I came across today’s building on the “Not Fooling Anybody” page on Reddit, where people post building conversions that poorly disguise the building’s previous use or identity. (Obviously, I love that this online community exists.)
The Reddit post was an image from 2013; the building has been altered quite a bit since then. Here it is in the present day. The Hat Creek Burger Company:
If this doesn’t particularly look like any other brand’s typical building, well, that’s because it doesn’t. The identifying elements have been removed in the remodel. The only thing that remains visibly unaltered, in fact, is the set of windows and the door.
What is Hat Creek Burger Company, anyway? According to its website, “Hat Creek Burger Company was founded in Austin, Texas in 2008 as a humble food truck serving up delicious burgers, fries, and shakes.”
That makes the building’s 2013 appearance perfect. The name, including the word “hat,” pre-existed the restaurant’s location in this old Arby’s with a lightly repurposed 10-gallon cowboy hat sign:
Now, sadly, it looks like it was a basically intact classic neon/lightbulb sign, not one of the newer printed and backlit ones.
These are rare pieces of roadside Americana; the internet thinks there are fewer than 100 known to still exist.
But the meta-reinvention of the sign, for a few years until the new restaurant was confident making the space truly its own, is also pretty cool.
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