We’ve all heard of Montgomery Mall, Wheaton Plaza, Lakeforest, and even White Flint, but there’s one mall that always seems to be forgotten in these discussions. It was a mall with all the potential in the world that fell flat on its face…Rockville Mall.
The link can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/MoCoShow/posts/1213589988744958.
A couple weeks later I interviewed Brandi using questions based on YOUR comments on our original post. With just 10 days left to raise over $75k, it doesn’t look like the Kickstarter campaign will be successful (it’s an all or nothing campaign, which means if the full amount isn’t raised, everyone that donated will be refunded their money), but even it the goal isn’t reached it doesn’t mean that the dream to bring The Cider Barrel back to life ends here.
I don’t really get the opportunity to write much about Poolesville, but I don’t want the small town of about 5,000 people to think that it’s because there isn’t much to say…there’s plenty.
What many people outside of Poolesville don’t know is that the legal name of the town was “The Commissioners of Poolesville” until 2010 when it was changed to “The Town of Poolesville.” The town was founded by brothers John and Joseph Poole, who owned a lot of the land within the boundaries of what is now Poolesville (about 160 acres or so). Though the area was settled in 1760, the town was’t incorporated until 1867…Happy 150th Anniversary, Poolesville!
If you’ve been to Cabin John Regional Park in the last half century or so you’ve probably seen a bizarre, miniature house-like structure that has a pig face with its mouth wide open on one side. That’s Porky. You can feed him paper and cardboard and soft drink cans, but you can’t feed him bottles or broken glass…glass gives him a tummy ache.
Porky has been there since 1966, making his debut one year after Billy the Litter Eater over at Wheaton Regional Park. “I still have nightmares of my arm getting sucked into this thing” commented Richard Schaffer as he shared a picture of the famous trash dispenser. Creepy Basement, a popular website that is comprised of creepy highlights from across the world, refers to Porky as an “eternally hungry demon pig that commands children to feed him with his creepy 1950s radio voice.”
If you grew up in Montgomery County (anywhere near Gaithersburg), you’ve likely seen Sam Eig Highway numerous times…but maybe weren’t sure to pronounce it (it sounds like I’d with a g instead of a d…i’g ). Most GPS systems mispronounce it to this day, which could lead to a second generation of confusion regarding the pronunciation of his name.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s talk about the man behind the locally famous name. Sam Eig was born in Byelorussia (now Belarus) in 1899, living there for 15 years before moving to the United States in 1914. He lived in Seattle and New York City before moving to the Washington D.C. area in the 20s. Eig owned a grocery store in D.C. before opening Eig Liquor Store when Prohibition was repealed (also in D.C.). At the same time, he was focusing on real estate in the Silver Spring/Takoma Park area and chose to stick with that full-time in the 40s. His real estate holdings were already worth over $100 million before deciding to expand his real estate empire to Gaithersburg in the late 50s/early 60s. He was even one of ten men mentioned as the “vanguard of the postwar millionaires” in a 1952 issue of Fortune magazine. Due to his success with real estate across the county, Sam Eig earned the nickname “Mr. Montgomery County.”
Updated November, 2021:
Using area codes was second nature before cell phones made it easy enough to call someone with the tap of a finger, but for the first 15 years of my life I dialed 7-digits to make a local call.
One of our Twitter followers informed us of a rumor swirling around Olney about the possibility of Sakura closing and being replaced with an IHOP. For what it’s worth, I called Sakura last night and the manager told me that this is not true.
K-Mart and Payless in the Kentlands will both close by the end of this summer.
http://www.mymcmedia.org/closings-and-changes-at-kentlands-square-shopping-center-in-gaithersburg-photos/
According to the Roy’s Place website, they began serving their 200+ sandwiches in Rockville in 1955. After a couple moves within Rockville, they settled in the Gaithersburg location so many know and love in 1971.
Roy Passin, the original owner, was a huge part of Roy’s Place until his passing in May of 2009 at 87. Many say the restaurant just wasn’t the same during the 4 years it lasted without him. His creative sandwich ideas, based on what his friends enjoyed and the ingredients available in the restaurant, grew the menu from 2 pages to 23, according to a 2009 Gazette article.
Here’s a commercial from 1987:
Some referred to Kim’s Karate as “McDojos” since they kind of popped up everywhere in this 15 year span and promoted people to black belts quite a bit faster than most martial arts training centers.
In the mid-80s, Aris Mardirossian opened his convenience store named “6-Twelve,” based on the worldwide chain 7-Eleven (7,400 stores in North America with hundreds more across the world at the time).
By 1990, his Gaithersburg-based chain grew to 20 stores and there were rumors that he would be purchasing 600 7-Eleven stores in the DMV (the rumors were denied by 7-Eleven executives).
Charles P. Lazarus, a Washington, D.C. native, founded the company now known as Toys R Us. In 1948, he opened a baby furniture store named Children’s Bargain Town. Two years later, in 1950, he added a few select toys to his inventory. It wasn’t long before he realized that toys, unlike furniture, tended to break or quickly fall out of favor with children, prompting him to introduce a larger toy selection while scaling back on furniture.
In 1957, Lazarus adopted a supermarket-style shopping experience that allowed customers to walk around with a cart and choose items that caught their eye. His first Toys R Us location opened on Route 355 in Rockville, Maryland, slightly north of the Mid-Pike plaza site now remembered by many—a spot once home to Mi Rancho and Chesapeake Seafood House, near today’s Party City.