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We used to have a few "Circus World" stores in our area malls. Apparently, that company got bought out by KB at some point in the early 90s or so, which might have helped the KB brand expand to more places rather quickly. It MIGHT be the chain Wandering Knitter is thinking of. Personally, I sort of miss the old days of the video game stores of the 90s. Right now we seem to mostly just have Gamestop, but I remember Babbages, Electronics Boutique, Waldensoftware, Egghead, Funcoland, etc. I think most, if not all, eventually just got consumed into one another, then into the entity that is now Gamestop. It was always fairly nice to have some variety, as Game Crazy would often carry a lot of preowned accessories and oddball items Gamestop just didn't bother with.
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Jul 27, 2013 08:50
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^ How about the fact that a few actually specialized in PC stuff over console games? Those were the days. ^ Though help me out here...which toy store used to have an orange circle logo/general orange motif? Was that Toys R Us? Dis posted:I remember that! Suddenly, I didn't mind so much that it took my mother seven times longer than a human child can deal with to shop for clothings or whatever the hell else I didn't care about at the time. As I recall, they pretty much always had a GameBoy Pocket and a SNES set up. And the SNES was always demoing Donkey Kong Country. Toys R Us used to have a huge touch-pad "keyboard" of game box art that would dial up the selected game's preview on the television screen mounted above. 
John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 11:24 on Jul 27, 2013 |
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Jul 27, 2013 11:19
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John Liver posted:Looking through an old photo album today roused up some memories: Hell yeah. I loved that place till I slid through a puddle of piss someone had left at the bottom of a big slide.
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Jul 27, 2013 12:16
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John Murdoch posted:As I recall, they pretty much always had a GameBoy Pocket and a SNES set up. And the SNES was always demoing Donkey Kong Country. Okay, I'm counting that as confirmation. THe Donkey Kong Country thing seals it. In fact, I think the GameBoy Pocket might have had Donkey Kong Land for awhile as well. I seem to recall the cart was yellow. And back then, that was somehow awesome all on its own.
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Jul 28, 2013 06:25
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McCurdy's department store, man. My grandma would take me shopping with her and then we'd go to the diner upstairs where she'd buy me a fried shrimp basket and a milkshake, and she'd get iced tea and chain smoke  Oh, gramma
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Jul 28, 2013 15:56
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Ha, smoking indoors. I remember McCurdy's, but I never went to the midtown store, only the Irondequoit store. Hell, Irondequoit mall was pretty 90's itself. Opened in 1990, was dead by 2000.  More pictures Those lights, the railings, the tile, the glass elevator. When I think of 90's public architecture, that's what I think of. e: I was feeling nostalgic, and was looking at more pictures, and found this:  This is the Freehold Raceway Mall; Freehold, New Jersey. It was built by the same developers, and I spent way too much time trying to remember if there was ever a Haagen Dazs in Irondequoit. Guy Axlerod has a new favorite as of 16:24 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 16:14
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Guy Axlerod posted:Ha, smoking indoors. Hey, the Irondequoit mall had the best food court carousel. 2 levels! The Greece Ridge Mall only had one! Come to think of it, Rochester itself is pretty 90s.
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Jul 28, 2013 16:17
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Guy Axlerod posted:Ha, smoking indoors. I was just thinking about how much the mall in the first picture looks like the mall near me, and then I scrolled down.  Sadly the huge fountain by the elevator was removed a few years back, and replaced by a Starbucks with a very tiny fountain. Here's a picture of what it used to look like:  And here's a picture of it's glass foodcourt and racehorse themed merry-go-round.  The mall opened when I was eight years old and it's been a part of my life since, so I have an odd weakspot for the old place.  Sadly I can't find any pictures of the old christmas house they used to put up during the holidays when I was younger.e: The best spots on the merry-go-round were on the second level. 
Wandering Knitter has a new favorite as of 16:37 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 16:35
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Malls themselves are becoming an outdated concept. I never go to them anymore unless the store I need to go to happens to be in it, which is rare.
