Vintage Roadside, an interesting on-line gift shop

I just found out through my exploration of Flickr about a website that should interest anyone with a passion for vintage graphics and other stuff dealing with the American roadside. It is called Vintage Roadside (not to be confused with Roadside Magazine) and it is the brainchild of Jeff Kunkle and his wife Kelly Burg. Jeff has been contributing to Flickr photos and other images from his collection which caught my attention. He in turn found out about my weblog and contact was made.

Ironically in the last 2 days Bill Griffith has used some pieces from Jeff’s collection for the “Zippy” comic strip ( http://www.zippythepinhead.com/ ). These are no ordinary pieces but the fibreglass statues of the whole “Burger family” from A&W Rootbeer fame. (“In 1963, A&W® restaurants introduced The Burger Family®, which included a Mama Burger®, Papa Burger®, Teen Burger® and Baby Burger®,” each burger was made in different ways, such as The Teen Burger included cheese, two slices of bacon, lettuce, tomato and salad dressing).

These statues similar to “Muffler Man” and “Bob’s Big Boy” statues are quite large and were used at various A&W stands over the years. Jeff & Kelly rounded up “Mama Burger”, “Teen Burger” and “Baby Burger” from a location in Sacremento, California last October and got the final one “Papa Burger” from Oregon not too long after that in November. You can read about it through his website and blog.

The website is http://www.vintageroadside.com/

and the blog is http://vintageroadtrip.blogspot.com/

Jeff & Kelly’s collection of fibreglass statues reminds me that they are not alone, John Baeder has a “Big Boy” statue in his yard as well!