How do you remember Phoenix? Stories from long time residents... (Mesa: summers, monthly)

[AzSon]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

I remember the silver dollar sign, it was right on Central Avenue. The upper left had a huge silver dollar and to the right the 'Silver Dollar Drive-In Theater' with neon arrows running along the bottom pointing to the box office. Beneath that was the marquee with lights around it. The whole thing was off the ground about 8 feet supported by two brick columns with a low planter in between. The area around the drive-in was a citrus orchard. I think it was $1 a carload so no need to hide people in the trunk.

I talked to my sister after this and she said when she was a kid (1950's) that they had real silver dollars imbedded in the counter in the snack bar.By the time I first went to the Silver Dollar they were long gone.

[AzSon]

Originally Posted by AzSon

Attachment 66662

Remember the 1977 flood that wiped out all the bridges except Central ave,I-10, and Mill ave. ? I took this picture from the south bank of the river at 7th st. facing north.

Found some more pictures of the 1978 flood,before and after.All before were taken from 7th st.( thats Smitty's warehouse in the first photo )All after were taken of the 16th st. bridge, or what was left of it.Note that bridge was built over a smaller one destroyed in a prior flood,probably in '65.

[Westside Willie]

All this talk about water makes me want to...

share this with you.

If you've never been there, check out Arizona Falls at 5650 E Indian School.

Read up and learn here kiddies!
Arizona Canal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[FadedGlory]

I have been to Arizona Falls a few time, it's nice. All things considered though I would rather it still looked the same as it did in 1900.

[azdr0710]

Originally Posted by FadedGlory

I have been to Arizona Falls a few time, it's nice. All things considered though I would rather it still looked the same as it did in 1900.

I agree....it's all prettied up now in a safe, clean, park-like way, but certainly not original looking!.....wish I'd seen it before this recent fix-up

[roosevelt]

A few resort that are mostly gone:

[desertratz]

Originally Posted by roosevelt

A few resort that are mostly gone:
Attachment 66785

Attachment 66786

Attachment 66787

Another long gone Tempe "resort".

[deraffe]

Originally Posted by Westside Willie

All this talk about water makes me want to...

share this with you.

If you've never been there, check out Arizona Falls at 5650 E Indian School.

Read up and learn here kiddies!
Arizona Canal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

when i was in high school, we used to jump the fence and skate the 2 bowls in the rear of the "old" AZ falls. it was just an old substation then and these were the pools that fed the old generators. they were seperated by a large spine and were dry most of the time. suprisingly, we never got caught or chased off.

[Arizona Mike]

Originally Posted by slowesthand

does anyone remember thr "PoP shoppe" Those little stores that sold there brand of soda. I can remember their red and white stripped labels, and the returnable bottles. They were based in Canada I think, I remember buying a case in the wooden cases, loved the grape and cream soda!

Just south of the old East High School on 48th Street there was a Pop Shoppe branch in the strip mall on the west side of the street around 1976. I remember getting them in those wooden crates, too.

[Arizona Mike]

Originally Posted by AzSon

O.k. i've read a few hundred more posts and now know the Fox theater was lost in 1975.
There are a couple things I remember about being in Phx in the 70's I'd like to know more about :
Anyone remember a big slide with a small pool at the bottom called SplashDown ? I think it was at the 5 points of 7th st.east Dunlap and Cave Creek rd. The "tickets" were wide rubber bands.
This would have been around '74 or '75.I think I remember Wallace and Ladmo promoting it on thier show.
I haven't yet read anything about Sombreo Playhouse/Theater,east side of 7th st. just south of Camelback.I went there regularly from fall '77 until '81 or maybe '82. Rocky Horror Picture Show on fri. and sat. nights plus saw films like Harold and Maude,Kentucky Fried Movie.A Boy and His Dog,Zardoz,Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings,and so on.What was the name of the restaurant adjacent to the theater ? It had had a south seas island
type of design with palm frond roofs.When the theater was built in the 50's its purpose was to stage plays,but that idea had long been abandoned by the time I was going there.The place was on hard times and run down.There was a article about it in a issue of Arizona Highways some time after it opened.Can't remember what year.My Dad had every issue of A.H. from 1948 to 1983 in cases the magazine sold with the year and Arizona Highways embossed on the spine.The first three,'48,'49, and '50 were actually bound like a book.Wish I had those volumes now.I don't know when the theater and restaurant were demolished.I hadn't been there for a while , when one day I passed by and there was a pile of rubble where they had been.A mid-rise office building took thier place.

Anyone else remember this place or am I the only "creature of the night" on this thread ? Speaking of creatures I saw 'Creature from the black lagoon" there on a double bill with '"It came from outer space",both in 3-D.
Back then,before this current phase of 3-D movies, 3-D was retro !

I also remember the Sombrero double-bills in its last days as a revival house. In the days before VHS players and widespread cable channels, if you wanted to see classic movies, cult movies, or anything that wouldn't show up on TV, we would go there or the Valley Art in Tempe. Remember how they would publish those monthly posters that were a calendar for all the movies playing that month? Most of them were played for 2 or 3 days. Movies on a screen are always better than on a video screen, no matter how big, so that's something a lot of kids today don't get to enjoy. I saw a lot of the same flicks you did there (was probably there on the same night as you at least once) - they had the midnight shows of "Rocky Horror Picture Show", of course. (They finally had damage to the screen from all the rice people threw during the wedding scene, so they banned it.) I remember going to see all the classic Universal horror films, a double bill of "Creature From the Black Lagoon" and "It Came From Outer Space" in 3D, "Phantom of the Paradise", "Dark Star", a great triple bill of "Last Days of Man on Earth", "A Boy and His Dog", and "Kentucky Fried Movie" on Halloween night in 1977.

I also remember taking a very lovely, very religious girl with whom I worked, who was a Sunday-school teacher and a psychology major at ASU, on a date to the Sombrero to see "A Clockwork Orange". She didn't know anything about it other than the title, which she said one of her professors had mentioned to her in a class while discussing operant conditioning. Jumping at any chance to ask her out, I mentioned that it was showing at the Sombrero and asked if she'd like to go see it. We had gone out once before on a semi-date to an antique auction at Rawhide and had a nice time, but during our evening at the Sombrero, I learned that "A Clockwork Orange" is not a good date movie. (Unless you're dating a girl from the Manson Family, perhaps.) After an evening of Kubrick's sardonic vision of the future and multiple beatings and gang assaults, she looked like she was almost in tears and barely spoke to me on the ride home. You live and you learn, I guess.

AMC Movie Theaters also had a Midnight Movie show with various cult flicks. I frequently went to the ones at the AMC Theater that was in the Town and Country Mall at 20th street and Camelback, and they had a really great promo trailer for the shows, which someone was kind enough to post on YouTube. Remember this?


YouTube - AMC Midnight Movie Express 1986