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I went to a rainforest cafe once. It wasn'ty a particularly good experience, but I do vividly recall it. I remember all the fake plants were really dusty. There were mist-sprayers inside, but the AC was on (because it was chicago in the summer) and cold mist doesn't feel very rain-foresty.
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Nov 20, 2022 00:45
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The Jerk Store. They went out of business after running out of You.
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Nov 20, 2022 01:32
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Nessus posted:I remember eating lunch at Zaxbys with my mom and then going to Service Merchandise. I bet both of them are gone. I had Zaxbys today. Sadly, I did not buy an above-ground pool off of a conveyor belt.
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Nov 20, 2022 01:49
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Living in a small town, going to Incredible Universe in Indy was awesome. Sure, I knew people with SNES and I had a Genesis (and later a Playstation), but getting to see 3DO, Jaguar, NeoGeo, TG16, CD-i and others that I'd only seen in magazines and actually play demos on them was cool. Plus, it seemed like they had a million games for PC and it was almost overwhelming picking just one. However, about the time the Playstation came out, it seemed things were starting to fall apart. There were corners and other areas of the store that just went bare over time and I think it finally closed around 96 or 97. Those last couple years it was a shell of its former self and their game selection for the PS sucked. Later, the same building became Fry's which I also miss sometimes when I need some weird cable or something that I wish could drive 20 minutes and get it now and not wait until the next day or two with Amazon. I can't believe they made it as long as they did, though. The last couple years they were open, it was K-mart levels of empty shelves, bare floor space and random old stock at MSRP that no one in their right mind would want.
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Nov 20, 2022 01:49
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Szyznyk posted:I had Zaxbys today. Sadly, I did not buy an above-ground pool off of a conveyor belt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEcz8I64Mz0
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Nov 20, 2022 01:55
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I had a good time working at Barnes and Noble. It was a really fun job
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Nov 20, 2022 02:07
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Taco Bravo Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road in Cupertino California. Silicon Valley. This was our late night hang-out in high school because it was open til 2 AM on Friday and Saturday nights. We'd go partying then end up there many late weekend nights. The nachos and tacos were decent, but the burritos were suspect, and they had an item called the Bun Beefer. (good user name btw) Essentially a BBQ pork sloppy Joe on an 8" hamburger bun, with pickle slices and chopped onions. A good half a pound of meat. On a dare a friend ordered one and ate it; it was like $2. I called him the next morning to see if he wanted to hang out and he reported that he had been making GBS threads for the last three hours. The two stoner dudes that ran the night shift actually advised him not to order one, but my friend did anyway. The stoner dudes were in their 20's and could buy beer, but they only had access to the shittiest weed imaginable. We were all 17 and 18 years old but had access to some top notch nugs. Barter ensued and we began trading cases of beer for sacks of weed. Literally out the back of the place. This went on for more than a year. Lots of good stories from there but the most interesting is that is where my friends and I met Steve Wozniak. At 1 AM. The first time we saw him he pulled into the parking lot in a red Porsche; license plate reads "WOZ". He immediately leaves with a tray of ~20 tacos and a large soda. Probably one of the earliest adapters of pre-ordering. Next weekend, same thing. This time one of my friends had the cajones to speak up and say, "We really like your computers Mr. Wozniak!" Our school had just won a grant for a lab full of Apple computers. He was stoked and asked how we liked them; but he had to leave, work to do, at 1 AM. We saw him about 4 more times and he sat down with us once and ate one of his tacos, "Hey what's up guys?" He asked about the lab; the school was using it for English papers, physics assignments, Oregon Trail, etc. and he was jazzed. The end of Taco Bravo was horrible. A McDonalds was built next door and that syphoned off a lot of their daytime traffic. A month or so later a Taco Bell opened up a block away, and was open til 2 AM; siphoning more customers. Bravo could not survive and had to shut down. A week later the Taco Bell reduced it's hours to 10 PM. It was truly the end of an era.
