Tag: restaurant

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Paradise Restaurant, Cooperville, Georgia

Empty Paradise Hotel, Cooperville, Ga.
Empty Paradise Hotel, Cooperville, Ga.

The old Paradise Restaurant, which apparently suffered a fire in recent years, is closed, as is the gas station at right.  Both are adjacent to a spooky old motel featured on Halloween in this post.

The complex is in Cooperville at the intersection of U.S. Highway 301 and Georgia Highway 17 in Screven County, Ga., which got started after the Revolutionary War and soon became part of the Black Belt of Georgia where cotton became an important staple crop tended by enslaved African Americans.

The county’s population jumped from 3,019 in 1800 to 8,274 by 1860, according to Census figures.  While it had 14,593 people in 2010, the county lost an estimated 391 people — 2.7 percent — by 2012, according to the U.S. Census.  In 2010, Some 25.4 percent of county residents lived below the federal poverty level, 9 points higher than the state average.

Photo taken Sept. 23, 2013, by Andy Brack.  All rights reserved.

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Closed restaurant, Henderson, N.C.

Old Tip Top Restaurant, Henderson, N.C. Photo by Andy Brack.
Old Tip Top Restaurant, Henderson, N.C. Photo by Andy Brack.

We bet the meat-and-three lunch specials at the Tip Top Restaurant on Garnett Street in Henderson, N.C., were outstanding in their day.  More than likely, the workers from the cotton mill just down the street flooded into the place in days gone by.  [See our entry on the mill.]

But the Tip Top doesn’t offer three home-cooked meals anymore, a sure victim of globalization and today’s economic times in the Southern Crescent.  A review from 2003 recalls the restaurant as having a relaxed atmosphere that offered good food, “just like being at home.”   Said the reviewer:  “‘Eating Out Can Be Fun” has been their slogan for 48 years!'”

Henderson, part of Vance County, had 15,320 people in 2010, according to Census estimates. Almost two thirds of residents are black. A third of residents live at or below the federal poverty level.  In April 2013, the county’s unemployment rate was 11.7 percent.

Photo taken July 24, 2013 by Andy Brack, © 2013. All rights reserved.