Motorheads Museum

Vintage signs lovers, midcentury kitsch aficionados, classic car and vintage gas station enthusiasts, route 66 explorers and hungry road trip travellers .. get your smelling salts out, because Motorheads celebrates all those things in a massive, enormous, extreme and wonderful way.

Like, holy wow!

The enormous restaurant and bar is a great pit stop in a burger, pretzel, pub cheese, cheeky beer way, but the star of the show is the fabulous sprawling museum with its classic car collection, cabinets stuffed with memorabilia and a colossal vintage sign collection. The 1937 Arts Motel and Restaurant sign takes up an entire wall …. wait … is that the Captain America chopper from the movie “Easy Rider”!?  I feel faint - they have the entire exterior of the Bel-Air Manor Motel, complete with ground to rooftop neon sign, and the entire Shea’s gas Station.  I think I need to sit down.

The car and motorbike collection is impressive, and surrounded by urban relics from drive in movie speakers to cigarette machines. The neon Sonrise Donuts sign, circa 1947 is a work of art. Wait … is that the world’s first mirror ball!?

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Midwest USA No. 27 - last visited October 2023