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Many people here know my full first and last name, so if you wanted to find me, a simple Google search is all you need. You could literally find my home address and phone number that way. Starting Tuesday, you'll need a simple Bing search, because Google is going AI-only on their search engine, so it'll be a crapshoot.
By the way, if you do get curious enough to search me out by my first and last name and find me and my number, give me a call. I ain't afraid to say hi. There ain't a person on VGC past or present I wouldn't love to hear from. Also, you ain't gonna scare me with any weirdness. I just recently tried to search out a friend with whom I've fallen out of touch with for years, tried to find them a week ago, but their name is so ubiquitous Italian that it was impossible to find them. Had I found them, I might have tried to call, but do you know how many thousands of Marisa Piazzas there? Just in New York? JUST IN BROOKLYN?! Fuhgeddaboudit. (Yeah yeah yeah I know I know...)
ANYWAY
The reason for that preamble is that I'm not scared to talk about my home city, even if it means you might find me, and I wanna hear about yours. No, I ain't gonna stalk you. I spend too much time enjoying my silly city while I still can.
I'm from and live in Ogden, UT. Since COVID, sadly, the charm of the city has slowly started to dwindle, with loft apartments going up on every other corner and depriving commuters of the gorgeous mountain views and wonderful little niche shops. There are still a few spots that are interesting and cool, and I'm gonna hop on Google Maps, throw a couple images into IMGUR, and share them.
First off, abandoned restaurant Boccia's D'Italia:
This building has been closed for WHO KNOWS how many times. It's been a dozen different restaurants, all of them fail. It has ample parking, an incredible looking little outdoor dining area, easy-to-access location, on a major roadway... but it just never seems to get a leg up.
Up the street from that, Lutheran Ascension Church:
This place isn't charming for any reason other than their little sign out front. 70% of the time, it's a Windows error screen. Sometimes it's like what you see here. Most of the time I drive by, it says, "Through God, all things are possible," so jot that down.
Moving south, across the street from a Lowe's and a giant Walmart shopping center (you know the kind), Elysium Evanscents:
Look, I have never been into any kind of mystical, zodiac, nothing in any serious capacity. Apparently, neither has the entire rest of the Ogden. I've never seen a sole vehicle in the parking lot other than the one of the employee or owner or whoever that runs this place and yet it's been open for 15 years.
This next one is mentioned in the Discord.
Formerly called IDK Barbecue, and now possibly my absolute favorite spot in the entire city, Carnitas El Jumbo!:
At this wonderful one-stop-shop building, you can pay your bills, send wire transfers, cash checks, refill your international phone minutes, photocopy, scan, and get burritos the size of your head. What's not to love? I all-but guarantee you there is an Olmec-looking abuela that runs this place, she's using recipes her own abuela made, who she is still living in Mexico and looks EXACTLY like Grandma Coco, but can walk.
In the summer, there's a shaved ice shack in the desolate parking lot that NOBODY visits. I'm 90% certain it's a front for big Carnitas:
A local burger chain you'll find through Utah is Arctic Circle. They're a rather run-of-the-mill burger joint, except they also have fried cheese curds, sweet potato fries, calamari, fish and chips, and, my favorite mystery food item, chicken rings. That's right, chicken rings. Not fingers, not breasts, not strips, rings. ****, that chicken is a versatile bird. Oh and this place also claims to be the origination of "fry sauce". For those that are anywhere else in the world, you know it as mayonnaise and ketchup mixed together. SURELY nobody ever mixed it together before they did. You might also know it as thousand island dressing, but now we're getting too saucy.
Down at the bottom, I'm gonna share a little bit of lore about a rival restaurant, Dylan's.
Just by looking at the shape if this next building, I bet you'd never guess that it used to be a Pizza Hut:
It's been about a dozen different failed restaurants since I moved back to Ogden 15 years ago. It's presently a donut shop where you can buy 10 donuts and get 2 free! THEY'RE PRACTICALLY GIVING THEM AWAY! All for the low-low-LOW price of $14.99!
Across the street from the donut shop is the Heiner's Insurance Center, with a sign that may as well be your Boomer Humor tearaway calendar:
This next place, I want you to try to guess what it is. Just take a shot at it.
Did you guess the entrance to maybe a community college? How about a megachurch? Neither. It's a mortuary. And that fountain LIGHTS UP at night like a mini Bellagio. It's beautiful. But it feels so out of place to be going there to honor the dead but oh I couldn't bring myself to tear away from the fountain to look at Ronny. (This isn't like an obscure Eddie Money reference. Ronny is the name of my brother that passed away in 2017 and it just seemed to fit in the moment.)
By the way, this all one main street, miles long. I'm gonna go around and grab some shots of other places I truly appreciate that aren't on this main road. Google Maps also picked them up, but I'm feeling a bit like this is missing a bit of personal touch.
