Gone But Not Forgotten In Miami (Tamiami, Coral Gables: bars, designers, car)

[angelo7221]

Originally Posted by tallrick

Lndsley Lumber was also on Bird Road between 92nd and 87Ave at the current discount/advanced auto parts location. I remember that place well. As I mentioned before, Gold Triangle was behind the Wometco twin theater at the SE corner of Kendall and the Palmetto expressway. Another place I remember was the New England Oyster houses located at US-1 at 62 Ave, US-1 at 168 St and South River drive near the 836. I even remember how rural Sunset drive was west of 107Ave, There was a very rural shopping center and redneck bar on 117Ave where it ended at Sunset drive. One place I cannot remember was an odd building at the SE corner of sunset and 97 Ave. It was a restaurant or social club or something, but I remember it having a fountain and a huge date palm tree. Like everyplace else, it was demolished for a typical strip shopping center. Sunset had a very rural feel, with little "towns" of development at 87 Ave and at 97 Ave and at 117 Ave. Everything today is "master planned" and nasty.

Wasn't the fancy building with the fountain/palm tree the original location of "The Melting Pot" before it moved behind the Mobil gas station....just a hunch

[angelo7221]

Originally Posted by tallrick

Lndsley Lumber was also on Bird Road between 92nd and 87Ave at the current discount/advanced auto parts location. I remember that place well. As I mentioned before, Gold Triangle was behind the Wometco twin theater at the SE corner of Kendall and the Palmetto expressway. Another place I remember was the New England Oyster houses located at US-1 at 62 Ave, US-1 at 168 St and South River drive near the 836. I even remember how rural Sunset drive was west of 107Ave, There was a very rural shopping center and redneck bar on 117Ave where it ended at Sunset drive. One place I cannot remember was an odd building at the SE corner of sunset and 97 Ave. It was a restaurant or social club or something, but I remember it having a fountain and a huge date palm tree. Like everyplace else, it was demolished for a typical strip shopping center. Sunset had a very rural feel, with little "towns" of development at 87 Ave and at 97 Ave and at 117 Ave. Everything today is "master planned" and nasty.

Oh..and here's a link to a picture of that "Sunset lounge" at the journey's end...1972 - the Sunset Lounge on SW 117 Avenue photo - Don Boyd photos at pbase.com

[angelo7221]

The last time I went to Lila's was around 2006...they were in the Westchester mall and I had my first tamal en cazuela there..knocked my socks off. But isn't that mall extinct already...it was behind a fence the last time I had seen it

[angelo7221]

Love..love all these posts....I grew up in Kendall....throughout the 80's....and while the area changed dramatically leaving me to greatly miss its former incarnation, the fact that I missed out on the innocence and exuberance of an even greater era a generation one half-step behind me relished in, during a time when Miami truly thrusted its most graceful face forward, saddens me more. An endless playground of adventure and manhood testing, where falling in and out of love and learning life's lessons was within itself as natural as the sky above and required no consultation with a media source; in today's day and age it seems there are people that walk around more and more aimlessly strapped to the volatile nature of conspicuous consumption and enslaved by a new definition of cool aimlessly redefining itself by whatever "suit" is calling the shots...every conversational mantelpiece these days is a reference to something making rounds in the television or internet circuit, catch phraseology included. I just look at these back in the day posts and it helps to reinforce in my mind how much we've been dumbed down.

[tallrick]

Originally Posted by angelo7221

Wasn't the fancy building with the fountain/palm tree the original location of "The Melting Pot" before it moved behind the Mobil gas station....just a hunch

No, the place I was thinking of closed before the 80's. The melting pot was in the shopping center next to the old storer cable building, a tae kwon do place is there. I still cannot find any info on what was on the NE corner of sunset and 97. What I do know is that one of the date palms was saved and remains in the current shopping center to this day.

