#flickrstruereflection1

[coffeenuts]

Wadi Dawan by llorenç1 http://flic.kr/p/5FDDve

[6ghassan]

Portrait by Jocarlo Via Flickr: Retrato

[nunoxaviermoreira]

Pacata Visao by alcides OTA USA - The American Dream Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Hall of Fame A Journey Throughout Europe - Countries'Listing: ✔ --------------------------- ✔ Austria ✔ Belgium ✔ Bulgaria ✔ Croatia ✔ Cyprus ✔ Czech Republic ✔ Denmark ✔ Estonia ✔ Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden The Netherlands https://flic.kr/p/6VCScE

[newsuburbanism]

TGI Friday's by The Lovelace Photography The Friday's restaurant chain was founded by Alan Stillman in 1965. The bachelor perfume salesman lived in a neighborhood with many airline stewardesses, fashion models, secretaries, and other single people on the East Side of Manhattan near the Queensboro Bridge, and hoped that opening a bar would help him meet women. At the time, Stillman's choices for socializing were non-public cocktail parties, or "guys' beer-drinking hangout" bars that women usually did not visit; he recalled that "there was no public place for people between, say, twenty-three to thirty-seven years old, to meet." He sought to recreate the comfortable cocktail-party atmosphere in public despite having no experience in the restaurant business. With $5,000 of his own money and $5,000 borrowed from his mother, Stillman purchased a bar he often visited, The Good Tavern at the corner of 63rd Street and First Avenue, and renamed it T.G.I. Friday's after the expression "Thank God! It's Friday!" from his years at Bucknell University. The new restaurant, which opened on March 15, 1965, served standard American cuisine, bar food, and alcoholic beverages, only on Fridays, emphasizing on food quality and preparation. The exterior featured a red-and-white striped awning and blue paint, the Gay Nineties interior included fake Tiffany lamps, wooden floors, Bentwood chairs, and striped tablecloths, and the bar area added brass rails and stained glass. The employees were young and wore red-and-white striped soccer shirts,and every time someone had a birthday, the entire restaurant crew came around with a cake and sang Friday's traditional birthday song: "It's Friday, Friday..". The first location closed in 1994,and is a British pub called "Baker Street"; the brass rails are still there. Although Malachy McCourt's nearby eponymous bar preceded T.G.I. Friday's and Stillman credited the media for creating the term, he had unintentionally created one of the first singles bars. It benefited from the near-simultaneous availability of the birth-control pill and Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique: I don’t think there was anything else like it at the time. Before T.G.I. Friday’s, four single twenty-five year-old girls were not going out on Friday nights, in public and with each other, to have a good time. They went to people’s apartments for cocktail parties or they might go to a real restaurant for a date or for somebody’s birthday, but they weren’t going out with each other to a bar for a casual dinner and drinks because there was no such place for them to go. T.G.I. Friday's was one of the first to use promotions such as ladies' night,and Stillman achieved his hopes of meeting women; "Have you seen the movie Cocktail? Tom Cruise played me!...Why do girls want to date the bartender? To this day, I’m not sure that I get it. He and the restaurant benefited from its location—according to Stillman, 480 stewardesses lived in the apartment building next door—and received publicity in national magazines. T.G.I. Friday's became so popular that it had to install ropes to create an area for those waiting in line, also unusual at the time for a restaurant. A competitor, Maxwell's Plum, opened across the street, and others soon followed. With fellow Bucknell graduate Ben Benson, Stillman opened other restaurants, including Thursday's, Wednesday's, Tuesday's, and Ice Cream Sunday's. Franchising of T.G.I. Friday's began in 1971 in Memphis, Tennessee in the Overton Square district; that location has since closed. As new locations opened in the suburbs parents brought their children, and the chain changed its focus to casual dining for families. Stillman sold the restaurant chain in the 1970s to the Carlson Companies—although he kept the original location—and, now married, founded Smith & Wollensky in 1977 with Benson. The oldest continually operating Friday's was in Louisville, Kentucky on Linn Station Road. It opened in August 1977 and at the time was the 31st store in operation. However, this location has been closed and shuttered as of May, 2011 without explanation. By the early 1980s the chain had grown to 100 stores and issued an Initial Public Offering in 1983, but faced growing competition and declining sales in the mid-1980s. After T.G.I. Friday's financial performance improved, the company became privately held again in 1989. Friday's has also been used as a restaurant for hotels run by Country Inns & Suites by Carlson brand. The largest Friday's franchisee is The Briad Group with about 70 locations in the United States.[9] A notable international franchisee was Whitbread PLC, the owner of TGI Friday's UK. Up until 2007, it had 45 locations in the UK. On January 17, 2007, Whitbread sold operating rights of all 45 restaurants back to TGI Friday's UK Limited (a consortium consisting of Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Inc. and ABN Amro Capital) thus exiting a partnership formed in 1986. A brand extension, which features the Friday's concept combined with the atmosphere of a sports bar and is called Friday's Front Row Sports Grill, is found at three Major League Baseball stadiums which each overlook the playing field; Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona, Milwaukee's Miller Park, and Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in Arlington, Texas, along with a stand-alone restaurant in Orlando, Florida. Historically, the chain's highest grossing location is at Haymarket Leicester Square, which opened in 1992 in Central London. The Haymarket branch is also regarded as the 'most popular' branch as well as being financially most successful. In October 2009, Haymarket broke the world record for biggest profit made in any week, throughout T.G.I Friday's history, and has also been home to several past winners from the bartenders competition. http://flic.kr/p/bVMNv1 May 10, 2012 at 02:52PM thegalaxy, mygearandme, ringexcellence, flickrstruereflection1, soulocreativity1

[aurorasborealesislandia-blog]

Aurora Boreal (virtual) por Jocarlo Por Flickr: Melilla

[writeandamuse]

Blue Lagoon, Iceland by sven483 on Flickr.

[hadeedsher]

Nothingness on Flickr.

[thefairytaleforest]

Roe Deer (Ree) by Denis Bitter on Flickr.

[coffeenuts]

Sutil-Subtle by MIRARK http://flic.kr/p/aH4UAn

[moosetank]

Back in Greenland. by Símon Hrafn on Flickr.

[nunoxaviermoreira]

Plant (Macro) by Jocarlo Planta (Macro) https://flic.kr/p/24V78h2

[dariomaro]

Le foglie morte by atlantex on Flickr.

[bitingthesun]

Ragnarök by goat1412 on Flickr.

[chasingthegreenfaerie]

Arboretum / Explore / by kontinova2 on Flickr.

[s0irenic]

Santorini by Carmelo61 PhotoPassion Thanks on Flickr.

[coffeenuts]

Cabeça Pensante II by Marcel Caram http://flic.kr/p/i5SBgC