Former Luby's (Orange, Texas)

The current cycle of this blog (until one runs out of ready content) is "I-35", the "July 2024 trip", and "Random". In the "Random" category comes a particular defunct Luby's Cafeteria in Orange, Texas. I previously showed off this photo on my old Carbon-izer page, with the picture taken in November 2006. Luby's opened this location in summer 1997 but closed it in 2003, so it had been sitting for about three years at this point. I wasn't actually trying to seek out this Luby's and even back in 2006 Luby's already seemed like it was on the outs, a dated and dying chain. Would it disappear entirely anytime soon? No, that was to come.

In 2007, the Luby's Cafeteria branding on the building largely disappeared as it became Richard's Cafeteria Grill. After that failed in a matter of months, by 2013 the "Cafeteria" portions had been removed and was advertising as "Richard's Event Center".

That too bombed and in 2014 the parking lot was removed for Crawdad's Convenience Center, an Exxon gas station that shared the same address (with "Moz Grill" inside)...though the former Luby's/Richard's still stands.