No, no, this is about Main Street, not malls, and it’s also about types or categories of stores, not specific brands.
What, no love for the local down-home opium den?
Just a note – the New Shop in my hometown finally closed down at the end of last year.
I’m surprised it lasted that long. News stands even in indoor malls have pretty much evaporated. This one had been operating since, I think, the 1930s. It hardly had any magazines or newspapers left, and was surviving by mainly selling lottery tickets, candy, and cigarettes. But it was still there years after all the other newsstands in town had closed.
Now that it’s gone, I can’t think of another free-standing newsstand anywhere. The only things even close are the things calling themselves “news stands” in the malls and at airports and train terminals. Most of those only sell a couple of newspapers and a couple of magazines – they’re all candy/tobacco/lottery ticket shops, too. I know of one, and independent one, that has a sizeable stock of magazines. Otherwise, if you want to buy the kind of thing newsstands used to sell you have to go to a Barnes and Noble.
If B&N ever goes under, who the hell is going to sell all those specialty magazines that still exist, and the Time, the reconstituted Newsweek, the Rolling Stone, and the Economist. Airport? Airports can’t sustain them all.
Let’s see…
A bank with a large neon sign.
A doctor/dentist pair of offices.
A Western Auto.
A cafe that does very little business.
A dying movie theater. Open 3 nights a week.
A run down motel with 8 or so rooms.
An appliance shop.
An ice cream/burger place (not a franchise).
A Rexall.
A barber shop. Complete with old rotating pole.
Two churches. The “good” church for the “better” people. The other for regular folk.
A little park with a war memorial.
The bar. Not “a” bar. “The” bar.
The courthouse.
An small office building for the lawyers and such.
A former hotel. Once pretty nice in its day. Now empty. Not torn down since there’s nothing to replace it.
An ARCO gas station.
Some abandoned store fronts. Of the big block variety. Where there’s a front wall taller than the rest of the building.
A lodge for an organization far, far smaller obscurer than the Elks or anything.
Dry cleaners. There was one on our major street back in the 60s. Now there seems to be a dry cleaners on every corner.
Type A is missing a Bowling alley ! There are still a few around today, they have a bar and an arcade today .