Along this main street are a couple of coin-operated laundromats. Everybody needs a laundromat every once in a while. Whether it's because your washer/dryer goes out, you need to wash a hot air balloon, or your life simply isn't fulfilled until you've been yelled at by somebody in a language you don't understand because you haven't operated a coin-op machine ever because it's 2026 who does that and yeah let's just rip this band-aid off right now they're going to be some kind of Asian but you don't know which because you never bothered to actually study the difference and it's not in a racist way but yeah they're going to be some kind of Asian deal with it.
Speaking of Asian...
Ocean Mart! Ocean Mart is my favorite grocery store in the entire area because it's a bit like playing Whose Line Is It Anyway? with your food prices. "Welcome to Ocean Mart! Where the prices are made up and they don't matter!" I will go in and grab a few things off the shelves - Turtle-flavored potato chips? (Not of the Teenage Mutant Ninja variety, I don't think, but I've never eaten either so I could not tell you which is which.), some fruit drink vaguely resembling Orbitz Soda?, a... fruit? root? ginger? thing that looks like an ET head? - and none of the items' prices are the same as what the sticker advertised. It's about half the time that the prices are actually lower than shown. Also, this place used to be an old K-Mart back in NINETEEN NINETY MOTHERTRUCKIN' NINE and was closed for TWENTY MOTHERTRUCKIN' YEARS. Guess what? They still have the plastic red Kmart shopping carts, shopping baskets, etc. There's even items on the shelves of this place that were there when it was still Kmart and it was just left in this abandoned building for 20 years until Ocean Mart came and opened it up. They had a bin with DVDs in it and were trying to charge $24.99 for Armageddon. Hell yeah I bought it. I DON'T WANNA CLOOOOSE MY EYES! DON'T WANNA FAAAAALL ASLEEP 'CAUSE I MISS YOU BRUCE WILLIS!
I'mma wrap this up with one last image as I have covered about... eh... only 2 miles of road and there's a LOT to go. This might even be a thread that I end up double-, triple-, nobody-even-knows-what-number-comes-next-posting in because there's so much goofy stuff packed into this city of <100,000.
This little stand has been literally a different place every other year, and shut down every other year, since I was a child. It's been a smoothie shop, froyo shop, 5 different coffee shops, and back in the early 90s it was a quick film development shop, and it fails. I don't know how because it's prime location. It is currently some kind of coffee place, for the 6th time now, something like PISTOL coffee and the sign is all black and it has a Punisher-like logo. I never knew a coffee shop could look racist, and they somehow pull it off.
So, how about you? Wanna share with me any highlights from your surrounding area?
By the way, if you do get curious enough to search me out by my first and last name and find me and my number, give me a call. I ain't afraid to say hi. There ain't a person on VGC past or present I wouldn't love to hear from. Also, you ain't gonna scare me with any weirdness. I just recently tried to search out a friend with whom I've fallen out of touch with for years, tried to find them a week ago, but their name is so ubiquitous Italian that it was impossible to find them. Had I found them, I might have tried to call, but do you know how many thousands of Marisa Piazzas there? Just in New York? JUST IN BROOKLYN?! Fuhgeddaboudit. (Yeah yeah yeah I know I know...)
ANYWAY
The reason for that preamble is that I'm not scared to talk about my home city, even if it means you might find me, and I wanna hear about yours. No, I ain't gonna stalk you. I spend too much time enjoying my silly city while I still can.
I'm from and live in Ogden, UT. Since COVID, sadly, the charm of the city has slowly started to dwindle, with loft apartments going up on every other corner and depriving commuters of the gorgeous mountain views and wonderful little niche shops. There are still a few spots that are interesting and cool, and I'm gonna hop on Google Maps, throw a couple images into IMGUR, and share them.
First off, abandoned restaurant Boccia's D'Italia:
This building has been closed for WHO KNOWS how many times. It's been a dozen different restaurants, all of them fail. It has ample parking, an incredible looking little outdoor dining area, easy-to-access location, on a major roadway... but it just never seems to get a leg up.
Up the street from that, Lutheran Ascension Church:
This place isn't charming for any reason other than their little sign out front. 70% of the time, it's a Windows error screen. Sometimes it's like what you see here. Most of the time I drive by, it says, "Through God, all things are possible," so jot that down.
Moving south, across the street from a Lowe's and a giant Walmart shopping center (you know the kind), Elysium Evanscents:
Look, I have never been into any kind of mystical, zodiac, nothing in any serious capacity. Apparently, neither has the entire rest of the Ogden. I've never seen a sole vehicle in the parking lot other than the one of the employee or owner or whoever that runs this place and yet it's been open for 15 years.
This next one is mentioned in the Discord.
