Remember when we used to go to Chicken City after a night at the Blue Pelican?

That’s something you might hear a longtime Aquidneck Islander say as they recall the places from their youth, filled with nostalgia for what used to be. Here is a list of spots we miss that are no longer:

Chicken City

It doesn’t matter that Chicken City closed in 1992, it lives on as a local landmark for giving directions. People don’t say “Two-Mile Corner,” or “the intersection of West Main Road and East Main Road,” or “where Walgreens is.” They say, “Where Chicken City used to be.”

Some people recall it as “a greasy spoon place,” but many others really liked the food and as a late-night place to go to fulfill a craving.

“I miss it,” said Mayor Jeanne-Marie Napolitano. “I loved their Jo-Jo Potatoes. They were the best — large potato wedges fried and crunchy.”

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Longtime co-owner Sheldon Bilow did one thing and did it well. He sold good food.

“I liked the original concept. It was all business,” he told The Providence Journal in a 1987 story. “Good food and no frills. I don’t sell decor. There are no curtains on the windows. I didn’t want the place to look so fancy that people would feel compelled to leave a tip.

“I don’t sell entertainment. I sell chicken, potatoes, cole slaw. I do have a fish dinner — but I don’t push it.”

The Blue Pelican

The Blue Pelican opened on Marcus Wheatland Boulevard, former West Broadway, in 1983 and was soon attracting local, regional and nationally known bands and performers. It was where the Community Baptist Church Annex now is.

The club was run by Gracious Audette and her husband, James McGrath, and brought in a diverse lineup of music — Donovan, Buckwheat Zydeco, Dr. John, Paul Geremia, Bo Diddley — and a diverse group of patrons during the go-go 1980s

Longtime Daily News reporter Jim Gillis remembers Harry Dean Stanton, who was in town for the film “Mr. North, dancing by himself in front of the Blue Pelican while Roomful of Blues played inside.”

McGrath was able to book stars like Rick Danko of The Band, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane and Richie Havens. They all played at Woodstock.

Phish, the rock band formed in Burlington, Vermont, and The Neighborhoods, a Boston band that had the 1980s hit single, “Prettiest Girl,” played there multiple times.

More often, it was bands like Throwing Muses, the rock band formed in 1983 by Kristin Hersh and her stepsister Tanya Donelly, who were both attending Rogers High School at the time. Other local favorites like The Ravers, who were still in their early years, also performed the Pelican. The club was known for having live music seven nights a week.

The club shut down at the end of 1991, but lives on the memory of former patrons and performers.

Christie’s Restaurant

Christie’s Restaurant, situated on the waterfront off lower Thames Street, closed in May 2006, but many people remember dining and dancing there. Locals were regulars, though visitors also enjoyed the ambiance. Past patrons and visitors have nostalgic memories of the good times celebrated there.

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“It’s one of those places,” Realtor Paul Hogan said when it went up for sale. “You could meet someone from Idaho and tell them you were from Newport, and they’d say they’d been to Christie’s.”

Original owner Steve Christie set up the first Christie’s in New York City’s theater district and reestablished the restaurant in Newport in 1945. Michael F. Crowley purchased Christie’s with business partners in the 1960s, but the Crowley family later became the sole owners.

Christie’s always had an old-time feel, with pictures of celebrities and area politicians on the walls, as well as age-old cartoons. Its Christie’s Landing had been a popular summer outdoor gathering for a primarily younger crowd, with live music and a separate bar. The inside bar traditionally drew an older crowd.

The six dining areas seated a total of about 650 people, and it specialized in seafood and steaks. Christie’s was a popular venue for weddings through the years.

802 Partners LLC, which included the late Campbell’s Soup heiress Dorrance “Dodo” H. Hamilton, bought the restaurant in June 2006. The company razed it in 2009 and built the luxury boutique hotel, restaurant and marina complex known as Forty 1° North on the site.

Brick Alley Pub fire truck

The 1940s-era fire truck perched on top of the Brick Alley Pub became a conversation piece and tourist attraction after pub owner Ralph Plumb had the truck bolted onto the roof in March 2001.

“People heard about it around the country,” Plumb once said. “And people used to stand on the street and take pictures of it.”

Putting the truck on the roof was the idea of two of Plumb’s fire-buff buddies, Peter Reed, who co-owns Coastal Electric, and former Portsmouth Fire Chief Ronald Chace, who had the truck in the yard of his Portsmouth home.

“They told me they had an old Newport fire truck that would be great for the restaurant,” Plumb said. “I bit at it. I wondered if they were going to cut it in half so we could bring it inside. It turns out they had another idea.”

To put the fire truck on the roof, workers used a crane from Newport Shipyard. The truck was welded onto the roof and inspected regularly. Plumb had it taken down in January 2008.

“I worried about a nor’easter or a hurricane coming through,” he said at the time. “You have to worry about pieces flying off and damaging something or, God forbid, hurting someone. So it’s definitely time.”

Plumb believed most people loved it, but some complained that the truck, best visible from a distance, clashed with downtown Newport’s architecture.

The fire truck’s tenure on the roof apparently was not long enough to become part of Rhode Islandese like, “It’s the restaurant the fire truck used to be on top of.”

Leys Century Store

Leys Century Store was on Long Wharf Mall when it closed in 1999, but it had been on Thames Street for a very long time before the 1969 development project that created the Brick Market Place.

 “We were open for 200 years,” the late David P. Leys, the last president and manager of the store, said several years after the closure. “But I knew we weren’t going to see 300.”

Mayor Jeanne-Marie Napolitano said she still misses the store, where she once bought all her home goods and curtains.

When Leys talked about the long history of the store, he was referring to the establishment of the dry goods store in 1796 by Job Sherman. Under the management of his sons William and David, it became the William Sherman & Company Dry Goods Concern.

That store was sold by the Sherman family in 1912 to William Leys, David Leys’ grandfather, who constructed a new building for what became Leys Century Store.

For many years it was common to see lines in obituaries like, “she worked in the knitting department of Leys Century Store during the 1950s and 1960s.”