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Jul 28, 2013 17:03
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Guy Axlerod posted:Ha, smoking indoors. I have a small, one-story mall pretty close to me which was built in the 90's and it looks so much like that. Everything is mostly blue or blue-green, gray and white, the beams and everything are really similar. It's somehow still in business despite the fact that the few times I go to it, every now and then, nobody is there. At any given time there's like a dozen people walking the mall, and the clerks just sit around inside unoccupied stores. I'm not sure that they changed the mall's logo since the 90's, either. Here's a good illustration of the architecture and color scheme:  The mall opened sometime around 1991 or 1992. I can picture some punk teenager with a hot-pink ball cap on backwards and a denim jacket skateboarding right through that food court. Also that picture was taken from just outside the former location of the arcade, where I spent my younger years playing Mortal Kombat and Revolution X (Aerosmith!).
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Jul 28, 2013 17:08
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90's shopping malls were the best, my favourite was The Galleria in Hatfield, UK. I haven't been for about 20 years but it's still there which makes me happy. It had a cinema and an ice rink which I thought was incredible. I saw Jurassic Park and Lion King there, and it had a huge tunnel underneath it that you had to drive through to get there that me and my brother got absolutely psyched for. I drove underneath that tunnel last year and it was disappointingly small and short compared to how my 5-year old self remembered it. 
Frankston has a new favorite as of 17:14 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 17:12
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Overbite posted:Malls themselves are becoming an outdated concept. I never go to them anymore unless the store I need to go to happens to be in it, which is rare. I thought this was true until I moved to Canada. With a half-dozen significant large malls in the city (and the largest containing a water park, NHL-sized rink, putt-putt, etc.) I've realized that in winter, when it is too drat cold to go outdoors, malls are something like the national past-time.
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Jul 28, 2013 17:12
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As awesome as that I'm really disappointed that the page isn't using a single table 
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Jul 28, 2013 17:24
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 Found a photo of the old Christmas House at the mall. And now I'm ten years old again.
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Jul 28, 2013 17:34
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Wandering Knitter posted:I was just thinking about how much the mall in the first picture looks like the mall near me, and then I scrolled down. Holy crap, I still go down to Freehold when I get tired of Woodbridge, Menlo, or Brunswick Square (then again, it's really the only mall that I go to. Woodbridge is somewhat of a dead mall with really nothing in it. Menlo is too rich and feels like a prison with the one straight corridor and Brunswick has too many kids for my taste). My earliest memories of going to a mall were at Freehold in the early 90s. I guess that because it was so new, that my parents liked going there with me and my sister because of the fact that it was so clean. I remember a few things about the early days of it: 1) the massive fountain that was in the middle of it and me not understanding why there was a fountain inside. 2) The arcade that was by the food court, which was about three places down from the McDonalds (both are gone now, leaving a Wendy's and Taco Bell as the two major chains left in the food court) and 3) the Carousel that is still in the food court. The renovations that they did seven years ago kind of sucked. Mainly because of the fact that it took away a few things that were awesome about the mall, such as the fountain that was in the middle. The elevator is still near the new starbucks, but its now behind it. It's one of the few malls in the are that never really changed over the years, which is somewhat of a good thing. Does anyone remember when the had the comic shop in there for a few years that was by the Johnny Rockets? It was a small, local chain that was called Zapp Comics. I think that the remodel drove them out, so that they could bring in more higher end retailers. I remember going in there a few time and being annoyed about how expensive the stuff was compared to the small local on that was in the town that I lived in.
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Jul 28, 2013 17:44
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King Vidiot posted:I have a small, one-story mall pretty close to me which was built in the 90's and it looks so much like that. Everything is mostly blue or blue-green, gray and white, the beams and everything are really similar. It's somehow still in business despite the fact that the few times I go to it, every now and then, nobody is there. At any given time there's like a dozen people walking the mall, and the clerks just sit around inside unoccupied stores. I'm not sure that they changed the mall's logo since the 90's, either. Speaking of mall logo:  Look at the "eq" in Irondequoit.
