This surprised me for a couple of reasons:
I had no idea the Red Barn, or Dead Barn as we called it in our witty way, had sufficient heft to run TV ads.
The man at the end makes you think of a swear word! Then again, everything someone says is a play on words. The first one is a little naughty, too – he likes to see the Italian. Dressing. So dad’s peeping on Luis getting into his uniform, is what you’re saying?
The young woman at :17 looks familiar – the one in the thumbnail, if you’re seeing what I’m seeing – but I couldn’t begin to tell you who she is or why she looks familiar. Some other commercial, perhaps. Must have struck me back then as someone who’d date you, because she didn’t get asked a lot.
Still don’t know why anyone thinks a barn is a great symbol for food. If you’ve ever been in a barn, all you can think of is itchy dust in the air and the ammonia tang of fertilizer and urine.
There were at least two Dead Barns in the Twin Cities. This was one, on Oak by the U:
Pass it along, if you wish
31 Responses to Evening Commercial Break: Dead Barn
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I ate more than one burger at that Red Barn. Odd that they’ve added a false front to it now. I suppose they had to camouflage the roof shape somehow.
OMG! Tab!
Tab. The Robitussin of colas.
“Coke or Tab for a penny”!!! Well, that’s worth the price of admission right there!
We never had Red Barns around here. Closest we ever had was the Old Barn Milk Bar. A magnificent ice cream place that served single scoops the size of a baby’s head, in a real 17th-century barn. Sadly they closed down. The barn was salvaged, thank goodness, and will one day be reconstructed as part of a museum.
I’m gonna say she looks like an older, uglier version of the character on-DRAY-a played by Gabrielle Carteris on the first few seasons of BH: 90210, c. 1990.
We lived near the Lotus about 25 years ago, and enjoyed the food. Good to see it’s still there. I suppose it’s nothing special, but I remember ample, decent, Vietnamese food on a meager budget.
I think there was a Red Barn in Dinkytown as well, or maybe there was only the one that is now the Lotus. I believe there were protests over it during the early 70′s because people thought it was destroying the neighborhood, or too capitalist, or something. Maybe just something to protest when the war was ending.
We would go to the Red Barn on hwy 52 in Robinsdale or Crystal when I was a kid when our relatives from Nebraska would visit. Sort of a special time out, I guess, and I remember the chicken basket as being rather bland and greasy. Never did like the food, and even as a ten year old I questioned the premise of serving food in a barn.
The best dead family restaurant, in my opinion, was Uncle John’s. There was one on hwy 12 in Golden Valley. Don’t know what happened to it.
I’ve never heard of Red Barn, but that was a very effective commercial. I don’t recognize the chick.
Just for the halibut!
Yeah, that was the killer punch line for a joke at the Sly Park cabins in the 4th & 5th grades. Felt all adult, like we were gettin’ away with swearing.
Good thing we had those counselors or we would have ended up playing quarters and doing Jello shots!
She looks a lot like Amy Sedaris is one of her rattier-looking characters.
A new version of TaB™ called TaB Energy™ came out a couple of years ago. It contains ginseng and vegetable juice.
The other Red Barn was at 24th and Nicollet. It’s now a McDonald’s. When they first converted it, it still had the old Red Barn shape to it, but I just checked Google Street View and they either tore down the Red Barn and built a new McDonald’s or they renovated it to look like every other McDonald’s.
Tony, who wants a Shamrock Shake
They planned a Dead Barn for Dinkytown, but after the protests wound down the project was scrapped. Never built.
in high school i frequently ate at the Pizza Barn in Princeton MN. it is a horrific name for a restaurant, but it was one of the only places to hang out and their breadsticks are of the “so good you’d kill a baby” variety. they have a pizza called “The Barn,” which just does not sound like something you’d want to eat.
James, you forgot the cloying notes of hay mouldering in puddles. Fresh air, indeed, Mr Douglas.
