I remember when department stores had everything. We went to one in Berlin about 10 years ago which was still like the old big city stores, with books, food, everything, not just clothes, jewelry and kitchenware. Took me back.
Einstein spent time with Walter Matthau? Interesting…
Oh man, I hear that! In fact your whole post reflects my experience. Until Waldenbooks (and a nearby B Dalton store) came along, my source of books was the “book nook” section of a Sears store in Livonia, MI in the late 1960’s. I thought THAT was heaven!
Remember the rolling ladders to reach the top shelves at B Dalton? I have that exact same type of ladder installed in my library at home. It’s in the part of my house with a cathedral ceiling, and we put the bookshelves up high there! Broomstick has seen the famous library ladder.
At least there’s a Barnes and Noble store between me and my daughter’s place. And a classic old style used book store still exists at the Milwaukee Airport, Renaissance Books. It’s not as cool as its progenitor, a 5 story building which began to collapse under the weight of ancient dusty tomes, but it’s a sliver of the good old days. If you ever fly through MKE, check it out.
The Boston area used to be the galactic center of used book stores. Charles Street at the base of Beacon Hill, Harvard Square in Cambridge, the pedestrian Mall in Salem, MA, and the streets around Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, NH all seemed to overflow with used book stores. Then, one day around 2000, it’s as if they were neutron-bombed out of existence by book-seeking missiles.
There’s still Brattle Books in Boston and a handful of others. The Avenue Victor Hugo bookstore that used to be on Newbury Street in Boston has almost miraculously re-appeared, run by the same guy, but now it’s moved a helluva long way to Lee, New Hampshire. There are a few others, and a lot of indy bookstores (like Wicked Good Books in Salem and Jabberwocky in Newburyport) seem to be selling used books on the side to help bolster their sales. but it ain’t the same.
Dammit, I miss the three and a half story Waterstones books that used to be in the Essex Street Theater!
Nah, Long John Silvers are everywhere, usually in one of the Yum brand combination places like combination KFC/LJS. I just searched and I guess LJS was sold by YUM in 2011 but they are still in those YUM (formerly Tricon) configurations.
I didn’t have Arthur Treacher’s as a kid. I personally never went to one, but in my mid-late 20s (late 2000s) my wife picked up food from there a few times. This was in Ohio. I grew up on the east coast. I liked it so I was sad to see them go.
It turns out the youth fish n chips place I mentioned was none of the ones mentioned and now I think that it was NOT a chain. I remembered that the name was Gullivers. I tried googling and couldnt find much other than lapsed trademark applications from the late 80s that may have been related.
You didn’t know about that?
My girlfriend introduced me to Brattle in 1973. I got some 19th century editions of Jules Verne there - ripoff editions thanks to no copyright, of course. I used to go to a conference in the hotel across from the famous church and visited Victor Hugo then. They published Galileo magazine.
Before I left Cambridge in 1973 a friend from MITSFS introduced me to a guy whose house was full of old sf books and magazines. He lived somewhere in the suburbs.
Yeah. I started going to AVH as an undergrad and saw the guy at the desk reading submissions to Galileo. Unfortunately, the magazine folded shortly after that.
In those days the store was a spacious, wide-open store. When I returned to Boston a decade later, it had become a tightly-packed warren of shelves reaching to the ceiling separated by narrow corridors. the high Newbury Street rents will make you do that*. The newly reconstituted Avenue Victor Hugo bookshop in Lee, NH is more like that.
*The same fate overtook the flagship store of Newbury comics, not far from Mass Ave on Newbury Street. It used to be a huge rambling single-floor shop filled with comic books, music, and pop culture. Now it’s a three-story relatively narrow store located in the same place, but hemmed in on both sides by other stores occupying its original space.
I remember Goodspeed’s, I bought the 4 volume “Genealogy of New England” by Savage from George. What an experience THAT shop was!
I visited it once. It was at the top of Beacon Hill, far from the little used book shops along Charles Street that sold the paperbacks i bought. Up in the high rent district. I couldn’t begin to think about purchasing anything sold there.
I splurged on that book set, may have been my most expensive single book purchase ever. The books still get used, residing in my genealogical library. I should see how much they’re worth these days.
