The public radio show/podcast did a story about how abandoned big-box stores like former Kmart or Walmart stores have been adapted for other purposes. Some become libraries, churches, grade schools or museums.
Pic n Save was founded by my friend’s grand parents. It would have the most bizarre seconds for cheap. Like notebooks and other merch for a tv show that never happened. We called her the Pic n Save heiress.
The Kmart which was near my house in suburban Chicago had originally been a Venture (a Chicago-area discount store), and became a Kmart in the early '90s. A Walmart was built a half-block away a few years later, and that probably hastened the Kmart’s demise, sometime around 2015.
The store, which was an “anchor” for a small strip-mall, was empty for years, until 2021, when the county took it over for the better part of a year, as a COVID-19 vaccination center.
It’s now empty again.
That was hilarious. I remember thinking at the time that it would make a great SNL commercial, but it was a bit creepy as a mainstream ad. I can’t think of any store where it wouldn’t feel a bit off. Still very funny, though.
And here’s the holiday version:
yeah if you missed something or wondered what happened to x merchandise you found it at Pic n Save /big lots at some point
ours became a haven for toy collectors looking for discontinued/hard-to-find lines especially for Barbie, Bratz, and Monster High dolls … like if you couldn’t get a certain doll at Christmas you went there about February and there was a good chance you’d find it for 90 percent off
My local Sears also closed before COVID and became a massive vaccination center back when those first rolled out and you had to wait 30 minutes in line for your vaccination.
I also remember reading the reason why every K-Mart looked like it was trapped in the 90s is that’s because that’s literally what happened, the new CEO in the 2000s basically halted any and all improvements or modernizations to store to save money, so many K-Marts still had the 90s look as well as wear and tear into the late 2000s.
One of the last hurrahs for K-Mart was in the late 2000s to early 2010s it was an INCREDIBLY cheap place to buy new video games, they’d have promotions of having brand new games for $10 off so I’d often stop by my local K-Mart and buy games that way. I last remember visiting a K-Mart in 2010 to get a brand new game on launch day for cheaper than anywhere else had it. I also remember my local K-Mart TRIED to have a grocery section to compete with Target/Walmart but their idea of a grocery section was to have groceries you’d get anywhere else but at double the price. So a 2 liter of Pepsi at Walmart for 99 cents was $1.75 or more, it made no sense.
yeah i went to Kmart and found the Game Boy Advance there when nowhere else had them and no one else thought of going there…but around here when they closed the lunchroom and took out the popcorn and icees a year or two after that it when people decided kmart was dead to them they even brought them back…( well ok just awkwardly shoved the machines in a spot in the front of the store where they were a pain to use and blocked traffic coming in and out if more than 2 people were inline ) but by then target and Walmart had stolen their customer base
My son was in grade school back then and loved video games. I wasn’t totally naive, I knew they had “adult content”.
He asked me to get a particular game from KMart that would probably run out. So I was there in line when the store opened. My son had told me all the details, the game’s name, the platform, etc.
When I reached the counter, the cashier somehow knew I wasn’t buying it for myself. He made me feel like I was buying a firearm for a felon, but he eventually sold me the damn game.
The local Sears was just gross too. They had kitchen and laundry appliances. Those poor guys worked on straight commission. I was acquainted with one of them so I wanted to help him out when I needed a dishwasher.
He gave me his best price. You could bargain with them a little bit but he cut to the chase with me. There was a Warehouse Discount Center literally across the street where the identical item was significantly less expensive and of course the store was cleaner and better organized.
Sears lasted a bit longer than it normally would have out of sheer momentum.
The last year at my local Sears was depressing, it was pre-COVID so it had to be 2019ish. Wandered in because I needed a power drill and assumed they’d have a sale or something. It was a huge store but had MASSIVE gaps between merchandise and there was an entire corner of the store where they just openly stored empty shelves. Like a single sales associate wandering around in the entire store and one person behind the cash register, that’s it
When I was growing up in the 1970s, we had a Sears store in the little suburban town in which I grew up. It had clothing, of course, but also furniture, carpeting, large and small appliances and hardware (power equipment and Craftsman hand tools). It even had a candy counter where my brother and I could get coconut haystacks, which were a pile of shredded coconut covered in chocolate. My father’s cousin’s wife worked at the Sears store local to them in New Jersey, partly for the employee discount.
The only job I ever got fired from was at Kmart. The rule was that they could let you go without cause if they did it within 4 weeks, so I got called into the office after 4 weeks to the day. This store closed a few years after my unfortunate experience. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
I had a similar story about Circuit City.
Got hired, did off-site job training for a week, then unceremoniously let go after the week of training was up because the head trainer didn’t think I “gelled” with the company. Then literally a month after being let go Circuit City announced bankruptcy and liquidation.
I never got a trashy vibe from Sears, as opposed to K-Mart. Toward the end it felt like a dollar store, with random stuff everywhere and lots of dirt. I still went there for clothes because they reliably had them and they were close to me. Yet, even though the place was nearly empty, and it looked like they employed sufficient cashiers to make the lines move fast, the checkout process took the same amount of time with 2 people in line in front of me as it did at Wal*Mart with 4 people in front of me. And the customers definitely weren’t buying lots of stuff, and the cashiers weren’t deliberately jerking off. They were just really slow. I think the cashiers and managers at that point just didn’t care anymore.
I’m bracing for a surge of interest in our early 80s college band - The Blue Light Specials! (Note, I didn’t say a “resurgence” of interest, as we never were terribly popular. But we DID have fun!)
Ours was divided into smaller stores, all of a thrifty nature (two dollar stores, a “Grocery Outlet” supermarket, and a “Thrift Superstore”).
… and an orthopedic medical center.
And that’s where I did my physical therapy when I broke my shoulder while running a few years back.
But when giving directions to somewhere in that area I still find myself saying “Over by where K-Mart used to be”
I used the term “Blue Light Special” talking to one of my pre-teen nephews. He was confused for a moment, but ended up interpreting it (somehow) as meaning that police were involved.
We didn’t have had a Kmart close by when I was growing up, but we had Sears and my parents loved it. I think I’ve only been in a K-Mart store twice in my life. I rarely went shopping in Sears after about 1980.
After going back and forth for a while, I moved to Asia for good in 1990.
I have a lot of happy memories of Sears from going there with my parents. We loved playing on the escalators.
One summer in college I worked at KMart. Someone mentioned upthread that some of the departments were leased out, and technically I worked for Meldisco, who owned the shoe concession. Easiest job I ever had. I worked every weekday from open to noon. It was always dead and I was the only one there, so my main job was just to neaten up the shoes. Also, perfect hours for a kid who really just wanted to hang out with his buddies.
I don’t have ready cites, sorry, but regarding Sears’ demise, I’ve read the following:
- They closed their catalog down in 1993. Just 3-4 years later and from what I’ve read it easily could have been Amazon, if they’d just moved the user experience online. You can’t really fault them, since in 1993 the internet wasn’t mainstream, but talk about a missed chance.
- Their inventory system was notoriously out of date, and supposedly stuck in the 60s. They were not taking advantage of modern computing in a way that would have allowed them to manage better, and so knowing what was needed where was still largely the purview of store managers.
As an anecdote, well into adulthood Sears was my go-to for khakis, as an office drone. The last time I was there, maybe 2012-ish, they basically had one or two of each color Dockers, always in a weird size (48 inch waist, 24 inch inseam). I didn’t get a single pair. That was the last time I bothered.