McDonalds, Adak Adak used to have a very large navy base, and the navy left in about 1995, and left everything behind. While attempting to unravel the âmysteryâ of McPizza, Mr. Thompson has turned doggedness into a kind of performance art. No way, says Mr. Thompson. Or thereâs a chance youâve blocked it. Nobody seemed to lament the passing of McPizza, and nobody was urging its return. Archived Featured Discussion Threads. âThis gave me the idea that maybe the recipe for McPizza was floating out there on the black market at some point,â Mr. Thompson said. âI shall continue my investigation next week.â. Then he uploaded episode 1 of the âWhatever Happened to Pizza at McDonaldâs?â podcast to iTunes. The Adak McDonaldâs has attained a certain level of notoriety among urban explorers. Alaskaâs southernmost town Adak is located on the island of the same name near the western extent of the Andreanof Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Large âNo Trespassingâ signs bar entrance to many of the buildings. tattooed a pizza slice and the words âThank you for your candorâ. I bet if you find a burger, it'll look brand new. World Report. âDealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. The restaurants. The show has spun off an online version of a board game and a self-published book (âHow to Be an Investigative Journalistâ), and Mr. Thompson has shot a TV pilot episode that his manager is shopping around Hollywood. Click here to remove banner ads from this forum. Adak Island features a former U.S. military base and town that was last occupied in the 1990s. And recently, Mr. Thompson heard about a McDonaldâs on a barge that opened in Vancouver for the 1986 Worldâs Fair â around the time of the pizzaâs debut. âThey were only in McDonaldâs for roughly two to three years because of the difficulty to program them,â the tech said on Episode 143. âI donât even think thereâs program manuals for it.â. For a while, he called the podcast âZipRecruiter Presents Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonaldâs.â Then ZipRecruiter sent a cease-and-desist letter. ", âI would rather be strong at heart than strong at mindâ, "Three things in life â your health, your mission, and the people you love.". And thus, to Mr. Thompsonâs delight, three years into the show, heâd added another reason that McDonaldâs killed pizza â the ovens were a fiasco. To Mr. Thompsonâs delight, he keeps unearthing new rationales for the productâs cancellation. ð ð Welcome to 1993, where Bobby's World toys are in your Happy Meal and "Dino Size"(Jurassic Park) was the way to make your fries and drink large before super sizing! Heâll need to visit. Browse photos, see new properties, get open house info, and research neighborhoods on Trulia. These days, Adak is a ghost town. Explore Adak: Many people visit Alaskaâs Adak Island to experience the prolific fisheries, abundant caribou, and breathtaking natural beauty.This remote wonder is a photographerâs paradise and a nirvana for those seeking tranquility in the wilderness. He started performing and writing for the Upright Citizens Brigade, a comedy group, and has spent recent years writing for TV comedies and doing voice-over work. Established during World War II during the battle to expel Japanese forces from the Aleutian Islands, the Adak Naval Air Facility helped to boost the population of Adak to around 10,000⦠and helped support one of worldâs northernmost McDonaldâs. There's even an empty McDonalds. Alongside the military assets that remain are houses for up to 6,000 people, a bowling alley, swimming pool, 400-seat theater and even a disused McDonaldâs restaurant. That would be fun to visit in person. At one point, he heard about a McDonaldâs in Adak, Alaska, a largely deserted island in the middle of the Bering Sea. Which, to Mr. Thompson in the fall of 2016, made the topic all the more appealing. ... A McDonaldâs, too. This included a tweet from John Darnielle of the indie rock band the Mountain Goats, who wrote: âNew favorite thing alert.â, âTo me, itâs a show about branding and the way podcasting has grown,â Mr. Darnielle said in an interview. The first inhabitants of Adak were the Aleuts as early as 9,000 years ago. The day after he posted the first episode, he checked a Twitter account heâd set up for the show and found a batch of enthusiastic messages. As of 2014, these facilities appeared unusable and probably ruined beyond repair. The military has a small contingent on Shemya Island (very close to Attu), but in the 745 miles that separates Adak from the Russian town of Nikolskoye, youâll ⦠Sometimes a life can change in the blink of an eye. He started reporting on the subject of McDonaldâs in Afghanistan â and to his amazement, he found a real employee at an Afghan embassy who told him that all over the country, there were bootleg fast-food restaurants selling food based on underground recipes, including McPizza. We need a town that looks like everything from the 90s. Random Ramblings. July 2020. âI really want to be the dumbest person in the room at all times.