ETA: I see they reprinted it in 2016, not sure when my edition is dated, but it’s OLD. I purchased it in 1983.
This topic brings out a rather crotchety brand of sentimentality in me. I really miss the shops of my childhood and adolescence. In particular the malls - while most malls that were in existence in Toronto when I was growing up are still in existence, the concept of shopping and the look of the malls has in many cases changed a lot. One of my main gripes would be that certain chains seem to have a near-monopoly, whereas back in the day, there was more variety.
In particular, I miss the variety of department stores, each with its own branding and product lines. Back in the 1980s and the very start of the 90s, in my neck of the woods, we had eight - yes, eight department store chains that were anchored to the various shopping malls: four more upscale ones (Simpson’s, The Bay, Eaton’s and the American Sears), and four more bargain-priced ones (Towers - a personal favorite of mine at Jane-Finch Mall -, Zellers, and the American Woolco and K-Mart). And then there was a variety of discount store chains such as Bargain Harold’s, Family Fair/Bi-Way, Woolworth’s (I remember at least one in Toronto in existence within my lifetime). And NO Walmart (woohoo!!!) At Yorkdale Shopping Centre, one of the biggest in Canada, there were at one time an Eaton’s a Simpson’s (later The Bay) and a Bay (later a Sears) - yes, THREE anchored department stores, PLUS a Kresge (what K-Mart used to be branded) in one of the main hallways. Then Towers got closed down by Zellers; Simpson’s was subsumed in The Bay. By the end of the 90s, Eaton’s, an iconic Canadian department store, was kaput. About a decade ago, Zellers was bought up by Target, which after a short period of shockingly poor operations left Canada. Then a few years ago, Sears went bankrupt in Canada. Now in the Toronto area there are exactly TWO chains of well-known anchored department stores: the Hudson’s Bay (upscale) and Walmart (discount). There are also a lot of “Dollaramas”, shops which sell a variety of goods at fairly low prices but have no real fun element to the shopping. And a few other chains that are quite unimpressive. (At least the BiWay has been re-launched, I hope successfully: https://biwaystore.com/)
I miss the ambience that the malls had in the 80s and 90s. In most cases, original artwork has been removed and the architecture renovated. For example Yorkdale had elegant mid-20th century courts outside the Simpson’s/Hudson’s Bay and (now non-existent) Eaton’s department stores. The latter had an oval fountain/reflecting pool with a statue of three dancer-like figures, named “Tritons” and giant flower-shaped support columns holding up a gallery in which was a restaurant. The former had a gallery restaurant as well, accessible by means of a curving stairway; below was a large atrium with a rectangular fountain. This atrium still exists, complete with the stalactite-like ceiling vault above it, but is much reduced in size owing to pillars that have been built to expand the Hudson’s Bay.
And don’t get me started on Jane-Finch Mall, which in my childhood had a lovely Towers department store, a Black’s camera store, TWO supermarkets (Food City and Dominion), and everything else that a person would need on an average day. Even an ice cream parlor…wait that still exists there of last report…only in my day, there was homemade, Italian-style ice cream there! Now the mall has a lot of discount-type outlets and is irrecognizable compared to the way it was in the 80s and much of the 90s.
In Canada, there is now literally only ONE major bookstore chain, Indigo. Nothing against it per se, but in my childhood there was the rather staple Coles, the seemingly slightly classier W. H. Smith and Lichtmans, and then on Yonge St. near Bloor (major Toronto intersection for those that don’t know), there was the Albert Britnell bookshop which sold choice books…now it’s a Starbucks. 