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Nov 20, 2022 02:19
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I have fond memories of looking through computer games at Electronics Boutique and a loving brick n' mortar Egghead Software store when I was a kid. I was recently at the indoor mall that's been around forever for the first time since COVID and walking through the food court with the scent of Mrs. Fields cookies lingering brought back some really old memories of running around that place decades ago, it was nice!
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Nov 20, 2022 02:28
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Nessus posted:I remember eating lunch at Zaxbys with my mom and then going to Service Merchandise. I bet both of them are gone. I think Service Merchandise was called BEST here. We didn’t have any of those cool artistic buildings, but I do remember going with my mom there once and I ended up picking out Sonic the Hedgehog 2 from the showroom. It came from the back on a long roller conveyer that I thought was really cool. Now y’all got me missing Borders. So many books and hard-to-find CDs purchased from there, and so many hours spent just reading books I never intended to purchase. I really miss Montgomery Ward. Their Electric Avenue had some great deals comparable to Best Buy and Circuit City at the time. I bought a 5.1 channel Technics receiver and Philips CD recorder from there in 2001 right before they declared bankruptcy and went out of business, and I felt like it was the first big purchase I made with my own money as a young twenty something. Still own and use the receiver to this day!
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Nov 20, 2022 02:37
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thomawesome posted:CompUSA. I'm at least lucky enough to live nearby a microcenter, but big box computer stores rule. Yeah now we have to deal with loving best buy. At least I can rip them off every two years with their insurance policies on Bluetooth headphones And Fry's. You're lucky as hell to live near a microcenter Are there still Sharper Image stores in malls? I never really bought anything but as a kid I loved going in there and looking and all the weird stupid poo poo they had in there
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Nov 20, 2022 02:38
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Animal-Mother posted:The Jerk Store. They went out of business after running out of You. wow rude 
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Nov 20, 2022 02:46
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olives black posted:wow rude I know. That joke is loving decades old
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Nov 20, 2022 02:50
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You Are A Elf posted:I think Service Merchandise was called BEST here. We didn’t have any of those cool artistic buildings, but I do remember going with my mom there once and I ended up picking out Sonic the Hedgehog 2 from the showroom. It came from the back on a long roller conveyer that I thought was really cool. We had service merchandise and were weaker for it, as Best stores had some serious art to them https://sitenewyork.com/portfolio-1/project-one-7tnzy-llznb-83lxp-6xw4p-726sh-k86c6-7l6se Fine, make the world a series of brands but at least make it pretty ffs 
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Nov 20, 2022 02:51
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Indoor malls had their charm when I was a kid. I don't understand how many of the stores made a profit, but it was fun to grab a slice or a burg and fries from the food court, play at the arcade for a bit, and then maybe buy a dumb gag gift or doodad from Spencers, a game from Gamestop, a video from Suncoast, or maybe just a big rear end cookie from Mrs Fields or whatever.
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Nov 20, 2022 02:57
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The mall I grew up with had no poo poo Alexander Calder works in it Now it’s some generic Simon mall of whatever
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Nov 20, 2022 03:03
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teen witch posted:We had service merchandise and were weaker for it, as Best stores had some serious art to them Those are badass buildings 
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Nov 20, 2022 03:05
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Yeah, the people back then booting some floppy on the floor for everybody to see was great. Reboot!
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Nov 20, 2022 03:11
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I think eventually when people order enough poo poo online in areas where people order a lot of the same types of poo poo frequently, people will eventually create places where they keep a number of things available for purchase, a store  if you will. Like a place where you keep things, like store them, because you know people are going to buy them, so it’s cheaper to keep them all in one spot and shipped in bulk. Ordering online is like saying we should build a train system that goes to everyones house.
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Nov 20, 2022 03:17
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Animal-Mother posted:The Jerk Store. They went out of business after running out of You. Nah the toilet store called me and they said I’m the poo poo. 
