Now defunct retailers of your youth

[Silentpoet]

6 hours ago, BMyers said:

Venture, which my wife worked there prior to them closing.

Circuit City, bought a few electronics from them over the years.

Rothman's Furniture, we bought are first complete living room set from them.

Waldenbooks, use to buy books from there when we went to the mall.

Blockbusters, I think there is one store left open, but all the stores around here closed.

 

My understanding is there are a handful of blockbuster stores in Alaska.

i used to have a waldenbooks otherworlds membership card when I was a teenager.

[OV10]

[OV10]

[OV10]

[Eric]

[johnbt]

"The basement housed a shooting range while on the mezzanine (main floor) paraphernalia for skiing, archery, free diving, and lawn games were sold. The second through fifth floors were reserved for clothing that was suitable for different climate or terrains. On the sixth floor were a picture gallery, a bookstore (focused on sporting themes), a watch repair facility and a golf school (fully equipped with a resident professional). The seventh floor included a gun room with hundreds of shotguns and rifles, decorated with stuffed game heads, as well as a kennel for dogs and cats .^[11] The eighth floor contained fishing, camping, and boating equipment and included a desk for a fly- and bait-casting instructor who gave lessons at the pool, which was located on the roof. The fishing section alone was stocked with over 48,000 flies and over 18,000 fishing lures."

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by johnbt

[KY_Moose]

"The basement housed a shooting range while on the mezzanine (main floor) paraphernalia for skiing, archery, free diving, and lawn games were sold. The second through fifth floors were reserved for clothing that was suitable for different climate or terrains. On the sixth floor were a picture gallery, a bookstore (focused on sporting themes), a watch repair facility and a golf school (fully equipped with a resident professional). The seventh floor included a gun room with hundreds of shotguns and rifles, decorated with stuffed game heads, as well as a kennel for dogs and cats .^[11] The eighth floor contained fishing, camping, and boating equipment and included a desk for a fly- and bait-casting instructor who gave lessons at the pool, which was located on the roof. The fishing section alone was stocked with over 48,000 flies and over 18,000 fishing lures."
 

When NYC was worth living in.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fideau]

I grew up in the 50's. Our little town had locally owned stores for the most part. The Western Auto was the place for hunting, fishing, and hardware and auto stuff. Sears and Montgomery Ward as they were in the 50's a few miles away.  Popes 5 and Dime was in our town. I'm  not sure if it's gone but there was a Rose's at least a couple of years ago still around in Chapel Hill.  Piggly Wiggly has not been here since the Late 50's. J.C. Whitney is still going I think.  Anybody remember Honest Charlie's Speed Shop? Got lots of stuff for my 52 Ford from there, mail order. It was a chore to order by mail back then but couldn't find stuff locally.

Of course I remember all the others that came along and went, Hechingers, Best, Brindles, Service, Mason's, Dockery's, lots of others that came and went.  I probably miss Best and Brindles as much as anything else.  I spent a lot of money there especially at Christmas, and good deals after.

[holyjohnson]

Child world was a huge toy store that had all the toys we could`nt afford they had above ground pools set up in the store and play grounds with slides and swings and dozens and dozens of bikes.

the smell of vinyl makes me immediately think of that place even now.

Woolworth`s five and dime in Boston,we did`nt go there a lot but i remember going there with my Aunt and getting a cheese burger,Orange crush and sundae and it was a really cool thing to sit at that big counter.

we bought a Yellow Canary there and i carried it in the box home on my lap all the way on the train and buses.

i remember the place was pretty threadbare and shelves were empty all over,but everyplace was in Boston then.

[limeylad]

Not retail stores but restaurants:

 

[Walt Longmire]

Coast to Coast was great. I could buy a bicycle, a .22 rifle, model cars, and all the 22 ammo I wanted.

Other than that, I miss the good old local mom and pop Hardware store. They had nails, nuts and bolts, pipe, lumber, leather, and AMMO. Us very young boys could wander in and prop our .22's and shotguns up while we used our pop bottle, bark peeling, or shake cutting money to buy more ammo. A 500 round carton of 22 for less than 4 bucks.  And we would be back soon for more.

[G19 DB]

Lafayette & Olsen electronics.

[janice6]

4 hours ago, G19 DB said:

Lafayette & Olsen electronics.

Burstein - Applebees.  I sent them almost every cent I had in the early days.

[Silentpoet]

Tandy was a big name in Fort Worth when I was kid.  Now all the radio shacks are closed.

[Borg warner]

7 hours ago, limeylad said:

Not retail stores but restaurants:

 

 

The last Sambo's restaurant in Southern California that I used to go to I remeber closing in about 1982 because that was the year I got married and I remember taking my wife there when we lived nearby.

Sambo's started in 1957 by Sam Battistone Sr. and Newell Bohnett. Though the name was taken from portions of the names of its founders, the chain soon found itself associated with the story of Little Black Sambo. Battistone and Bohnett capitalized on the connection by decorating the walls of the restaurants and the menus with scenes from the book, including a dark-skinned boy, and tigers. By the early 1960s, the illustrations were changed to show a light-skinned boy wearing a jeweled Indian-style turban with the tigers.

Though the chain went out of business in 1982, there is one remaining Sambos restaurant in Santa Barbara Calif.

[Moeman]

Bobs Big Boy

https://goo.gl/images/B7z9GM

 

[jfost11]

There was a department store called Ames that my mom used to take me to. It required a dime to use the restroom. Over the years, the Roses five minutes away, where my grandmother worked, had put it on life support.

By the time our first Walmart came, it was done and Roses was mostly done too. There ended up being one run down store left in a neighboring county. Somehow that one is still open 20 years later. Probably only because of it's central location between the closest Walmarts, which are somewhat annoying to get to from there because of the traffic.

K-Mart may as well be gone. All of the ones I have ever gone to are now closed and I have no idea where the closest one is. 

Edited November 30, 2018 by jfost11