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Jul 28, 2013 17:49
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The arcade was Time Out, which me and my brother more or less lived at our entire childhoods. They had double-screen arcade machines with one screen on top of the other, so people wouldn't crowd around the machines to watch. It was dark, filthy, and covered in countless stains. God I miss it. Zapp Comics was also awesome, and I would spend far too much of my allowance on imported knock-off Pokemon toys. There was a mini-golf course in the food court back when the place first opened. It was too expensive for my family, so I would have to settle for peeking in and trying to see as much as the course as I could. Later on I got invited to a birthday party there and thought it was great...until I reached the Tea Party hole. It was a giant cracked tea cup which had a statue of someone drowning in the tea in the middle of it. Now that I wish I could find a picture of!
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Jul 28, 2013 17:51
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If there any Vancouver goons, or goons that used to live in Vancouver (like me), did anyone remember around the late 90s where the Metrotown Mall at Burnaby had some sort of an expansion that included a bunch of stores that were aimed towards younger shoppers? I remember it had a Playdium, a bunch of stores that sold merchandise from Japan, and most especially a Rainforest Cafe. Man, when you were like 10 it was definitely the place to be.
Thwack! has a new favorite as of 18:43 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 18:07
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Wandering Knitter posted:And here's a picture of it's glass foodcourt and racehorse themed merry-go-round. Oh my god, that loving carousel. I live in Florida, but my family would go up to Rochester (and other various places in the Mohawk Valley) for Christmas and summer due to most of my extended family living there, so I got to ride that fucker so much. You're right, second floor was the best. I wound up attending college at RIT, so I went back to check it out one day only to find the whole place had been basically mothballed  Speaking of MallChat, the mall around where I grew up, which isn't exactly that huge, managed to have no less than three separate arcades back in the 90's, which is something that I can barely even imagine these days. They're all gone now, replaced with a Cold Stone, a knicknacks shop and a Radio Shack. I'm surprised they didn't stay alive based on me and my friends' quarters alone. Shame Boy has a new favorite as of 19:02 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 18:55
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No poo poo, Zapp moved out? I live in the town where the previous one was way back when. Spent a lot of allowance money on Star Wars action figures from there before that one closed and the one in Freehold opened. The only notable thing about the mall at this point for me is that I really like the gyros the Greek place makes. Don't tell me that place is gone now too. I remember when the corner spot on the opposite side of the carousel from the arcade was a cramped little playplace. I don't think it lasted all that long. Also s'up, NJ goons. How about them Easy Videos?
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Jul 28, 2013 19:13
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Oddly enough that gyro place is still there, and is still making the exact same gyros. They haven't changed at all in the 20 or so odd years the Mall's been open. I'm pretty sure it's the only location in the food court that hasn't changed at all. And Easy Video!  Was it a chain? There was one by my house. All I remember about it was it had anime before anyone knew what it was. Oh, and during the huge blizzard that hit (93?) the owner actually walked through the storm and opened the shop up just so he could charge everyone late fees.
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Jul 28, 2013 19:52
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John Murdoch posted:No poo poo, Zapp moved out? I live in the town where the previous one was way back when. Spent a lot of allowance money on Star Wars action figures from there before that one closed and the one in Freehold opened. Yeah, that Gyro place is still there and it hasn't changed in years. Zapp had a few locations at one point. One in Sayreville, where I grew up, one in Freehold Mall, and two other locations, one some where in Central Jersey and one up North somewhere. They closed a few of them down and I think it was the one in Freehold and up north somewhere where left a few years ago. I think the one that was in Freehold is now in a strip mall in Manalapan. It seems to be doing good from what I understand. Yes, I remember Easy Video. There was one in my home town and it was around for years. My parents never joined, but I had a friend whose parents were members. Then in the the early 90s, a Blockbuster opened and it killed it a year later. There was one left up on Rt. 9 in Woodbridge and it was there all through the 90s and the first half of the 2000s. I think that it closed down maybe three years ago or so and was replaced by a restaurant. screenwritersblues has a new favorite as of 02:44 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 20:51
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Glad to hear the gyro place is still going!screenwritersblues posted:Zapp had a few locations at one point. One in Sayreville, where I grew up That's the one I meant. Howdy, (former-?)Sayreville goon.  I think the original store was/is up in Wayne?And Easy Video was just a few doors down, though I can't remember if both were in operation at the same time. And on the other side, a Blimpie I don't think I was ever in. Such strange nostalgia I have. Wandering Knitter posted:And Easy Video! I think it was a small chain, yeah. I vaguely recall there being more than just the one in Sayreville and the one on Rt. 9. And oh man, crazy 90s blizzards were so much fun as a kid. And just slightly freaky to have the snow be up above your waist. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 21:09 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 21:07
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All this talk about malls and all I think about is awesome 90s movies that had quite a bit of interior shots of malls. Like 'Jingle All the Way' with Arnie.
