Part of the ongoing disappearance of tacky iconic structures along Route 1 north of Boston.
We’ve seen Weylu’s Chinese Palace go, the Hilltop Steakhouse (with its herd of fiberglas cows), the Full of Bull restaurant (replaced by a MacDonald’s – how is THAT fair?), and the MiniGolf Course with its iconic fluorescent orange T. Rex.
Well, now another one bites the dust – The Ship Restaurant (originally The Weathervane Restaurant, other branches of which are still going) has been demolished
After Weathervane left, a series of upscale restaurants opened up inside the ship, always called The Ship, but none of them could make a go of it.
There was a Yankee Candle downstairs, and a Christmas Tree Shop went up next door – in the form of a New England Fishing Village, so it fit the theme. But the fully Rigged Ship is now a thing of the past.
I hope the rest of the tacky things stay up – they give the road character. We still have Prince Pizzeria with its Leaning Rower of Pizza, and Kowloon’s restaurant, in the shape of a giant Polynesian hut. And they left us relics of two of the things torn down – we still have the Giant Cactus from the Hilltop an d the Orange T rex with fluorescent green eyes from the min-golf.
But, for all that, the place is starting to look too much like Everyplace Else.
I’ve eaten at Kowloon’s and the Hilltop. Never been to the Ship or the miniature golf course. For those with a nostalgic attachment to those places, you have my sympathies; but as someone who didn’t grow up around here none of them strike me as a huge loss.
I never ate at The Ship, didn’t much care for the Hilltop, but I miss/will them both as interesting cultural touchstones. I really wanted to mini golf last week and there aren’t really other options any more.
I like to visit the cows when I go to Lynnfield. I don’t remember Full of Bull. Weylus was something else. What a shame. Patton Oswalt and Dane Cook were joking about the Kowloon’s chicken wings earlier this week.
We had a similar nautical-themed restaurant closure in the Bay Area recently: Forbes Island at Pier 39 in San Francisco is gone for good. It’s one of those touristy places that I never got around to checking out, and now I’m kind of bummed that I’ll never get the chance.
When we were introduced to the Hilltop, they didn’t take credit cards, the Filet was $6.95 for the steak, a huge salad, and a potato from Three Mile Island.
The wait to be seated on the weekends was normally north of two hours.
well, I didn’t grow up around them either, but I lived with them long enough to get an attachment for the ugly things.
and it’s not just the attachment to Things That Have Been Around a Long Time – it’s the disappearance of the local idiosyncrasies that give a place its local flavor. With those places gone (and a few others like Russo’s Candies), we’re left with the relatively new Target and Walmart and Applebee’s and McDonald’s (two of them!) we DID a Kelley’s Roast Beef, a limited and local chain whose walls are decorated with memorabilia of bygone Revere Beach, but it’s not enough. Fair Rarity – if you want local mini-golf, there are still places to go. There’s a small course at Salem Willows, and – to my unending surprise and delight – Hago Harrington’s mini-golf continues to operate on Route 28 in Stoneham
Much further up Route 28 in North Reading there’s BFM Mini-golf (and soft-serve ice cream)
We did, by the way, eat in two of the posher restaurants that took over The Ship. They were good, though expensive (hey - it IS in Lynnfield). the combination of a toney restaurant in a tacky but lovable building apparently made for too much cognitive dissonance for most people. that’s all I can figure.
(The old Weathervane was in no way a ritzy restaurant. Fried seafood with French fries and other such plebian grub was their specialty, perfectly suited to eating in a building shaped like a sailing ship.)
Oh god, yep! Never had a bad meal there – it was very basic but very good. My uncle loved their lazy man’s lobster casserole. We used to have Sunday dinner there every so often with my aunt and uncle who lived up that way. The line would snake around the entire building.
What was it, a few years ago where somebody stole one of the cows and the cow would reappear in different places in the Boston area? IIRC it was eventually returned.
BTW, never ate at the Ship but did mini golf a few times with the orange T-Rex and ate at Weylu’s/Kowloon maybe a handful of times.
Yeah, it was nuts. They installed a covered walkway (with a bar) outside the building proper to handle the crowds. And the announcements telling you which room to go to - “Dopers, party of 4, for Sioux City, Dopers, Sioux City.”
One day a friend of mine discovered there were no crowds on Good Friday. We used to go every Good Friday for at least two decades, long after their popularity dropped.
Yeah, I can appreciate the local kitschiness of it, and I don’t want to world to become an unbroken expanse of Walmarts, McDonaldses, and their ilk. But I can’t make time stand still and save everything, either. While places like the Ship and Hilltop are disappearing, craft brewers and new burger joints are popping up all over. It was ever thus. Before the orange T. Rex, what was at that location? Whatever it was, I’m sure someone was sad to see it go.
It was a family affair, that was the owners wife droning out the numbers to tell patrons which of the rooms to go to.
As the restaurant was cash only, the owner ended up buying a bank and stuffing it in the basement to make things easier.
The parking lot was a little different. Frank, the owner, had the spaces striped wider than normal, to reduce the chances his customers would get a door ding from the Caddy next to them.
For a long while the Hilltop was the largest restaurant in North America
Despite what people say about popularity falling off, it was always hard to get a table at The Hilltop at dinner time, or on Sundays, even up to the end. There would be lines in that covered walkway. The only time I could get in easily and quickly was if I came in well after normal dinner hours. I’m still surprised that the place closed. Certainly its original customers had aged out and died off, but there’s still a steakhouse operating not half a mile up the road. And, as I say, the crowds were still there.
They were especially there when they announced the place was closing – everyone wanted a last shot at the place.
I lamented the loss of Weylu’s and the Hilltop, but the Ship never really was on my radar as something that was particularly special. Yes, it was unique, but it wasn’t particularly good.