I have a vague memory of reading somewhere about a restaurant, I think it was in L.A. or somewhere, that just up and closed under mysterious circumstances one day. Even more mysterious, for reasons known only to the owner the building was left exactly as it was on the day it was closed, for decades. Passer-by could look in the windows and see fully-set tables as if the place was going to open later that day.
Is this story ringing a bell for anyone?
Closest thing that I know of is Little Joe’s.
Yes it does. It wasn’t China town. I want to say it was on Western, but I don’t think that’s right. I’m going to have to do some digging. My parents might know if I can’t figure it out.
Found it! Original Spanish Kitchen on Beverly Blvd. It closed in 1961, all set for service the next day, and stayed that way for 25 years.
Yep, that was it! Thanks!
Now that the question has been answered:…
Here’s a story about a woman who lay dead in her apartment for 3 years before being discovered and her TV was still on!
http://yourblackworld.net/2014/10/03/this-womans-body-was-in-her-apartment-3-years-with-the-tv-on/
Here’s a picture.Link
Of the Spanish Kitchen, not the dearly departed.
I have seen a couple restaurants left like that for years but not decades. For decades I would have to fall back on a hardware store that closed for the day in like 1961 and never reopened. I was in it in 2010 or so and except for most of the perishables being removed (like the live bait luckily) everything was still in place and the cash registers had a basic change set-up in place. I did mention “silver coins and melt value” when I noticed that.
There was a place like that near where we used to spend the summer. It was a diner, and I remember it being open long ago, when I was small. Then, it closed, and remained that way for years.
You could look in the windows, and see the red-checked tablecloths on tables set for the next day: upside-down water glasses, salt and pepper shakers, paper placemats, cutlery in its proper place, ashtrays. Behind the counter, everything looked ready to go the next day: the toaster, and the coffee machine complete with pots, and so on. There was a Kellogg’s rack with small boxes of cereal. Signs on the walls inside advertised the diner’s offerings: “Best Coffee in Town, 10c,” “Apple Pie, 35c.” These made us laugh, as the years went by and prices for such things increased.
Every summer, we kids would pass by and look in the windows. It never changed, except that the red-checked tablecloths on tables near the window gradually faded from the sunshine coming in through the windows, to the point where they had tablecloths that were white with faint pink.
There’s an entire city of (formerly) 39,000 people like that, in Cyprus.
I grew up in the UK Midlands and there was a spooky old shop in the nearby town of Wednesbury.
It was a bike/auto electrical shop that must have closed in the 1960’s, but was still there until the 90’s. The nearby road layout had been changed at least twice and this little shop ended up on an isolated traffic island.
The prices in the window were all in pre decimal units. Looking through the dusty windows you could see boxes and boxes of stock. And on the counter there were two coffee mugs with a plate of biscuits. It looked like the owner had just popped out on an errand and would be back soon.
But the spooky thing was how much it was ignored. The roads and the nearby bus station had been redeveloped twice and they just worked around it. Nobody ever broke in and stole any of the stock, maybe because it was mainly Lucas!
I can find very little mention of it on the internet and friends from the area need a little prompting before they remember it. It’s very odd!
I’m guessing the owner died suddenly and the deed to the land got tied up in some sort of legal dispute. Or there’s a perception filter on it and the town planners just couldn’t see it.
And then there was the Marie Celeste, a sailing ship found abandoned with dinner half eaten on the tables.
A few years ago I was walking around an abandoned Red Star Yeast factory that a friend of mine had bought and was taking down.
Everything in there (that he hadn’t removed) made it look like they left one day and never came back. You could tell what day the factory closed just by looking at calendars in the offices. IIRC, one of the little office type rooms on the factory floor even had Christmas decorations up and the place had been closed for a few years at this point.
For those of you in Milwaukee, even though there are/were breweries in that area, Red Star is what made the Marquette interchange smell like yeast when you headed up 94W.
Reminder folks: Giving a Google image search link like this does not work for everybody! I just get a search page with a lot of variations on a “spanish” kitchen. Which one is the intended one is difficult to impossible.
Always, I repeat, always, give a direct link to the intended picture or at least the original page it appears on if there is no ambiguity as to which picture(s) you are referring to.