â. âI want to do an episode about looking for evidence of McDonaldâs pizza on the bottom of the river.â, A Podcast Answers a Fast-Food Question That Nobody Is Asking. Pro weirdo. Who. âMake website easy.â. But heâs irked by podcasts that blur the commercial and editorial by having hosts read advertisements, a throwback to TVâs early days. 5. When Season 2 of âSerialâ â now owned by The New York Times â focused on Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who went AWOL in Afghanistan, Mr. Thompson did episodes about a fictional soldier who wandered off a base in search of McPizza. Welcome Guest. Recorded on September 19, 2009 using a Flip Video camcorder. At the second, a manager was sincerely stumped. What a blast from the past. We just thought it would be fun to pose these pictures. He has had bizarre, occasionally illuminating conversations with dozens of people, including a saleswoman at an aerial advertising company. department, this guy was chatty. Cool photos and video!! On the podcast, Brian Thompson plays an earnest, eager naïf, also named Brian Thompson, who regards himself as an intrepid seeker of truth and seems to think he’s digging into a riddle for the ages.Credit...Michelle Groskopf for The New York Times. If there is a god of ludicrous ideas that later seem inspired, he must have smiled on Brian Thompson one evening four years ago. Since ancient times this island has been home to the Aleut people, [â¦] Well, it is true. The housing unit we stayed in had a nice framed Adak map for reference, with all the trails annotated, which helped us plan each day's hike/hunt routes. âSquarespace,â Mr. Thompson said, in a cheery version of a monotone at the end of the pitch. Front Desk. But Little Foot wanted better food for the world. Producer & host of the @CrmnlPrspctv & @AttemptedWorder podcasts. ... semi-abandoned community remain all around. (He described it as âat least as good as Little Caesars.â), He wondered how the place kept selling an item that others in the chain didnât offer. Several months after Mr. Thompsonâs visit, the Pomeroy McDonaldâs stopped selling McPizza. Larry determined it had been manufactured for McDonaldâs by Garland Commercial Industries, a company in Freeland, Pa. To âBrian Thompson,â this was a breakthrough on a par with the formulation of the laws of thermodynamics. ð². Actually, all the talking on the show is done by a character played by Mr. Thompson, an earnest, eager naïf, also named Brian Thompson, who regards himself as an intrepid seeker of truth and seems to think heâs digging into a riddle for the ages. The City of Adak, Alaska, the westernmost city in the United States is a community centered among the most productive fisheries in the West. Itâs a pitfall Mr. Thompson is acutely aware of and tries to avoid by making himself the butt of every joke. The movies. Adak, Alaska- abandoned McDonalds. YouTube/Popular Cruising Abandoned vehicles, homes and even a McDonalds are all sitting practically untouched. Open Discussions. Tony@prettygoodagents.com for ads and promos That landed him a job with a science education nonprofit in Los Angeles, which quickly imploded. Unexploded ordnance is not the only danger to people of Adak Island. Adak was a staging point for the American militaryâs Aleutian campaign. Maybe you are too young to remember. Some date back as far as 1942, when the U.S. Army first arrived. What a blast from the past. Who's paying the taxes on that land all this time? âMy character has always refused to believe reality,â said Mr. Thompson during a phone interview. âAnd I knew there were a lot of McDonaldâs that are open 24 hours, so I could call one of them right then.