Monthly Junk - October 2024

Welcome to the next installment of Monthly Junk, a series which really really needs a better, less crass sounding name. But with the looming election, my mind isn't cracked up for any stress-inducing tasks like name generation, so Monthly Junk it remains. We got a big one this month- so big in fact, it has a table of contents!

Good(?) Eats
Carspotting
Thrifting & Estate Sales
Commercial Architecture
True Miscellany

Good(?) Eats

Wonder how long I can run that title before a knock from whatever amorphous blob owns Food Network? Anyway

• Papa Vito's in Cape Canaveral styles itself world famous, and I gotta say, it's pretty good. Pizza's damn solid, and the garlic knots were respectable. During my visit the place was beset by probably half the beach's police force in for a late lunch, which meant a certain tweet about cops and truffle pigs was stuck in my head for the remainder of the day.
• Jones Petroleum was a gas station I'd never encountered before, and I enjoy their straightforward name. This location off I-95 in SC is actually an outlier, as a majority of their locations are clustered around Atlanta.
• Perched on US-17 outside Charleston is the Carolina Cider Company. This (likely) former gas station now serves a variety of packaged and fresh local goods, including this hefty chocolate chunk cookie
• Treylor Park Pizza Party in Savannah serves a pepperoni pizza that'd be pretty highly rated if it wasnt so. damn. greasy. I could have tilted my plate into my gas tank and saved a few dollars. A real shame, cause look at that cupped pepperoni.
• Waters Ave in Savannah is very much in the early stages of a renewal and/or gentrification after Covid slowed initial city improvements. Waters Cafe sits in what was once an abandoned T-Mobile at the start of a small strip of recently-opened businesses, and makes a respectable grilled cheese, in both price and quality.
• Reese's entered the "what are we doing here?" stage a while ago, when they introduced the Big Cup alongside the normal and good King Size. I have yet to try a hockey puck sized Jumbo Cup, for which my gut is thankful.
• Hangry Joe's is a rapidly growing chain of restaurants in the recently-booming Nashville Hot Chicken fad category. They serve some really good chicken alongside great waffle fries in a former Pizza Hut down here in Melbourne.
• However, Hangry's is kept from the top by So-Ju Chikn, who's unassuming strip mall storefront serves the best chicken I've ever had. It is, cruelly, just far away enough from me that I can't make it a regular spot. 

Carspotting

While my carspotting is mostly focused on cars no one except weird nerds like, I do occasionally capture stuff normal people would consider cool cars. 

• This beautiful red Trans Am was resting in a car hauler parked down a suburban alley right off the interstate in Melbourne, Florida.
• Lounging in a beachside driveway is this weathered Triumph TR-7 convertible, an angular little British roadster from the late 1970s.
• For those with more refined taste, we can turn the clock back a decade to the TR4A, a much more classic roadster. This one is street-parked in front of a historic home in downtown Charleston.
• A cherry red Mustang is perhaps the most stereotypically American car I could have found to include here. This example was street parked on the streets of Savannah. 
• Finally, deeper into the suburban streets of historic Savannah, is this sharp looking Nissan 300ZX in the photogenic early morning sun

I'll be there when the light comes in
Tell 'em we're survivors!

This collection is are all survivors- either clean for a class of common but usually beat up vehicles, or just survivors of any grade from vehicles that didn't usually make it past 2015.

• This Ford F350 isn't the cleanest truck I've ever seen, but for a vehicle built to thrashed until the frame snaps in half, this thing's a beaut. Perhaps a configuration that made it as long as a small jet airliner kept it from a true working life.
• Second comes a true fly in amber. Hyundai today makes a lot of good vehicles, but back in the day, they were known primarily for utterly disposable economy cars^[1], built to make roughly 120k miles and then be crushed after something important broke. Not this humble Accent! I spotted this one with no rust, no dents, no fogged lights, no cracked glass, and, oh my god it's even got an original dealer plate frame.
• This Dodge Intrepid was hanging out in a Charleston parking garage, a survivor of Chrysler's LH platform that produced a lot of swoopy full size cars that didn't often last. Will these ever be cool again? Will any survive to see that era? Only time will tell.
• A baby blue Ford Ranger in a church parking lot in front of a spanish moss coated tree is perhaps the most Southern picture I've taken. This is a first generation example, the boxy predecessor to the 2nd and 3rd gens that would earn the Ranger it's internet fame.
• The Oldsmobile Silhouette was Chevrolet's bougiest minivan for the 2000s, but roof racks, heated mirrors, and an overhead DVD player couldn't save these upper middle class soccer carriers from the dustbin of history.

As more and more bloated, supercrewcomfortcab XL kingranch abominations take the streets, I cherish every vintage truck I see even more.

