This is one terrific #cocktails sign, and how can one resist the World Famous Sultana Bar? This is #route66 #vintage #americana at its best, in Williams, #Arizona.
Williams #Arizona is a treasure trove of #route66 #americana. This was one of my favorite stops. Look at the amazing Highlander Motel sign. Old West meets 1950s roadside. And the old #AAA neon sign completes the package.
A #route66 tradition: Jumping on the Jackrabbit Trading Post statue for a photo. #sunset #arizona #americana @frankofonic
The El Camino Family Restaurant in #Socorro, #newmexico There are no words to describe this #googie goodness. #oldsigns #retrosigns #signporn #vintage #retro #roadeats #americana #retro
A Mother Road classic: the 66 Drive-In. #route66 #drivein #movies #roadside #americana #roadtrip #missouri
30-foot-tall young, lanky and non-vampire Abe Lincoln carries ax and is ready to split some logs at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. #roadside #americana #folkart #route66 #honestabe
Fantastic #mufflerman, the Gemini Giant from 1965, outside Launching Pad #drive-in on #route66. #spacege #1960s #nasa #rockets #kitsch #americana
Our #lincolnhighway trip ends with the Haines Shoe House. #Roadtrip pics soon on the #Retrologist #americana
It’s no longer Cott to be Good: Vintage roadside sign for old-school soft drink vanishes
The Cott soda sign, photographed Dec. 25, 2009 (Photos: Rolando Pujol)
Last Christmas, and the one before that, and indeed, for many dozens of Yuletides, the sign was there.
I came to associate if with Christmas, because the building in North White Plains on which it was long affixed is on the way to the Chinese restaurant I take my parents to every Christmas — Imperial Wok — on Route 22 in Westchester County.
It was a faded sign for Cott soda, touting “17 delicious flavors” and featuring its truly delicious slogan, “It’s Cott to be Good.” Until seeing this sign for the first time on Christmas 2009, I had no idea what Cott soda was. But I was intrigued. The name goes all the way back to 1923, to a beverage company founded in Port Chester, not far from this sign’s long-time home in White Plains.
The Cott sign as it appeared on Dec. 25, 2010.
Cott is still going strong, producing a range of beverage products such as Vintage seltzer water, but not, it seems, making much under the Cott name, at least as can be surmised from the website.
So this old sign was very much a tie to a vanished regional drink.
I photographed the sign on Dec. 25, 2009 and again on Christmas 2010. I drove past it last Christmas, and opted to skip the ritual photo.
All that’s left of the Cott sign is the shadow where it was once affixed.
This year it was gone.
The brick wall had been repainted, and the sign was MIA.
Holiday heartbreak.
It’s Cott to be good, right? Not in this case.
Did someone save it, realizing the treasure that it was? Or was it unceremoniously junked?
These are the sorts of urban eccentricities I live for, and this particular gem came to develop a warm link to Christmas.
I’ll miss it come Dec. 25, 2013.
Rolando Pujol
RETROLOGIST ON A ROLL: Cross Bay Motor Inn, Ozone Park, #Queens. #motels #hotels #neon #highway #retro #americana #highways (Taken with Instagram)
