Here’s Why Soda Shops Will Always Have A Place In Every American’s Heart

You push open the door, and a bell dings overhead. A tune from the jukebox is the first thing you register – along with the wafting smell of malt. Waiters buzz from one end of the bar to the other, easy to track in their crisp, white uniforms and matching paper hats. And the bobby-soxers huddle around the soda fountain, giggling as they await their bubbles.

It’s the classic scene you envision when you hear the words “soda shop.” These locales became the gathering-places of choice for teens in the 1930s and ’40s. With the jukebox blaring out the coolest music of the day and sweet drinks flowing from the taps on the bar, it’s not hard to imagine why.

So, the boys and the bobby-soxers – teenage girls who wore this particular kind of sock and fanatically chased their favorite pop artists of the ’40s – crammed into soda-shop booths. They didn’t just order fizzy drinks from the bar, though. The soda shop would typically draw them in with malts, milkshakes and sodas served with a dollop of ice cream on top.

It’s an idyllic image of American life in a bygone era, one for which people young and old feel nostalgic. But soda shops opened their doors long before they became the jukebox-blasting, milkshake-mixing destinations that we remember. In reality, the first soda fountains started serving up fizz nearly a century before they transformed into teenage hangouts in the 1930s and ’40s.

You may not know the history of the soda shop beyond this glorified image; how these outposts transformed over the years is quite shocking. And that ability to adapt and change might leave you wondering if they were able to survive life after jukeboxes and sock-hops lost their luster with the teenage crowd.