[scotchnh2o]

Originally Posted by miamiblue

There was this little restaurant called Chicken Unlimited at the SW corner of 97th and Kendall that we used to get take-out from a lot when I was a kid. It has been many things since then.

Crazy flashback! Keep it going!

I was the asst. mgr. then manager there from '72-'74.

Good times, great food... Manny was the owner, great guy.

We kept that place so clean, our area out back where the trash bin was kept was cleaner than most kitchens.

I left Miami in '74, anybody know when it closed?

[Miami Disco]

Video Power House

The Beat Club on Bird & 92nd

Break dancing at 81 st and Collins

Salon Azul parties

[tallrick]

Originally Posted by scotchnh2o

I was the asst. mgr. then manager there from '72-'74.

Good times, great food... Manny was the owner, great guy.

We kept that place so clean, our area out back where the trash bin was kept was cleaner than most kitchens.

I left Miami in '74, anybody know when it closed?

It closed in 1996 and was replaced by a Boston Chicken later renamed boston market. I am not sure what it is now.

[Cougar Beach]

The shopping center at the SW corner of Kendall and 97th Ave. was called the Village Mall. Remember the magazine shop there? They guy who owned tried to convince me to become a doctor. The chicken place next to it I think was a Maryland Fried Chicken for a few years. Some of my Killian ('78) classmates worked there. I remember they got busted for paying sub-minimum-wage.

My family moved near there a year (or so) after the Youth Fair moved away from K-Land.

I remember the Forum Cafeteria at the Dadeland shopping center. My parents loved the place; I thought it was weird to line up for food outside of school. It was between the Burdines and Jordan Marsh, which were the only department stores there (circa 1970).

Before that, we lived near Sunset Corners, at the apartments behind the Tip-Top gas station. I remember just to the west, across the railroad tracks, near the freight train siding, there was a field with cows. A neighbor moved down from Philadelphia, and she was fascinated by them. (They had the Gateway computer box pattern....Jersey, I think.) At Sunset Corners there was the Sunset Corners supermarket and Gwen's dance studio. Behind them were two very short streets with very long names.

Between the apartments was a restaurant (OK burgers and breakfasts) owned by a very old lady, and a drop-off laundry, run (owned?) by a guy named Tom. Across the street they'd built a Grand Union. There was also a Love Bug gift shop, a candy/ice cream (i think) place, where these two long haired bearded guys worked, and there was a take-out Chinese restaurant. The Chinese restaurant was great! I think the owners sent their kids to good colleges...our chow mein purchases paid their tuition.

Across Galloway Road from there was the Royal Castle, on the corner. It was a nice one. One day they filmed a Royal Castle TV commercial there. I was waiting to see it on TV, but they chain went under before the commercial was out.

[Cougar Beach]

We moved to Miami in '68, when I was 7 years old; we moved in with my father's uncle, who had a house on 103rd ave and 40th terr. We used to go to the Concord movie theater every week for the double feature. I saw 1,000,000 Years B.C. with Raquel Welch and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mrs. Miller, ther theater manager got to know us, and she'd always let us sit in the loges on our general admission tickets. (The seats were nicer, and you could smoke.)

On Bird road I remember the Dog House, which became Uncle Belly's, and Arbetter's across the street. Of course I remember the Pizza Palace at Galloway, but the Pizza Patio was better. They had carhop service at the Pizza Patio. I don't remember how good the pizza was there, but they had very good friend chicken, spaghetti and meatballs, and stuffed potatoes.

There was a strip shopping center at Bird & 98th, where my parents owned a drop-off laundry/dry cleaning place, next to Olympia TV and a bait & tackle store. Further down was Luther's Hardware, Dr. Weiss the optometrist, the FranBill luncheonette (owned by a couple from West Virginia), and the Olympia Heights drug store. Pearl's furniture was at the other end.

The Old Hickory was near Tropical Park, on the north side of Bird Road. The guy who ran it reminded me of Uncle Joe on Petticoat Junction.