A Skillet and a Paper, No More

The final print edition of Columbus Alive, which recently announced its online-only
status like an increasing number of publications around the country

The July 3rd edition of Columbus Alive marked a significant and increasingly unsurprising development in the publication's history. The newsprint version of this weekly, which has history dating at least to the 1990s and most likely into the 1980s (see below), will go the way of the dodo bird, with the publication going to a strictly online presence from here on out.

Normally, this mere transition would've been an "Oh, okay" moment for me, a mere blip that wouldn't have merited more than a brief mental acknowledgement.  However, a chance find at an estate sale a few weeks prior provided a golden opportunity for a blog post that I couldn't turn down.

All Signs Point to High (Pt. 1) - Diners, Drive-Ins and Drives

This photo of the neon Dairy Queen sign on the north end of the metro's
High Street inspired me to take a little road trip

Growing up, Dairy Queen has never been one of my favorite fast food joints - in fact, I always like to joke that the worst burgers I ever had were from a DQ (they were so bad, it made me crave the elementary school cafeteria burgers with the "Hot 'N Tasty" adorned foil wrappers.) However, an old-school neon sign can induce anyone to warm up to a place, and the one that adorns the front of Worthington's location (the building itself dates back to 1955) certainly does the trick.

When I posted a picture of the sign, I asked folks if they could remember other memorable signs along this main thoroughfare of Columbus. A few folks chimed in, and I was a bit flummoxed that I couldn't think of many more than I did during my post. I really haven't stopped thinking about it since, so on a recent slow, nothing-better-to-do day, I drove the roughly 16-mile-stretch of north-south aligned High Street from one end of the I-270 Beltway to the other to see what I could find.