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Jul 28, 2013 21:08
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Thwack! posted:If there any Vancouver goons, or goons that used to live in Vancouver (like me), did anyone remember around the late 90s where the Metrotown Mall at Burnaby had some sort of an expansion that included a bunch of stores that were aimed towards younger shoppers? I remember it had a Playdium, a bunch of stores that sold merchandise from Japan, and most especially a Rainforest Cafe. Man, when you were like 10 it was definitely the place to be. Yes, Metropolis - where the theatre is. Everything else around it failed and now it's just another part of the mall with crap stores like Winners etc. Agreed that malls in Canada are still a big thing. In Vancouver we're building a lot of LA/Grove style outdoor malls lately, which seems crazy when it rains 9 months of the year. Here's one of the more successful ones, built in 2004  Basically just a fake street. Which is weird because we never had the crime problems that scared people away from actual streets like in major US cities. UnfortunateSexFart has a new favorite as of 21:52 on Jul 28, 2013 |
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Jul 28, 2013 21:47
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John Murdoch posted:And oh man, crazy 90s blizzards were so much fun as a kid. And just slightly freaky to have the snow be up above your waist. Yes they were. I tell my younger cousins about it all the time and they think that I'm crazy when I tell them that I had almost a week up off of school because it was so bad. I remember the Nor'easter of 1992 pretty good. I had just started grade school and my father was driving me to the bus in his 1970 Chevy pick up truck because he was on his way to work. A neighbor saw him and told him that school was canceled because of the weather. I remember being scared of it because it was raining so bad that I asked my to stay home that day, because I was worried that he was going to get stuck in the water. Of course he doesn't listen to me and he goes to work, but not before getting his camera to shoot pictures. About a hour later, my house phone rings and my mother tells me that my father wants to talk to me. I was five at the time so mind you I was thrilled that he called. He told me that I was right that he should have stayed home, because of the fact that the lot that he parks in was flooded and one of the secretaries that he worked with car was underwater. I think that it was on a Friday too, because he didn't go out that night because it was so bad.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:43
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I was in Jersey for the '93 (I think) and '97 one. The '93 is mostly a blur. I have sound-less memories of just a whitewhall of snow and not even being able to leave the front door. The '97 was pretty rad. Some dickhead snowplow driver ended up pushing a ton of snow down the embankment into our yard which my sister and I promptly turned into this beaver lodge igloo thing with three different entrances.