â. After landing, he went straight to the McDonaldâs and was disappointed to see it had been boarded up â there was no way inside. Thereâs a middle school in Utah that years ago buried a time capsule with some kind of McPizza variant that came in a wrapper. The military abandoned it all in the late 1990s, turning roughly $3 billion in military assets over to the wind. September 19 Camcorder Mcdonalds Alaska Abandoned Shed Military Outdoor Structures Island. The most beautiful building was the Bering Chapel. At the peak of the World War II Aleutian military campaigns, Adak Island was home to 30,000 people. Abandoned Adak Alaska McDonald's (Established during World War II during the battle to expel Japanese forces from the Aleutian Islands, the Adak Naval Air Facility helped to boost the population of Adak to around 10,000⦠and helped support one of worldâs northernmost McDonaldâs. Evidently, it had been hauled out of the defunct McDonaldâs. Outdoor recreational activities on Adak include fishing, hunting, backpacking, birding, and wildlife viewing. âI had heard about it when I was younger, but Iâd never tried it,â he said. The former Navy Air Facility Adak is located about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. âArmed with this treasure trove of dangerous information,â he said, ending the episode. Nothing heâs done, though, has resonated like his podcast. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. Adak Island 10 km; Expedition Harbor 12 km; Kagalaska Island 22 km; LIttle Tanaga Island 36 km; Great Sitkin Island 42 km; Umak Island 42 km; Kanaga Island 51 km; Igitkin Island 53 km; Chugul Island ⦠Russians traded with the Aleuts by the 1750s. (This reporter fared no better. There are also a lot of abandoned buildings with hazards like disintegrating materials and broken glass. The large building in the center houses a basketball court, saunas, squash court, bowling alley, and more. Adak rounds out that count, settling in at 437 miles east of Attu Island â the very end of the U.S. What a cool find. We need to get a member from Alaska just to trespass and get us even more. The food. Former contributing writer for @Vice. He has traveled to a remote Alaskan island to study an abandoned McDonaldâs and walked up to the gate of the White House, where he tried to enlist the help of President Trump, a noted fan of fast food. European truck makers say they will phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2040. âHave a good night.â. âMy dream would be to take scuba diving lessons and search underwater where this barge was located during the fair,â he said. What started as a lark meant to amuse himself and his girlfriend has evolved into something far richer â a deadpan satire about podcasts, the business of podcasting and the quirks of investigative journalism. Join me as I explore the creepy homes and abandoned neighborhoods of Adak Island. But the home of the Big Mac began selling pizza in the mid-1980s, hoping to grab market share from national pie chains. On the island of Adak, Alaska, thereâs an abandoned McDonald's, frozen in 1993! At the first, an employee hung up a few milliseconds after being asked about McDonaldâs pizza. The population of the island went from thousands to about 100. He ended with an off-kilter ad he wrote for Squarespace, the web hosting platform, which he falsely claimed was the showâs sponsor. The Abandoned McDonald's of Adak, Alaska, Frozen in Time, "We got a job to do so shift your carcass. Welcome Mat. He called two. âWhateverâ has a core audience of about 30,000 listeners, one of whom tattooed a pizza slice and the words âThank you for your candorâ above her ankle, a phrase Mr. Thompson intones after interviews that have shed little light. Much of the property on Adak is decaying from the severe weather conditions, with the buildings that once housed 7,500 Navy personnel and contractors and children abandoned to the winds. Up on Bering Hill, the old church just barely stands. The Navy pulled out of Adak Island in 1997, followed by a big clean up. McDonaldâs, it turns out, is the ideal corporate foil for this absurdist spoof. Mr. Thompson grew up in northeast Louisiana and originally hoped to write fiction. This makes sense only in the mind of âBrian Thompson,â whose baseline assumption is that McDonaldâs ought to again sell pizza because people love it and because the company is in business to make money. This included fast food like Pizza Hut, McDonald's and Baskin Robins. The creepiest building by far was the abandoned hospital and dental clinic: operating rooms, an X-Ray laboratory, and the morgue. The stores. For years, Adak was a Cold War outpost for Army and Navy barracks, but it was decommissioned in the early 1990s, and the McDonaldâs there was abandoned. Even after the permanent Aleut villages were abandoned in the 1830s, seasonal and subsistence use of the island continued until World War II (WWII). Adak had a McDonalds, 23 years ago. Adak Island has a land area of 274.59 square miles (711.18 km2), making it the 25th largest island in the United States. That's so cool. Reached by phone and asked about the singular longevity of McPizza in Pomeroy, a supervisor at the restaurant, Kevin Matheny, said âWeâre not at liberty to answer that question.