|
Athanatos posted:We still have one around here. It's 3 stories of some building that seems to be falling down and creaks loudly with every step. No rhyme or reason for placement of anything, just piles of random things and everything is priced as "just make an offer." This reminds me, my favorite musical instrument store was a place called Chicago Store. The two-story building it was in dates back to 1903 and was originally a department store when it was built. This music store was an organized mess, had the same creaky floors and piles of random things everywhere, was poorly lit and grungy with a layer of dust on everything, and it had literally everything you could think of regarding musical instruments. You’d never walk out of there empty handed. There was a long-standing rumor that an untouched crate of new old stock Fender Stratocasters from the 1950s was somewhere in the loft upstairs, but it was so messy and jam-packed up there that no one knew where the crate was. The building got a nice expensive exterior restoration that returned it partially back to what it looked like in the past, then the store moved out to a smaller building around the corner lmao. Now it’s currently being gutted inside and I don’t know what it’s turning into, but after nearly 120 years of having a tired interior (I don’t think it was ever remodeled inside), it deserves it. I bought so many guitar strings and picks and clarinet reeds there in my youth, and I just loved walking the hoarded paths of instruments and messing around with stuff. I wonder if they ever found that crate of Stratocasters when they moved, though…
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 04:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 08:02 |
|
|
precision posted:Orange Julius That was totally my poo poo back in the 90s, then the prices spiked way up and I quit going. apowe posted:What Kmart was to Walmart, Shopko was to Target. Shopko might've been wildly uneven in quality but using Kmart as the analogy is a bit harsh. I tended to pick Shopko over Target. Target always felt like the generic option, no good deals or neat surprises to hunt for, just standard goods at standard prices.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 05:01
|
|
|
KitConstantine posted:Borders books. They had a really cool music section and carried a ton of genre fiction and the combined forces of Amazon and Barnes & noble murdered em and consumed the corpse respectively here an interesting story about borders. They had bad corporate culture/managment like my local borders was right by a retirement community. The corporate people would ask the store why manage isnt selling.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 05:06
|
|
|
I bought a lot of video games, books, and CDs at Hastings ca. 1998-2002. I liked that store.
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 05:08
|
|
|
Fry's Electronics, just because it was the only place that had a Sega Dreamcast when I was a kid and was available. The one closest to me was themed like Alice in Wonderland and was my go-to location New Years Day and when PC gaming was growing. (Sorry CompUSA) Suncoast was a great place for movies, and even though anime at the time was very pricey, was still one of the few places that somehow gave it dignity, instead of just the cheap cutout of Faye Valentine. (At least my local one). if we want to talk obscure and wild places that I vividly remember - Gateway Store and BEST. Gateway Store was similar to an Apple Store, here are some computers for you to buy, try out the computer and most likely it's people just messing around with the internet and for children, playing edutainment software - my only vivid memory was purchasing a copy of Wheel of Fortune 2nd Edition in the place, and them trying to say why they are better than the blueberry iMacs. BEST was like a department store, but nearly impossible to really buy most anything. But it was a "try before you by". Situation with like vacuum cleaner testing and the only reason I remember it was when I was a small small child them having Nintendo Demos available. Of course, The Good Guys was another electric store that didn't survive and that was the place where I got my first game console - a Sega Genesis. Now that I think of it, many of these outlets are basically gaming related. I could've just said "Toys R Us" or "Babbage's" and called it a day. The final retailer, would have to be DAPY. DAPY was like Spencer's Gifts, but instead of just having the marijuana leaf shirts and gag gifts all over the place, it was mostly filled with like inflatable chairs and lava lamps and magic 8 balls and other "goofy crap". Just a real knock-knack store
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 05:25
|
|
|
Howard Beale posted:Western Mass had those hippy-weirdo-headshop boutiques called Faces, one in Amherst and one in Northampton. The Amherst one was in a former bowling alley behind a gas station and decorated its front facade with enormous weird designs cut out of sheet metal so you could see 'em from the street, which they'd change out for holidays and stuff. It closed in the 90s but the Northampton store, which was more funky than hippy, continued on til 2019. This post reminded me to look up all the places I remembered about western Mass (my mom went to, then worked at, Mount Holyoke, so I spent an unfortunate amount of time there), but all the places I remembered are all still open. Good for them. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 05:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 3, 2024 08:02 |
|
|
I'm going to also throw out ShopKo as a cool place to go and find great gaming deals. Other places I miss: Phar-Mor and Venture. Venture mostly because of the awesome snack bar* and Phar-Mor was just cool. I seem to remember them having a whole media section with games and CDs for a while, but I might be wrong. *Okay, store snack bars. I miss that. They used to be really neat as opposed to the Starbucks/Subways/Little Caesars/Whatevers that replaced them over the years. There was something just far more casual and special about the food and drink you could grab there while you sat around before or after shopping. Everyone had one. Hills, Walmart, Target, Kmart, etc. Some of them were as big as some smaller fast food dining rooms. It doesn't matter if retail makes a massive comeback or not, I don't think any store is going to bring back their in-house diner-style snack bar, again. JediTalentAgent fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Nov 29, 2022 |
|
#
?
Nov 29, 2022 06:18
|
|