Looney Bird's Footage (2001) - Jackson, TN

From the archives - video footage from the 1st franchised Looney Bird's located in Jackson, Tennessee. This video was recorded on November 23, 2001 - the fifth day of operation and a day before the big weekend grand opening.

I was able to drop by the new store and film this by sheer coincidence, as a friend and I had a road trip planned to TN visit a mutual friend for Thanksgiving. It was really cool getting to see the store so close to the grand opening - it was fully staffed and they had both the Billy Bob and Looney Bird costumed characters out and about and the employees dancing along with nearly every show that played.

Everything in the store was still brand new, with the interior panting and color theme designed by the franchisee owners Jeff Wall and his wife Amy. Much of the finishes came from having run a child's day care center and gauging what was popular with little kids (planes, trains, and the color purple). Even the ceiling was painted sky blue with white clouds. The train that was painted on the wall was completed right before the Sept 11th attacks, so the next day an American flag was added to the end of it.

My friend and I got to meet Jeff, who was incredibly nice and accommodating, going so far as to give us a new desert pizza they had just developed and lots of tokens and tickets and any merch they had with the Looney Bird's logo on it - all complimentary. It was almost like being treated like a celebrity, which was very weird to me at age 21 (actually thinking back on it, it's still weird).

So I hope everyone enjoys getting to see this "lost" footage, I myself hadn't seen it in probably 15 years until I made this encoding. Please forgive my shoddy camerawork, and also forgive the quality of the tape. This was originally recorded on a Hi-8 video camera, and then transferred to VHS, and then transferred AGAIN to a compilation VHS which I used to dub 6-hour tapes for fans (back when you had to mail a physical tape to people because the internet wasn't an option for anything but the crappiest of small video clips). That low-quality compilation tape is where this footage was found. The original Hi-8 tape, along with the original VHS copy, have unfortunately been lost to time over the course of 19 years since this was originally filmed.