Sponge-worthy: Tarpon Springs, Florida's Spongeorama

 Step right this way!

 Just a little bit further...

 Become an expert!

 A throng of spectators take in the sponge documentary.

 And then the dioramas await...

 On to the gift shop!

Don't care for sponges? Abalonie to you!

We're suckers for any place that has a suffix of "orama" in its title and there's a real lulu in the warm and friendly Florida gulf coast community of Tarpon Springs. Spongeorama was created in 1968 and boasts of its "world famous Spongeorama museum" that pays tribute to the industry and the Greeks who immigrated to America to create better lives for themselves working in it. They offer a free, yes free, movie and entrance to the museum. There are actually two  movies: a yellowed 1980s-looking infomercial about the different types of natural sponges for sale in the gift shop, and a 1950s-looking documentary about sponge diving that will remind baby boomers of the movies shown on rainy days after lunch in elementary school when you couldn't be let outside for recess. The crowds of bargain-savvy documentary-loving tourists populate the benches in the multi-media center (or back room next to the gift shop) and sit in awe at nature's marvel of endoskeletal, biomineralized, soon-to-be kitchen implements. After that, a tour of the museum's dioramas is not to be missed, with their late-60s mannequins, high school science fair-style reproductions of historical events, and windows that look like they haven't been cleaned since Lyndon Johnson was president. Then it's on to the glory of the gift shop, where you can buy a fabulous array of natural local sponges as well as other Florida keepsakes, all at a 10% discount now that you're a Spongeorama-deemed "expert" in the world of sponges.

Places like this are a dream come true for us, reminding us of our childhoods and the earnest efforts of people devoted to a subject others might consider mundane or unworthy. We would love to go back again and again to soak up the atmosphere.

Appropriate liquor store marquee of the week

Not only does Liquor Oasis of Bradenton, Florida have a delightfully retro sign, they have a marquee that looks like they were taking dictation from one of their tipsier clientele. Foster Brooks could not have said it better (*BURP*).

Long live decay: Scenes along Route 301 in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida

 

Route 301, running from Deleware to Florida,  is one of those old highways that has been around forever and used to be the main way of getting from point A to point B. Then along came the interstate, with its fast-moving uninterrupted lanes and easy-on, easy-off exit ramps. Old 301 is still around and has parts that are thriving quite well, thank you very much, but there are also good chunks of it that have seen better days, with its abandoned motels and dilapidated old signs of places once prosperous but now left to rot along the roadside. These are the stretches we like the most and we had a nice, but all too brief, drive along the part of it from South Carolina down to the Sunshine State. The dreary weather seem very apt. And rock on, Dr. Doug Stein...17,000 vasectomies is quite a record, no matter how you slice it.

A place in the sun

We've been a little behind on our posts lately but we have a good reason. Eccentric Roadside is moving its world headquarters from Rhode Island to Florida! Oh, the eccentric places we'll see, once we get settled. There will be new posts coming, so please be patient and see you later, alligator!

Do you Imagine men in beards

We got another one of those outlandishly translated robo-comments on our Giant Scorpion of Exeter, Rhode Island post from a while back. If John Lennon was going to write another verse of "I Am The Walrus", this passage from Angela Navejas of Cash For Junk Cars would have fit in nicely:

Nice Post! Do you know about a horse driven wagon being passed? Do you Imagine men in beards, and also suspender held black overalls? Wives with cloth hats, full dresses with dicky and youngsters dressed? You do understand people who keep advanced tenet for themselves in spite of contemporaneous society moving away from them.

Thank you for commenting, Angela. We'll have what you're having.

A 'saur standing there: Harold's, the dinosaur-shaped auto garage of Spring Hill, Florida

As if the real, live mermaids of Weeki Wachee (see previous post) weren't enough to coax you to the mid-Gulf coast of Florida, there's another fantasmagorical attraction to lure you in. Harold's Auto Center of Spring Hill is housed in a giant dinosaur named Dino. Back in 1964, a Sinclair gas station took their green reptilian logo to real extremes by erecting a 47-foot tall, 110-foot long apatosaurus. Though no longer a Sinclair station, Dino still stands today with googly eyes and a goofy smile to greet all motorists on busy Route 19 in need of tune-ups, batteries and brakes. Harold's has been in business since 1977 and boasts of all the latest technological automotive diagnostic advances ("although we are inside a dinosaur, we stay up to date with what your vehicle needs"). I know if I lived in the area, I would be raptored with joy every time I drove past such an outrageously eccentric establishment. So if you're in the area and having car trouble, bring your "car Rex" to Harold's -- they're a sight for 'saur eyes and tricera-tops in our book.