• This is about as big as a truck should be allowed to be sold, without some kind of work-requirement waiver. I have a real soft spot for this generation of Dodge, they're kinda the ideal of a work truck to me. Big, solid, practical.
• On the same carrier as the Trans Am from earlier was this absolutely beautiful Chevy. Idk if paint schemes have names, but I'd call this 'Creamsicle', and if I had the budget or need for a 'show truck' this is what I'd buy. 
• In a similar but more understated paint scheme is this Ford F100, a picture perfect example of patina. 
• There are few nicer trucks than a weathered, working old Ford. This one's still racking up the miles at a local auto repair shop.
• This boxy Chevrolet in a classy green was seen sinking into the asphalt outside a Charleston-area auto repair shop. 
• This bulky Chevrolet on big tires is fighting with the earlier Ranger for the strongest Southern vibes, this one was also photographed in residential Savannah.
• This was one of my favorite spots, honestly. a perfectly weathered Chevrolet S10 with a bedcover on a tree-lined Savannah street. 
• I initially suspected this of being a replica, but upon closer inspection I think this is a real deal Kaiser-Jeep M725 Ambulance. I have no idea what it's doing parked outside an office space in Savannah though.
• Finally, a spot from a story I might tell another time: one of Kennedy Space Center's maintenance trucks. My parents got this called over because our van got a flat tire, and the 10 year old spare turned out to be also flat. Look at all the stuff crammed in the back of this thing! It's got a full on little crane stashed back there!

The humble econobox is an increasingly rare sight today, both as truly cheap new cars vanish from the market, and the ones that remain shirk the classic box styling. Thus, the true econobox is joined now by an increasing cache of fallen luxury cruisers and other once fairer folk. The members of the shitbox club I spotted this month were

• I consider the Pontiac G-series as the defining shitbox of this generation, and that's only partly because a high school friend of mine drove a G8 with crash damage that gave it a permanent snarl. This sunfaded mall-crawler is a G5, the Cobalt-derived base spec of the series, and direct successor to the Sunfire lineage of shitboxes.
• While the Sunshine State is home to a large number of honest-to-god 'garage kept, only driven to church and back' cars, as time marches inevitably on, those flies in amber fall onto their less caring 2nd and 3rd owners. Thus, many grandma cars are now joining the primer-speckled ranks of this Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.
• The V20 Toyota Camry is what you'd get if you turned a child's drawing of a car into a real vehicle. Four doors, 4 cylinders, 4 seats, a hood and a trunk. It's just an car, what more can one say? These older examples are sadly getting rarer- not even a 1980s Toyota 4-cylinder can escape truly entropy. 
• While never achieving the frugal fame of contemporary Japanese imports, a second or third (or fourth)-hand Pontiac Grand Am is still the beater of choice for those who shop American. This example, sucker-punched in the jaw, was spotted pulling out of a shopping center.
• the Mazda 626 is a store brand not-a-Ritz cracker of a vehicle. An utterly unremarkable family sedan, only pictured here because I earnestly have not seen one before. Or maybe I have, and I just assumed it was some other forgettable sedan.
• Members of Chrysler's LH-platform are thin on the ground these days, and this Chrysler Concorde represents most of the survivors pretty well- sunfaded but still smiling. 
• The Eclipse is an outlier here- what's a sports car doing among gutless sedans and weathered econoboxes? well, look at the thing. This metallic orange Mitsubishi, having missed it's true calling of being wrapped around a telephone pole by an overeager guy in his 20s, has been reduced to the color of splotchy pennies outside the local shopping mall. 

Thrifting & Estate Sales

Spent a lot more time in thrift stores this month than I thought. Thankfully, still didn't buy much, which is a real improvement over my previous spending habits.

One of the pickups I did make was this amazing Chrysler safety booklet, maybe from the 1960s? (as it's an internal thing and not published, there's no copyright date or anything). Amazing that this is the level of artistry that used to go into a "don't spill flammable liquids or stand too close to the spinning machines" pamphlet.

It's a little strange, but something I really love to find is old packaging. I'm a real nerd for graphic design and ephemera specifically, and this sorta stuff, well it's trash, right? It gets thrown out, so for it to survive longer than the printed expiration date is a miracle. For a play-by-play;

• RoseArt only used this blocky-font logo in the 90s, discontinuing it around 2001
• Durocher's ice cream was based out of New Hampshire, and was bought out by Hershey^[2] in 1980
• Skippy has had a pretty homogenous logo through it's history; I'd speculate this is from the 70s, maybe early 80s, based on design and the "Less Sugar" branding
• the Minolta Maxxum QTsi was released in 2000, and I'd wager the Planters jars next to it are of similar vintage. 
• This metal tin, I'd wager is from either the 1970s or early 80s.
• Albertsons has been gone from Brevard County since 2010, but I'd wager this jar of vanilla creamer is from the early 2000s.

This was a fun one. Canaveral Groves is recognizable today as a collection of rural subdivisions in western Brevard County, but at the time it was being first advertised in magazine adverts like this, it was a borderline real estate scam. Advertised lots were located on improperly-recorded dirt roads with no utilities, if they were accessible at all, and it took decades for even a fraction to be turned into functional homes.