Formerly called IDK Barbecue, and now possibly my absolute favorite spot in the entire city, Carnitas El Jumbo!:
At this wonderful one-stop-shop building, you can pay your bills, send wire transfers, cash checks, refill your international phone minutes, photocopy, scan, and get burritos the size of your head. What's not to love? I all-but guarantee you there is an Olmec-looking abuela that runs this place, she's using recipes her own abuela made, who she is still living in Mexico and looks EXACTLY like Grandma Coco, but can walk.
In the summer, there's a shaved ice shack in the desolate parking lot that NOBODY visits. I'm 90% certain it's a front for big Carnitas:
A local burger chain you'll find through Utah is Arctic Circle. They're a rather run-of-the-mill burger joint, except they also have fried cheese curds, sweet potato fries, calamari, fish and chips, and, my favorite mystery food item, chicken rings. That's right, chicken rings. Not fingers, not breasts, not strips, rings. ****, that chicken is a versatile bird. Oh and this place also claims to be the origination of "fry sauce". For those that are anywhere else in the world, you know it as mayonnaise and ketchup mixed together. SURELY nobody ever mixed it together before they did. You might also know it as thousand island dressing, but now we're getting too saucy.
Down at the bottom, I'm gonna share a little bit of lore about a rival restaurant, Dylan's.
Just by looking at the shape if this next building, I bet you'd never guess that it used to be a Pizza Hut:
It's been about a dozen different failed restaurants since I moved back to Ogden 15 years ago. It's presently a donut shop where you can buy 10 donuts and get 2 free! THEY'RE PRACTICALLY GIVING THEM AWAY! All for the low-low-LOW price of $14.99!
Across the street from the donut shop is the Heiner's Insurance Center, with a sign that may as well be your Boomer Humor tearaway calendar:
This next place, I want you to try to guess what it is. Just take a shot at it.
Did you guess the entrance to maybe a community college? How about a megachurch? Neither. It's a mortuary. And that fountain LIGHTS UP at night like a mini Bellagio. It's beautiful. But it feels so out of place to be going there to honor the dead but oh I couldn't bring myself to tear away from the fountain to look at Ronny. (This isn't like an obscure Eddie Money reference. Ronny is the name of my brother that passed away in 2017 and it just seemed to fit in the moment.)
By the way, this all one main street, miles long. I'm gonna go around and grab some shots of other places I truly appreciate that aren't on this main road. Google Maps also picked them up, but I'm feeling a bit like this is missing a bit of personal touch.
Along this main street are a couple of coin-operated laundromats. Everybody needs a laundromat every once in a while. Whether it's because your washer/dryer goes out, you need to wash a hot air balloon, or your life simply isn't fulfilled until you've been yelled at by somebody in a language you don't understand because you haven't operated a coin-op machine ever because it's 2026 who does that and yeah let's just rip this band-aid off right now they're going to be some kind of Asian but you don't know which because you never bothered to actually study the difference and it's not in a racist way but yeah they're going to be some kind of Asian deal with it.
Speaking of Asian...
Ocean Mart! Ocean Mart is my favorite grocery store in the entire area because it's a bit like playing Whose Line Is It Anyway? with your food prices. "Welcome to Ocean Mart! Where the prices are made up and they don't matter!" I will go in and grab a few things off the shelves - Turtle-flavored potato chips? (Not of the Teenage Mutant Ninja variety, I don't think, but I've never eaten either so I could not tell you which is which.), some fruit drink vaguely resembling Orbitz Soda?, a... fruit? root? ginger? thing that looks like an ET head? - and none of the items' prices are the same as what the sticker advertised. It's about half the time that the prices are actually lower than shown. Also, this place used to be an old K-Mart back in NINETEEN NINETY MOTHERTRUCKIN' NINE and was closed for TWENTY MOTHERTRUCKIN' YEARS. Guess what? They still have the plastic red Kmart shopping carts, shopping baskets, etc. There's even items on the shelves of this place that were there when it was still Kmart and it was just left in this abandoned building for 20 years until Ocean Mart came and opened it up. They had a bin with DVDs in it and were trying to charge $24.99 for Armageddon. Hell yeah I bought it. I DON'T WANNA CLOOOOSE MY EYES! DON'T WANNA FAAAAALL ASLEEP 'CAUSE I MISS YOU BRUCE WILLIS!
I'mma wrap this up with one last image as I have covered about... eh... only 2 miles of road and there's a LOT to go. This might even be a thread that I end up double-, triple-, nobody-even-knows-what-number-comes-next-posting in because there's so much goofy stuff packed into this city of <100,000.
This little stand has been literally a different place every other year, and shut down every other year, since I was a child. It's been a smoothie shop, froyo shop, 5 different coffee shops, and back in the early 90s it was a quick film development shop, and it fails. I don't know how because it's prime location. It is currently some kind of coffee place, for the 6th time now, something like PISTOL coffee and the sign is all black and it has a Punisher-like logo. I never knew a coffee shop could look racist, and they somehow pull it off.
So, how about you? Wanna share with me any highlights from your surrounding area?