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Nov 20, 2022 03:19
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Haverchuck posted:One of the classic pizza huts just closed in my little town and I'm looking forward to seeing it blossom into a loan shark place/vape shop/tattoo shop with garish signs bolted to the roof One near me closed, and is getting replaced by yet another Chik-Fil-A. Feels like they're expanding like crazy . I miss places like Caldor's, Bradlees, and even Pathmark. Funco Land too. When I lived in Florida for far too long, there was a pretty cool Media Play. Armitage fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Nov 20, 2022 |
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Nov 20, 2022 03:19
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Armitage posted:One's getting replaced by yet another Chik-Fil-A. Feels like they're expanding like crazy . I got my Scary Spice doll at Caldor’s and it’s such an oddlt cherished memory. And gahhh Pathmark had some wild rear end blue soda in a 3L I think? Who remember
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Nov 20, 2022 03:25
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Animal-Mother posted:The Jerk Store. They went out of business after running out of You. They're still thriving, after all, you're their all-time best seller.
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Nov 20, 2022 03:36
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There used to be store in my town called recycled audio which only carried super high end audio equipment and they would let you bring in cds and demo stuff. Back when I had less than $100 to my name I would go in and listen to aerial boundaries on $30k McIntosh speakers.
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Nov 20, 2022 04:27
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super sweet best pal posted:Hastings was great. Got so many books, games and movies there. Easily my favorite local shop, and nothing will ever come close. A store the size of a small Kmart that combined the best parts of Blockbuster, Suncoast, Borders, GameStop, Spencer's, Sam Goody, etc. Comics, CDs, toys, some electronics and PC software, new and used books, video and game rentals. I loved renting SNES and Genesis systems and games, with the systems coming in those neat hard plastic briefcases.
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Nov 20, 2022 04:38
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Chinatown posted:Fry's Electronics. I had spent years being told that Fry's ='d west coast Best Buy. I almost cried the first time I walked into one.
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Nov 20, 2022 04:52
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Mostly I miss having time to go to brick and mortar stores and just browse around.
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Nov 20, 2022 05:42
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thomawesome posted:CompUSA. I'm at least lucky enough to live nearby a microcenter, but big box computer stores rule. We had an Elek-Tek back in the day. I remember the store being fairly dark, but all the shelves along the walls were backlit with fluorescents, and then they used little spotlights everywhere else. Or at least I think they did? We always went there because we were the weird Mac family and no one else had a selection of Mac software as good as them. I remember picking up a “200 Mac Games” shareware package that had like, Ep1 of Doom and Wolfenstein and it introduced me to Escape Velocity. Elek-Tek owned. Darth Brooks posted:Hastings. They had cool junk but also almost every kind of magazine and book. I'd go there look around grab something to read and maybe buy and be there until they started playing happy trails. I remember my brother and I needed a CD key for Half-Life once we got a PC because the one we pirated stopped working so we just went to Hastings and wrote down one after we opened a Half-Life box. I still to this hope someone bought a new copy of Half-Life and then was told that their “CD-Key is already in use” lol GundamHealer fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Nov 20, 2022 |
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Nov 20, 2022 05:51
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The Saxecutioner posted:I had spent years being told that Fry's ='d west coast Best Buy. yeah fry's was cool. that said, I have fully accepted the fact that i've sold my soul to amazon and could never go back to actually driving 45 minutes one-way to buy a goddamn usb cable.
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Nov 20, 2022 05:55
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The dope thing about Fry's though was there were two in San Jose with absolutely crazy design like check this one out: https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/46960 And I'm pretty sure there was a way bigger one somewhere in this area, it also looked like a pyramid and to get to it you'd take an outdoor escalator up a full story to the entrance Or wait, did they all look like that e: this might be the one I was thinking of. not a pyramid but still a pretty weird shape 
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Nov 20, 2022 06:17
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the Fry's in north San Diego (San Marcos) was an Atlantis theme. When it opened, the glass obleisks infront had a pair of electrified cables inside and electric arcs would crawl up from the bottom to tip.  Giant fishtanks inside too. We used to get blazed and go browse computer stuff with my friends in high school. Good times.