One of the estate sales I went to had some just beautiful pieces of mirror-tastic 80s/90s furniture. They aren't my aesthetic, but I appreciate finding them, and it's sad they're probably destined for landfill.

Okay, here's all the stuff that didn't fit into convenient categories.

• Give us the good stuff, egg master!
• Babe are you ok? you've barely touched your Northrop-Grumman:tm: packed lunch
• The Oldsmobile Aurora was perhaps Oldsmobile's last gasp in the public consciousness, and I like seeing them. I really wish this hat had fit me.
• Making literally anything into a board game is far from a dead trend, but it's fun finding a more retro example, and this box art is super cute.
• Final Doom is from that weird era where fan-created content could make it onto physical discs; this differs from glitchy Sims packs however in that Final Doom was published and partially comissioned by Id Software.
• Just a little Citibank keychain; the other side features their 1976-1999 logo and I'd wager this probably isn't far from 1976.
• I found this build-it-yourself toy at an antique mall; I just really enjoy the quasi-3D design of the little guy used as the logo.
• One of the estate sales had several "NYNEX^[3] News" tapes, including this one produced in the narrow period in which "the World Trade Center Disaster" could be assumed to mean the 1993 van-bombing.
• I had known about military analog flight simulators, but I had never even considered tabletop trainers for civilian light aircraft until finding this one.

Commercial Architecture

A couple of miscellaneous pictures of commercial architecture;

• This ancient gas station was located somewhere outside Charleston, and has probably been vacant since the 70s or earlier, if I had to guess. I took some more pics with my film camera, which I hope to be able to share soon.
• This circus-roofed building in Charleston was actually a very early Hardees, later adapted for a florist and now East Bay Deli
• Just up the street is this former 'mission' style Taco Bell, now slathered in HGTV white for a salon.
• This iconic sign for Coburg dairy was put up in 1959, and has survived both storms and corporate brand consolidation. I tried to get a photo from the other side without the wires, but the sun wasn't co-operating.
• Speaking of unco-operative lighting, that rears it's ugly head in this quick shot of a mid-century bank across the street.
• Coming back to Florida, RJ Farms opened recently in half of a Staples in Eau Gallie that downsized several years ago. The store's incredibly spartan on the interior, but it seemed well stocked and I'm sure it'll be good for the local community, which is what counts.

True Miscellany

Okay, we're finally at the end, folks! Here's everything that I couldn't spin into a category.

• I always love seeing the 'exposed' server racks at the movie theatre. In an age of everything being run by a Windows mini PC stuck to the back, it's nice to see some proper equipment.
• One of the estate sales I went to had an amazing vintage curved ceiling over the kitchen. Sadly, the plastic hasn't totally held up over the decades.
• You know you're traveling in the aftermath of a hurricane when FMTVs roll by the gas stations you stop at to refuel^[4]. I'm assuming these are being called out to do rescues and run supplies in flooded areas, since they sit signifigantly higher than normal trucks.
• Speaking of hurricanes, I found this simple note- "HURRICANE', in this Georgia Welcome Center logbook pretty sobering.
• I wonder how old this derelict newspaper box is. Can't be much older than the 2000s, since it has a URL, but still.
• While digging for the tool kit in my parents van, this Wildwood, NJ sticker popped out. We've never been to Wildwood, so presumably this is a hanger on from previous owners.
• Spotted this mail crate at the mall bearing UPS' full name; for the curious, FedEx is also shortened, from Federal Express.
• Ollie's Bargain Outlet is a chain of closeout stores here in the US; they're big enough I dont want to call them 'regional', but they're not nationwide either. One of their quirks is they occasionally sell busted ACs- semi-sarcastically Guaranteed Not To Work!. I have seen people buy em, presumably to fix, and I definitely prefer it to most stores' policy of simply trashing defective items.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! This post ended up WAY BIGGER than the previous monthly roundup, and I even considered splitting this into multiple posts, but I don't wanna clog y'alls feeds. If these get any bigger though, I'll probably do that. For fans of the regular stuff, I got that in the feed too, just been busy with life and vacations.

Until next time!

(this guy is the mascot on a cheap 100-pack of paintbrushes I bought this month. I really enjoy him)

Published November 3rd, 2024

[1] I'd be honestly shocked if there's more than a dozen roadworthy Excels left in the country. Counting junkyards and those rotting in the backlots of mechanics, the number probably still doesn't break triple digits.
[2] Hershey Creamery Company, despite being founded in the same county in the same year, has absolutely no relation to The Hershey Chocolate Company. There's been about as many trademark disputes as you'd expect.
[3] A New York City-based telecom company that merged with Bell Atlantic in 1997
[4] I'd also be remiss not to mention the legions of power company bucket trucks migrating south on I-95 as I went north.