â). Early on, Mr. Thompson learned that a McDonaldâs in Pomeroy, Ohio, was the last franchise in the country still serving the pizza, and he raised money through Indiegogo to fly there and try it. He called Garland, and a representative put him in touch with a service tech in Cleveland who had once repaired McDonaldâs ovens. As funny as the show is, it can induce winces, particularly when Mr. Thompson is talking to minimum-wage workers, who have little choice but to treat the oddball on the phone diplomatically. Mr. Thompson has no beef with money, and he recoups his costs â about $100 a month in podcast hosting fees â through ads automatically added to the show. He has traveled to a remote Alaskan island to study an abandoned McDonaldâs and walked up to the gate of the White House, where he tried to ⦠Initiation Passage. This McDonalds, like most every other building on the island, is completely abandoned and empty. There are big buildings, mostly empty. (PAUL D. ATKINS) THE ALEUTIANS ARE A chain of relatively small islands that separate the Bering Sea from the main portion of the Pacific Ocean. An abandoned McDonalds, a rusted out playground and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game office on Adak. One trick to keeping this enterprise alive and entertaining is Mr. Thompsonâs refusal to accept answers to the showâs titular question, which he had learned by Episode 5. Posted in Alaska May 27, 2019 by Megan McDonald The Abandoned Naval Base Hiding On An Alaskan Island Is A Birderâs Paradise Alaska itself may be considered a birderâs paradise, as we have 525 recorded avian species! Unlike the corporate P.R. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.â. By 3 in the morning, Mr. Thompson had edited the calls and added some narration. The trip seemed a grand bust. âI donât want this to be a prank show, as much as I love prank shows,â he said. Exploring Reality. It is the westernmost municipality in the United States and the southernmost city in Alaska. Itâs just one of many leads he plans to follow up, which could keep him busy for a long time. Thereâs one fabulous spot, however, where you can find some incredibly rare species you usually only see in Asia. The U.S. built a sprawling army and naval base on Adak Island during World War II. The only store on the island (The 100 Knot Store) only has 1 aisle, but that aisle is labeled "Aisle 5". From an empty McDonaldâs to a deserted Kmart, these ransacked restaurants, derelict diners, forgotten food courts and ghostly grocery stores will give you chills. Last year, Mr. Thompson raised money online to travel the 3,100 miles there, hoping that the husk of a restaurant would contain his Holy Grail: a McDonaldâs pizza oven. McDonaldâs gave up a few years later. The podcast depicted this as retaliation against the show, a shameless effort to curtail old-fashioned muckraking. European Central Bank will lift ban on bank dividends, a sign of cautious optimism. I actually remember some of those things. He segued to stand-up comedy after graduating from college, then started a daily science news podcast in his late 20s. Its namesake town, set in a natural harbor, is the most westerly municipality in the United States. More information... People also love these ideas He flew to Anchorage, then took a once-a-week, three-hour flight to Adak. Adak Island is way out there, so far at the end of the Aleutian archipelago in the Bering Sea that it shares a time zone with Hawaii instead of its own state. Adak (/ Ë eɪ d æ k /, Aleut: Adaax), formerly Adak Station, is a city located on Adak Island, in the Aleutians West Census Area, Alaska, United States.At the 2010 census the population was 326, up from 316 in 2000. Once again, definitive answers were elusive because the franchise owner would not speak to him. Please Login or Register. Adak Island (Aleut: Adaax, Russian: Ðдак) is an island near the western extent of the Andreanof Islands group of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.Alaska's southernmost town, Adak, is located on the island.The island has a land area of 274.59 square miles (711.18 km 2), measuring 33.9 miles (54.5 km) on length and 22 miles (35 km) on width, making it the 25th largest island in the United States. For reasons he canât fully explain, he came up with: Whatever happened to pizza at McDonaldâs? 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