Turning to restaurants, my biggest gripe is that there seem to be fewer European (e.g. Italian and Greek) places, or classic North American greasy spoons, and WAY more Asian and Persian ones, or else restaurants offering an expensive, gourmet version of what in my youth was fast food. Am not playing a blame game here - clearly restaurants have to evolve with changing demographics and it’s nobody’s “fault”. But I do miss some specific restaurants that were familiar to me. I grew up mainly in Willowdale in North York (Northern Toronto), not far from Yonge Street. I particularly regret the demise of the local John Anderson’s (a chain of greasy spoons started by an ex-Maple Leafs hockey player of that name and his Greek-Canadian friend and which is still in existence at perhaps two other locations), which had big burgers, souvlaki TO DIE FOR (the closest match I have been able to find is at Joes’ Hamburgers up in Richmond Hill), and great salads, the Greek salad always having a BIG piece of feta cheese on top. If I could select one favorite meal, their souvlaki dinner would be it…up the street between Finch and Steeles, there were two excellent Italian restaurants, Tony’s and Gepetto’s. These are LONG gone. Or Pickfair Family Restaurant, which had great fish and chips. That folded 20 or more years ago. Now there are a lot of Persian restaurants/supermarkets in that area. I grew up with other kinds of food, so it’s nothing for me.
Places to Eat: Buxton’s and Gino’s (the latter was sort of like McDonald’s.)
Places to Shop: Bradlees and Two Guys
Where did you live? we had those in central New Jersey.
Gino’s was a fast food place owned by Football player Gino Marcetti. The logo featured a cartoon football player carrying a giant hamburger. What set Gino’s aside from McDonald’s and Burger King (and Carroll’s, the other big burger fast-food joint in the area) was that they carried Kentucky Fried Chicken. In fact, it wasn’t until .years later than I learned that there were separate KFC restaurants. There were Gino’s as far away as Atlantic City, where an electrical short in one on the Boardwalk set fire to and destroyed Steeplechase Pier.
Buxton’s was much more local. I only knew of three Buxton’s. we only went there for the ice cream.
Two Guys was the department store that had everything, including a supermarket (ages before Wal-Mart or Target had them) and a liquor store. I used to get books there. They ranged as far north as Rochester, NY
Everybody goes to Gino’s, 'cause every other place is closed.
Gino’s took the place of Ameche’s (sp?), which was a slightly upper scale restaurant also owned by a football player.
We also had Bradlees and Two Guys, plus E.J. Korvette (bought my first stereo there).
Henry’s Hamburgers – they were the best.
Yes, Alan Ameche, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1954, and played for the Colts after. I once played chess with Alan’s brother Lynn. I lost, but I gave him a run for his money. I also ate at Gino’s more than once in the years that I lived in Bawlamer.
I lived in central New Jersey, too. I definitely remember Buxton’s. Occasionally my family went there for dinner–I remember thinking that it was a high class, fancy place since there was a toothpick with cellophane stuck in my hamburger. For a while, Dad would take us there on Saturday afternoons for ice cream. I still remember the metal dishes the ice cream was served in.
Ha! That is the intersection I always stay near when I attend a yearly conference in the area; I wish that Starbucks was a bookstore again. Yonge has changed dramatically even in the past decade since I’ve been going.
I also agree about the general lack of Greek restaurants. The town I grew up in had a sizeable Greek immigrant population, and we had some fantastic choices. But now there is barely anything besides gross chains, and the last time I tried to find one, I ended up at a Persian place that also had Greek items. 
I miss the weird huge salads with the “here, just have an entire block of feta, why not” mentality.
I should make mention of a restaurant I’ve been going to for over 63 years now, it’s the nearest one to my home. It opened in 1954 as a tiny drive-in outside a small village of then less than 1000 people, along what was the main highway between Milwaukee and Green Bay. It converted to a sit down restaurant in the mid 1960s, and made great charcoal broiled burgers served on Sheboygan hard (semmel) rolls with lots of butter, along with brats, chicken, fish, soups, fries, cones, floats, shakes and malts.
It changed hands from the original owner in 1979, but nothing about the interior ever really changed from its '60’s remodeling. It’s gone through a few owners since then but the interior is exactly as I remember from the mid 60’s, and the menu still features the above named items, along with a few expansions. The old carhop window is little changed either.
It’s now off the beaten trail, as the expressway went in long ago. But it still endures as all the locals go there. They’re surviving now by doing carryout, and the Mrs. and I have had more than a few meals made there since the pandemic started.
It began as Lloyd’s, became Jer & Edie’s, then when Jer ran off with a waitress (or so it was rumored, may be spurious) became Edie’s for decades until it became Country Grove, then later became Mary’s Country Grove. But to me it’s the same place it always was.