Fotomat

Fotomat! Come on, I know you can picture a spot in your neighborhood where one of them used to stand. (Highland Park, Minnesota...I remember the one in the Lunds parking lot.)

What's there today? Has it been torn down? Is it being used as something else? Drive-up coffee, perhaps? (I can't find any Fotomats on Not Fooling Anybody--can that be right? Were the huts just too small to survive as other businesses?)

When Tommy Chong was on "That 70s Show," his character worked in a Fotomat. It seemed like such a convenient business back in the time when we had rolls of film bouncing around in the car, and were looking for a place to drop them off and get them developed.

Today, of course, most of us have digital cameras or just use our phones to take pictures, no developing needed. What anguish the Fotomat folks must have suffered as this development took hold. But their tiny little huts will always be fondly remembered.

Also, Wikipedia claims they were pioneers in video rental! What? Did anyone ever rent a movie at a Fotomat? Yet another business that soon would be ground into the dust by technological advances. Netflix, anyone?