Here’s another fab shot by CP, and a nice follow-up to yesterday’s Tip Top In and Out. And a big Ford wagon again too.
Curtis Perry Outtake: Winchell’s Drive Through
– Posted on February 15, 2020
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Curbside Classics Archives
Here’s another fab shot by CP, and a nice follow-up to yesterday’s Tip Top In and Out. And a big Ford wagon again too.
Great pic. Nice ‘73 Country Sedan with circa 1968-72 hubcaps.
Chicago has lots of hot dog stands, but I always wondered why LA has so many Donut Shops – this looks like So. Cal.
Winchell’s used to be everywhere, then they sort of disappeared and now I know of one out here in Colorado in Longmont. Winchell’s is sort of the 7-11 of donut shops – usually slightly seedy, never really clean inside, the parking lot is curiously sticky, their coffee isn’t very good, but you know what everything will be like in advance and they usually have exactly what you want at almost any hour.
That era of Ford wagon I spent a lot of time in as a teen when an older neighbor teen friend of a friend had one and we used to cruise around in it. Not sure why the older teen wanted to cruise around with us youngun’s but whatever, lots of evenings running up and down Ventura Blvd in the Valley left me with a fondness for these wagons. Nice pic, it could just as well be from 1983…
Your description of Winchells is bang on. Except for the part after “but…”, it applies also to Tim Horton’s, which for some unfathomable reason inspires fierce loyalty and love in Canada. This despite the grade-F coffee (literally, they buy the floorsweepings and burnt overroasts nobody else will buy), the always-stale doughnuts factory-made in Mississauga and shipped frozen everywhere, the sad parodies of soup and sandwiches, and the fact that they haven’t been a Canadian company in many years.
But then again, I don’t understand most of the fervour at the other end of the doughnut spectrum, either. A good doughnut made well is a fine treat once in awhile (Top Pot in Seattle, e.g.), but people queueing up for hours at the opening of a new Krispy Kreme…? Portlanders getting all excited about Voodoo Doughnuts’ latest random let’s-see-if-we-can-sell-these-with-a-straight-face quippily-named random combination of kids’ cereal and fluorescent food dye…? I just don’t get it, with or without a big damn Ford Country Squire parked outside.
+1 on the failings of Tim Hortons. The food is horrible, the coffee awful yet for some reason, working class folks just love it.
Not just working class folks! When you’re poor, Tim Horton’s is cheap enough to afford, quick enough to suit a short lunch break, and open late enough to suit a short lunch break at an odd hour.
What makes a whole lot less sense is people whose wallet never cares where they eat, and they just can’t get enough of “Timmy’s”.
The sign in the window for a half-pound breakfast sandwich compliments the heavyweight Ford wagon very well. Both contain more mass than anyone probably needs.
Good point! That’s one big sandwich in the window.
Ha ha ha LOLROFL, remember when we used to drive giant 11-miles-per-gallon cars down to the store for a doughnut and coffee or a packa cigarettes?
(…now we drive giant 11-miles-per-gallon SUVs down to the store for an avocado toast and kombucha or a vape pen…ha ha ha LOLROFL…)
With fuel at $1.50/L, I’m just puzzled why people buy gas-guzzling trucks. How the heck could anyone park one in Vancouver?
Daniel knows of what I speak.
I imagine it’s the same reason people buy gas-guzzling SUVs in Geneva, Switzerland ($6+/gallon): to advertise their wealth. Look what I can afford to buy and feed!
It really is a superb photo. Very evocative.
Just what is the “Heavyweight” that looms threateningly from the windows? To my (admittedly tired) eyes, it looks much like a jumble of toasted post-mortem lower intestine with an undescended turd still within, or at best, a croissanty thing with the same contents, but even this sort of place wouldn’t headline the serving of shit sandwiches, surely?
I hate to fight with adults over DOUGHNUTS, but I will. I always look for a locally-owned shop because in all of my experience, those doughnuts are the best. They do not sit on the bottom of my stomach. They have the flavor without being icky sweet. You can keep your chain doughnuts. In the fall of 1966 I was working in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and living in the adjacent town of Dalton. At that time there was a daylight bakery in Dalton run by two brothers who were the sons of Italian immigrants. HOMEMADE DOUGHNUTS. My breakfast every morning was a cup of good coffee, two jelly doughnuts and a glass of orange juice. I knew that I would never eat like that again and, in truth, it is a rare experience because the chain doughnut shops prevail. Sorry, is this supposed to be a car and truck web site? I guess that once and a while we can digress.
This is a truly great photo. At first glance I thought it might be an old ad drawing by Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman, but I don’t remember them doing Fords. A tip of the lens cap to Mr Perry.