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Nov 20, 2022 06:22
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free hubcaps posted:funcoland
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Nov 20, 2022 06:27
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Zellers for the Canadian goons.
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Nov 20, 2022 06:35
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Comet pizza. Great pizza, however I did see a large group of old men in red hooded robes go into the basement so I assume they closed due to a health concern or something. The kids screaming from the basement definitely was a vibe killer but it always quieted down after an hour or so
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Nov 20, 2022 06:39
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As previously stated, the weird used book stores where it was just paperbacks, textbooks, and national geographics from the 19th century onward. Where things weren't organized and there were vague non-fiction, fiction-sci-fi fantasy, fiction-romance, fiction-historical and you had to hunt to find those .99 cent Dragonlance novels. These days everything is overly organized because they depend on online sales, so you don't have the ability to stumble upon those true gems that you wouldn't otherwise have heard of. Same with used CD stores. It was always great finding an obscure bootleg or europe only EP from your favorite band, or a complication to discover new bands. Nowadays I'm just going to let spotify or podcasts tell me what to listen to. Also Quiznos. All the ones in my area shut down.
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Nov 20, 2022 06:48
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Nessus posted:I referred to the ancient tomes and I was actually thinking of Rax's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNqZ7qsWpJc
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Nov 20, 2022 07:37
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the tower records by my house i would check the used cds every week because people have no loving taste and i'd get really good music cheap as hell. it was criminal how much they used to charge for cds new but you could get used ones pretty low price and sometimes it was really worth it even if it only had a couple songs that were good. i do miss toys r us and borders but i'm a little pressed to think if i would still solicit them now or if it's just the nostalgia of my youth when things were less awful or horrifying in my personal life.
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Nov 20, 2022 09:07
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MettleRamiel posted:While it's good that they're gone for ethical reasons, I sure do miss going in to pet stores as a kid and being able to pick up all kinds of furry or exotic animals that 90's of were sold to people who didn't know how to care for them and wold be dead within the year Who wants to tell 'em that pet stores with actual animals in them to buy still exist?
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Nov 20, 2022 09:29
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Radio Shack
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Nov 20, 2022 11:35
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The White Elephant in Spokane. They had two locations and their locations themselves represented the city itself - one on North Division (grew up near there) and one on East Sprague. My grandparents took me there a lot because my grandpa was a hunter. Things you could buy at The White Elephant -hunting rifles -canoes -fishing gear -trinkets from Expo 74. They had boxes and boxes of ashtrays and shotglasses and poo poo left over from the world's fair, at least when I was a kid in the 90s, maybe they ran out at some point. -TOYS They had a toy section that was crammed floor to ceiling with old stock toys. Barbies from the 80s and early 90s. Playmobil out the rear end. Anything you could imagine, and a lot of it was old stock. Around 2012 or so I went there with my husband and we got a bunch of Star Trek Generations action figures. No matter your political or regional (loving South Hill people  ) everyone loved The White Elephant. When they closed up two years ago it was a news item for months. They didn't close down because they went bankrupt, just the owners died and the kids didn't want to run it anymore. As a coda, the titular White Elephant, which was a kiddie ride that cost a dime to ride and I and everyone else who grew up in Spokane surely went on at one time or another, has been returned to its original position in the historical Looff Carousel.
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Nov 20, 2022 11:36
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Radio Shack, hell yes. I don't think a week goes by today that I don't need something from there. Adapters, connectors, wire, components, etc. Even at their worst, their cheapest crap was better than the appalling junk we're left with on Amazon. And at their best -- 80s and 90s -- their house-brand stuff was decent. Tools, audio gear, whatnot. Not great, but definitely good enough. They were never viable competition for Frys/Microcenter, but when you needed a BNC-to-RCA adapter or a couple LEDs right now, you could at least get them.
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Nov 20, 2022 12:20
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