I once went through an Edmund Scientific catalog adding up everything I’d like to buy. Not necessarily useful, mind you, just cool to have. (Oooh! A 24-inch range finder? Gotta have one!).
It came to a little over three-thousand 1975 dollars.
They actually still exist, though they’ve contracted considerably since their peak in the '80s and '90s; their website indicates that they still have around 50 locations.
Which were, overall, very ordinary. But golly, had they mastered presentation. They made a rather boring generic hamburger into an experience.
I too miss them just for that.
Go Fuddruckers!!
And towards the end, at least for the metro Atlanta one I frequented, the had specialty burgers like…bison, I think?
Here’s one I haven’t seen mentioned yet: Mervyns. I bought a lot of clothes there. Nothing fancy but good quality at reasonable prices.
The one near me outgrew its mall location so it built a beautiful big stand-alone store a few blocks away. It lasted only a couple months before going bankrupt. A few years later it was torn down and a housing development was built on the site. An incredible waste.
Probably the latter. I’m about a decade younger than you and I do remember eating hamburgers at the lunch counter a few times with my mother (and thinking they were delicious). But this was when I was quite young and as such almost certainly on the east coast. In fact I suspect NYC for those memories, so maybe 1974-1975ish.
I never ate at Woolworths. I just bought cheap stuff there. I think i still have some “lace” tablecloths i bought there.
I forgot about bed bath and beyond. I miss them, too. I looked being able to feel the sheets and pillows before i bought them.
I’ve eaten at Woolworth’s counters in several different places in western New York and Pennsylvania in the late 70s through the mid 80s. Of the other Woolworth’s I remember, there were 2 others in NYS and 1 in Florida that didn’t have a counter, and 1 in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico around 1990 that did have a counter but which we did not eat at.
They were mostly, but not entirely, not really “counters” per se because they also had booths. One of them in NYS was in a mall. It was sort of a completely separate restaurant because its main entrance was to the mall itself, although you could also go directly to the retail area of the Woolworths through a side entrance. We ate there a lot because this was the early 80s, before the rise of food courts, and it was one of the few food offerings in the mall.
Many of my choices have already been mentioned here: Woolworth’s, Sears, Radio Shack. But does anyone remember Service Merchandise? (Or the other similar “catalog showroom” stores?)
They published a catalog, like Sears did, but no clothes, focusing on electronics, gizmos, sporting goods, and especially jewelry. (I see they still run a jewelry-only website.) You could visit the store and touch the stuff. If you wanted to buy something, fill out a form with carbons, give one to a staff member, and someone in the back would go into the stockroom and bring out your items for you to take home. Looking through their catalog was like I graduated from the Christmas toy catalog into the adult world.
I had a job after school (high school) busing dishes at the one in the now gone Mayfield Mall in Mountain View, Ca. This was in 1977-78.
Good one. I also bought decent clothes there, and was surprised when they shut down.
I was going to mention Service Merchandise (also, E.L. Rice before them, which had the same buying format. I remember waiting in line, watching the conveyer belt, waiting for your cassette player or toaster oven to roll up.
Also worth mentioning: a few hardware/home goods type places the younger me frequented: HQ (Home Quarters), Builder’s Square, Forest City, and Handy Andy.
And, pre Toys R Us - Bargain Town.
mmm
Agree. We just bought a new house that we will move to this summer. I was thinking we should get some new pillows, nice king size down ones. Where am I gonna find them?
I’m sure we will need all kinds of little do-dads. We are going from a 2 bedroom, 2 bath house to a 4 bedroom 3.5 bath house.
We had a Service Merchandise store near where I lived ad a child and we shopped there often. I think I read somewhere that the catalog showroom business model was designed to sidestep laws about selling below the MSRP.
Sears here too (which tanked due to spectacularly poor management IIRC) as well as John Wanamaker. The Macy’s store that took over the JW flagship site in Philadelphia is now itself closing, alas.
Borders, yes, although I can’t remember any significant differences between them and Barnes & Noble.
Also for the New Englanders, Spaggs and Building 19. Huge warehouses full of stuff you probably didn’t need but were really fun to browse.
The hamburger chain I miss is Backyard Burger. We used to take the grandkids there all the time. Our local one closed shortly after Five Guys opened down the street, and I always suspected that BB closed because FG took away a lot of their business. But I did some research later and found out there were some financial shenanigans going on in the company and they wound up closing a bunch of stores because of it. Not sure if they’re even still around, too lazy to go look.
Oh yes, RS clerks were on commission. Former RS employee here, and the free flashlight coupon brings up hilarious memories. I mean, when you consider the absolute worst possible promotion, the free flashlight is a shining beacon of bad ideas.
#1 People who clip a coupon for a free flashlight are the cheapest SOBs in your neighborhood. They aren’t walking into your store to buy stuff, they’re walking in to be given stuff.
#2 Flashlights you can afford to give away are cheap crap.
#3 You now have the cheapest people in your community holding a crappy flashlight that doesn’t work, with your store’s name written on it.
#4 Profit!
Honestly, the clerk hassling Hampshire was probably just pissed off about the whole promotion to begin with. Bringing in a bunch of customers who have no interest in buying anything, to clerks who are paid on commission.
That said, I do like Radio Shack as a company to magically resurrect, before they started selling cell phones.
I’ll also put up Waldenbooks, as others have. In 1984 I obtained a lifetime membership to their Science Fiction and Fantasy club, 10% off! I kept that little card in my wallet for ages, until clerks said “What is this? I never heard of it before”.
My main Radio Shack memory, aside from the ‘ZIP code to buy batteries’ jokes, was when I was looking for a PC for college. Got a hard sell on a Tandy, bought it and a week later learned that it was now discontinued and they’d stop selling any of the peripherals and whatnot. It was sorta-PC compatible in that you had to make sure any PC software also listed Tandy on the box and was kind of a piece of junk. I’d bought it right before leaving for school so couldn’t easily return it and the experience made me feel just fine years later when Radio Shack folded. Nuts to them guys!
I was one of six construction managers for Mervyn’s during their rapid expansion in the late 70’s and early 80’s. They were a solid outfit but part of the Dayton Hudson empire so were eclipsed by another one of their holdings, Target, in the “value” space.
There were some great perks - like a 50% discount on everything they sold, which could be applied after any promotional sales discounts. When jewelry had 40% off clearance sales I made bank.
Tower Records has been mentioned above, and I second that. Similarly, Sam the Record Man up here in Canada. There’s only one left, in a mall in Quinte, Ontario, and I usually stop there on my way to or from Ottawa when I’m visiting the folks. It nearly closed last year but got a reprieve somehow. Still, I’m sure it won’t be long.