Interstate has some awesome old neon Motel/Hotel signs. Sadly this one is getting removed on Monday, I believe. The Motel is getting torn down to make room for some affordable housing complex thing. The sign, however, is being salvaged by some group in order to preserve it. From what I read they don't know exactly what to do with it yet, but they don't want it to die.
This Interstate renewal program can be argued as either bad or good with great points on both sides, I'm sure. Honestly though I don't know anything about it other than its title and goal, but as far as taking this place down, it is probably for the best. A lot of the motels on this stretch are "by the week," which is telling, sadly. Down-on-their-luck families trying to get from here to there, facing the numerous speed bumps and chasms that fate has thrown in front of them, or that they themselves have thrown in front of themselves. Drug dealers, prostitutes, the various and sundry elements of the lower strata of our society. For those Humboldt people, this is a stretch that Eureka's Serenity Inn (aka the Ranch Motel) would easily fit into.
This place in particular, I'd like to think that it had a heyday as a primo motoring lodge before the freeway system came along and relegated it to what amounts to a back road.
That may be giving it too much credit though, and I realize this. It may have been scabby and cursed from the get go. I'll never know for sure, but I do know that I love this sign and on my walks home at night, I am going to miss its neon glow that lets me know that I am coming up on Killingsworth. The beacon of gaudy light that tells me that it is only 15 more minutes until I can wrap myself up in my comforter and fall into a deep, untroubled sleep on what is essentially a balloon.
Cheers, Crown Motel! May you be reincarnated as something prouder, grander, and in a location that cannot be usurped by any sort of freeway system.
2 comments:
nice one! i love those kinds of signs the best. why do they always get replaced by those sadsack plastic rectangles?
I know, huh? But truthfully, I would probably end up staying at some Regent Inn or something as the motels with the best signs tend to be rife with ugliness and pillows spiderwebbed with semen and blood.
The whole motel is nothing but a hole in the ground now. No rubble, no tombstone, just a John Deere of some type and orange/brown dirt.
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