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Jul 29, 2013 02:51
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Here's one thing 90's related that has been bugging me. I keep hearing about ska music becoming huge/semi-mainstream in the 90's and spawning a subculture of "ska kids" who listened to it near-exclusively and dressed distinctively. I grew up in the 90's-2000's and I have absolutely no recollection of this ska boom happening. Was this an early 90's thing that I'm too young to have remembered or something geographically localized (born in '89, grew up in suburban Atlanta area)? I remember being aware of juggalos, mall-goths, and the whole lovely Nu-Metal thing from the late 90's. When I started middle school at the very beginning of the 2000's, rap got huge at my suburban, 99% white school, and when I was in high school (2000s) the whole Emo/Scene thing was huge. Don't recall ska being on my or my friends' musical radar at all.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:34
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GOO PUNCH!! posted:Here's one thing 90's related that has been bugging me. Kind of, but I don't remember it spawning any related fashion other than the odd pair of checkerboard vans or occasional fedoras.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:42
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GOO PUNCH!! posted:Here's one thing 90's related that has been bugging me. You missed out. The college I went to has a pretty good music program and roughly 90% of the kids in that program were 90's Ska Kids come home to roost. Every day you'd see posters for yet another band of Ska players which would fall apart and reform itself with other ska bands detritus constantly. All that said; the people in the Preservation Hall New Orleans Bingo Show are pretty talented folks and put on a hell of a show. If you get a chance and want to enjoy an interactive music show good enough for the Kennedy Center give them a look.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:49
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GOO PUNCH!! posted:Here's one thing 90's related that has been bugging me. There was definitely a small sub-set of "ska kids" at my junior high. Most of them were band geeks because hey, it's cool (yeah, yeah) music that NEEDS A TROMBONE! 
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Jul 29, 2013 22:52
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My 90s roommate was into swing dancing, which I think was a ska fad related activity? He asked me and the other roommate to go once and we couldn't have said "no" more emphatically and quickly. But it was a niche thing. Mainstream-wise the closest most people got was liking No Doubt.
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Jul 30, 2013 04:31
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Ska seemed (and still seems to) attract the weird band nerd type. I have a friend who was a ska kid for a little while, fits all the weird descriptions you guys are saying perfectly (including the fedora  )
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Jul 30, 2013 04:44
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Even at it's height ska wasn't really popular. No Doubt had to literally stop being a ska band before they sold any records, and that was right during prime ska time. Nowadays there's only like 2 people who like ska so if you think about it, ska was probably like a thousand times more popular in the 90's, which is pretty big.
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Jul 30, 2013 04:52
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The 90's ska scene was really deeply tied to 90's punk rock, and ska-punk bands were probably as common as any other subgenre. Some people dug this, other people, well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F03gEzdLa2g
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Jul 30, 2013 05:46
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Modern Day Hercules posted:Even at it's height ska wasn't really popular. No Doubt had to literally stop being a ska band before they sold any records, and that was right during prime ska time. Nowadays there's only like 2 people who like ska so if you think about it, ska was probably like a thousand times more popular in the 90's, which is pretty big. I assume you're talking about in your life time, and in America, because Ska was massive in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s, not to mention in its original forms earlier in other parts of the world. See; The Specials, The English Beat, early UB40, The Police, etc. etc.
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Jul 30, 2013 05:51
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Grrl Anachronism posted:I thought this was true until I moved to Canada. With a half-dozen significant large malls in the city (and the largest containing a water park, NHL-sized rink, putt-putt, etc.) I've realized that in winter, when it is too drat cold to go outdoors, malls are something like the national past-time. I cannot even tell you how many times I've been to Mall of America in winter just to take a loving walk.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:08
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rttBwGgBWzg Dancing loving coke can. This was standard issue in the 90s.
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Jul 30, 2013 06:56
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The move to ska happened in my neck of the woods around the same time the swing/big band music craze swept the nation (for all of maybe a year or two). I think I had a Mighty Mighty Bosstones CD but that was as far as I went towards ska back in the day. The swing music boom seemed to be way more apparent though, every wedding and bar mitzva in the mid 90s lived off that poo poo. Squirrel Nut Zippers and Brian Setzer Orchestra were two of the big names I remember from then. Some kids I went to school with were even enrolled in a swing dancing class at one point, but then after a while everyone hung up their zoot suits and stupid hats and no one ever spoke about it again. The ska thing outlasted most of the other flash in the pan music crazes but eventually people either tended towards more punk type music or listened to Mustard Plug by themselves until they found college.
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Jul 30, 2013 08:25
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John Murdoch posted:
Yep the original Wayne location is still there and going. Just went there the other day.
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Jul 30, 2013 08:43
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