Hello!

Thanks for visiting. My name is Luke, and I’m here to write about some arguably negligible pieces of history. I reside in New Jersey, where I’ve become an avid researcher of local history, retail history, and historic architecture over the past decade. For a while now, I’ve thought about writing and photographing so-called “stragglers” along the commercial landscape, where only one, or a few, examples remain of a once-common sight. 

I first had the idea for this blog in 2017, when I paid a visit to the final operating Howard Johnson’s restaurant. While the HoJo restaurant chain is now a distant memory, (that final location closed in 2022,) there are many other “stragglers” still out in the world to talk about. Since I have a tight schedule, without the time or money to visit a different struggling restaurant chain across the country every week, I’m including many “stragglers” in the mix, with a pretty lenient definition.

What you can expect to see here are rare remnants of specific architecture, logos, brands, businesses, and products, dating back as recently as the early 2000s, or as far back as the early 1900s. My aim here is simply to shine a light on experiences and sights that we take/took for granted, that are becoming increasingly harder to find in the public eye. I will focus my efforts on presenting examples that are still visible at the time of writing, as well as open to the public. I will try to avoid any pieces that are in private collections, requiring you to “know somebody” in order to see it yourself. 

Stay tuned, because I’ll be introducing some Stragglers to the mix very soon! Thank you again.

LF