There was a Red Barn near the Syracuse campus when I was going there, but it was on its last legs and catered more to campus hangers-on than students. I met a teacher as he was coming out of it once and he said, “Have you ever been in there? It’s like a a halfway house.”
Relatedly, why would a woman want to buy clothes from a chain called “Dress Barn”?
The first time I watched it I just thouht he said, “hell of it,” and I thought nothing of it.
I can think of a worse name for a restaurant: “Pizza Ranch.” Worse food too.
Our Dead Barn, over in Cupertino, was “rendered” into a successful Saddlery & Tack store in the late 70′s – and it’s still there:
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I still have the “When The Hungries Hit… Hit the Red Barn!” in my head, and if you want a scan, Mr. Lileks, I have an original, unused T-Shirt iron-on decal. Like you are the only one with an archive of useless, fascinating stuff in your basement! Although it is a stretch to call a Red Barn decal fascinating.
The Sears Tower renamed?! What you talkin’ bout, Willis?
TAB… isn’t that how they disposed of heavy water from the nuclear plants before Diet Coke came along?
Finally, someone else remembers “When the hungries hit, hit the Red Barn!” Thanks Jeff. When I start singing that one during Memory Lane time with my ’70s buds they all look at me like I’m crazy–none of them recalls Red Barn even though they all went to the U. My selective memory hasn’t kicked in yet, perhaps.
Yegads, a piece of University of Minnesota cultural history. There were SERIOUS protests against the Red Barn in Dinkytown in 1970, to the point of actual riots — tear gas, windows broken, the whole works. Hell, Al Milgrom even made a film about it.
There were two Red Barns — Dinkytown and Stadium Village, where the Lotus is now. And there were protests at both.
I’m pretty sure the Dinkytown Red Barn was cancelled. An office building (with a Federal Post Office – oh, irony!) was built on the site of the People’s Park. When I redo the Dinkytown site, I’ll have more to say about it.
There was also a Red Barn at 50th & France in Edina.
Red Barn = Dead Barn for sure. Moving around the country a lot as a kid, I also learned that Baker’s Square = Baker’s Hair; Burger Chef = Burger Death; Burger King = Burger Bling; & Pizza Hut = Pizza Gut.
Glad to see that others are remembering the “When the hungries hit, when the hungries hit, hit the Red Barn” jingle. I recall that they had Muppet-like characters that were in the shape of a fish, a chicken and (?) a burger, which they referred to as Fish Hungry, Chicken Hungry and Burger Hungry. Boy, that was original…
We had a number of the barn-shaped restaurants in the Denver area, many of which have been taken over by Mexican, Chinese, or other ethnic restaurants. Here’s the one in Aurora (a Denver suburb) that we used to frequent in the early 70s:
http://snurl.com/dvlpb [maps_google_com]
Steve
OK, I was wrong: it was “Hamburger Hungry”. But the critters DO look like they are Jim Henson creations. I did find an ad on YouTube that features two of the damned things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Golt3nnCY
Further research found http://barnbuster.net, which has…YES!…the song in its entirety for your listening pleasure.
Have FUN!
Steve
I googled Red Barn Dinkytown; there are a couple sites about the protests and the location. It was an actual riot, about 70 arrests, and about the same time as Kent State. Apparently the buildings that were to be torn down to make way for the Red Barn were bulldozed but the Red Barn was never built. There’s a pretty ugly (imho) mural in “honor” of the protests out there.
Thanks for the barnbuster site TUAWSteve. I checked there and, Yes!, I wasn’t fantasizing, there was a Red Barn on Snelling. Now I just have to look up the old Mr. Steak on Snelling (not because of their A-1, premium steakmeat, of course) …
Not only do I remember the “When the Hungries Hit” jingle, but I actually had a “magic record” from them when I was a kid. It was a standard 45-RPM record, but depending on where you put the needle down, one of three different songs would play on each side.