Still have bad memories of the a-holes at Radio Shack harassing my 10 year-old self when I clipped a “free flashlight” coupon, rode my bike there, only to have the store clerk go into “Klear-Kote” salesman mode lecturing me on how a flashlight is no good without batteries and he probably couldn’t honor the coupon unless I ponied up for the 5 D-cells it used.
Is it still too early to mourn Applebees? All of the ones around me have become mattress stores. Any time I crave “shit that comes out of a deep fryer”, wish we still had an Applebees.
Were Radio Shack clerks on commission. That wouldn’t surprise me.
I seem to have moved into Fry’s region late in their life. My recollection of Fry’s was just like Circuit City but dirtier. So zero electronic trivia gizmos, lots of generic TVs and car stereos. I don’t recall pushy salesgeeks. Rather the opposite; finding one was nigh impossible.
I guess I missed their heyday.
They’re still around. One just couple of blocks away. Never eaten there, though.
I liked them, though they were only in the Chicago area for a couple of years. Good prices on OTC drugs and personal care, plus a section of sports attire and memorabilia (apparently because the owner was a huge sports fan). Said owner, Mickey Monus, was apparently cooking the books, and embezzling from the stores, in part to help fund a minor-league professional basketball league he owned; that was their downfall.
For me it’s Bed, Bath & Beyond. It was my go-to place for things like small kitchenwares and towels. They carried OXO products, which I like. I bought things from them like bowls, measuring cups, and towel hampers. There was one in a mall near me that I used to go to every couple of months. That one closed because of a fire before the chain went under. I still miss it.
No one has mentioned Heathkit yet. They were like a high-end Radio Shack, with kits for things like audio amplifiers that you’d build yourself. A lot of their products were high quality. They had brick-and-mortar stores, but got out of that business in 1992. The Heath Company still exists, but all of their sales are on line.
Oh, fuck - forgot entirely about CompUSA. One of those was convenient to me and I was in it a fair bit once upon a time. But it sort of straddled the line between Best Buy and peak Fry’s. Need a video card? They had a modest selection of the more common models, usually sufficient. Need a particular cpu cooler fan? Nah, man - usually not happening.
It was an occasionally useful store, especially when I was young and still did stuff like browse shelves for the latest PC games (I agree Bed, Bath and Beyond was as well). But I’m not sure I can say I miss it, exactly.
I agree that Bed, Bath and Beyond was a useful store, as was Linens 'n Things, a similar retailer that went out of business in 2008. Bed Bath, & Beyond closed in 2023.
I nearly always got the fried clams at Howard Johnson’s and I don’t remember them being tasteless at all; they very definitely tasted like clams. I do miss them.
I don’t remember them being called clam strips, though. Maybe they started selling some other version before they died? I remember them from the 1950’s and '60s. (And I was, admittedly, a kid.)
Yeah, there was one less than a mile from my house here in Chicago. It morphed into a Coconuts, which sold music as well. Or were they just a rebranded Peaches? I don’t know. I thought my friends were pulling my leg when they told me the record store was changing from Peaches to Coconuts.
Me, too until @Jophiel mentioned it, then it popped up again in that wiki entry. Looking through my emails, I see I bought a netbook from them in 2009, remember those? Acer 11.6", Celeron, 2G ram, Win7, $399.
They had a considerable presence in Canada, too, and although I rarely went there, it’s still sad to see them go (I like OXO gadgets!).
There’s a kitchen supply place at the local mall that has (or maybe I should say “had”) similar stuff, but I haven’t been there in years and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they were no longer around, given the huge turmoil in the retail industry. In fact, considering my earlier post about the demise of the Eaton’s department store and then recently The Bay, I wonder if the mall itself will survive. The Bay was one of their major “anchor” stores. Sears (defunct in Canada for years now) was another.
People are still buying things, but apparently they’re now getting everything from Amazon or, inexplicably, subjecting themselves to the horrors of Walmart.
Anyone else recall Bill Knapp’s restaurants (also known as “God’s Waiting Room”)? Wiki tells me they were only in Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.
On your birthday you were given a percent of your meal discount based on your age (someone turning 52 would get 52% off their bill). There were stories of some >100 year olds having the restaurant pay them a percentage point or two for eating there.
I fondly recall the cheesy scalloped potatoes and the chocolate cake.
mmm
I’d also chime in with Woolworth’s. They’re the only chain, let alone national chain, that I experienced that had both edible food and stuff worth buying. Other national chains in that same market that had cafeterias generally had food that was significantly worse than fast food, whereas Woolworth’s was slightly better. And we ate quite a bit at the regional chain Maas Brothers, but we rarely bought other things there. I seem to recall that their department store offerings did not deliver enough value for their money for us, but since we rarely bought there I can’t say for certain.
OMG I loved their cakes and biscuits with honey, and their potatoes (as you noted). I was crushed to discover they’d gone out of business.
You can still get a few of their baked goods. The Mrs and I have enjoyed their cakes this way. Shop Online - Bill Knapp's
Both of those. Indispensable for what they specialized in.
Whats interesting to me is I can’t think of any other national retailer with that same general product niche. if you wanted to buy some of the stuff BBB or LnT used to sell, where to you go now? A dying department store? Target? Kohls? Hard to say.
FYI, some bottom-feeding business scavenger vulture bought the Overstocks.com website and the BBB name & logo rights. And have continued what’s in effect the traditional overstock website, just using the BBB name & logo. Whatever it is, it ain’t traditional BBB.
I must be younger than many of you. Or I lived in an area with very little legacy retail. I certainly recall Woolworth’s as a / the major “dime store” from my youth. I can easily picture walking their aisles as a ~6yo.
But … with the exception of an ice cream counter at our local outlet I have never seen one that had any sort of food service inside. I have read of Woolworth’s (in)famous lunch counters, but they are mythical beasts from decades before my time or another region of the country. FTR, I’m 66 from SoCal.
Our local K-Mart had a lunch counter up through the early 1970s if not later. I sorta remember it being removed about when I/we stopped shopping there.
I do not believe I ever ate anything from there, despite Mom being a perennial K-Mart shopper before “K-Mart” became a mark of penurious shame.
You saved me the trouble of checking if it was national. It was music heaven.
I’ll go with what’s been said: Sears , Radio Shack, Woolworths, and add Grants which rivaled Woolworths.
Businesses like Sears along with car companies Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Mercury were century old pillars of existence. It’s like waking up in an alternate reality without them.
Fuddruckers, the hamburger chain that would hang cows in the meat locker, which you could see when you walked in.
The best part were all the toppings that you could select from.