I’d treat myself to lunch there sometimes. There was another one downtown where my Dad often had lunch. One day my grandparents took me there and the waitress wanted to know what they were doing with Mr Charlie’s daughter. I looked like he had cloned me so there was no mistaking who I belonged too. Still cracks me up.

From catalogs to stand alones to Mall stores.

One of my first sources for collage images. Wish I had one of those old catalogs today. 😆

My sibs and I would get so excited when that behemoth showed up in the mail.

Montgomery Wards, May D&F, Miller & Rhoades, Mervyn's, Woolworth's (I moved around a lot growing up--experiencing a lot of now defunct stores)... But those off the top of my head.

Sadly, more recently, Tuesday Morning (I loved browsing in there every once in awhile). Oh, and I SOOOO miss Bed, Bath & Beyond. Its online presence (bought out by Overstock.com) is just not the same.

It was oh so modern..for about a month.

was a hot water heater. We called it the 399 coffee maker.

Id heard of the "world wide web" and bought a pc to go on it..used it for little else other than writing letters and playing solataire

The moment i logged into BB, got swamped by chat requests. Chats that went sideways.

it was in the regular store with clothing and stuff but the nearest entryway to appliances would have "electric avenue" over the entrance

when its only open on Tuesday morning?

At least since they went nationwide in the late 70s-80s. I think WIKIPEDIA mentions its origins as a "pop-up" for warehouse sales, but that was long ago.

It seems to me that like Bed, Bath & Beyond (which closed permanently just before Tuesday Morning) both were victims of COVID closures and business collapse.

Just gone

They emptied it completely & sold to another company. The great majority of the employees, thankfully, retained their jobs with the new company.
I'm not sure what took over the store that was a few blocks away.

Actually, two.
On the way from where we live to where that "Toys" warehouse was, we pass a HUGE Amazon warehouse. Amazon as a second one farther east, too!
A few major interstates here so this area is warehouse central for the Midwest. It seems like everyone has a distribution center around here, plus every big 3rd party logistics company I've ever heard of.
The old toys r us joint could be anybody. Avoiding greenfield projects is what those big logistics outfits are known to do. Might be one of them buying space at nickels on the dollar.

After Thanksgiving and pay off people's lay away accounts. Most fun at Christmas. Wish we could find another place to do that.

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Used to be a W.T. Grants and an A&P in my little home town of Hudson Falls, NY.

Woolworth’s and Ben Franklin were across the street from each other. Apparently, a few Ben Franklin stores survived the bankruptcy, but I haven’t seen one in decades.

in the Thumb of Michigan. Usually hanging out in the back of other stores.

Caldor, Casual Corner, Filene's Basement, Ames, Linens and Things, Kings, Bombay, Pier 1

I only ever heard of it on a trip to NYC about 15 years ago, from a local's recommendation. Had to shop there after flying in, since the airline lost our luggage and we needed something to wear for a dinner reservation that night. OMG, the place was huge! Multiple floors of everything.

==================

It was near my work at the time. I would stop in a lot when I found something I liked. If they had plenty of them, I'd wait until they hit the "bottom" price or they only had a few left. Got some awesome deals.

clothing for the future. He was a infant then and grew so quickly. My inlaws that lived in Boston sent us clothing too. I had boxes marked with 2T, 3T, etc.

They deserve to be dead.

I started on the day they first went into chapter 11. They committed corporate suicide by buying Zayres and killed both companies with reckless abandon. I’ve looked at the wiki entries for both and… Fantasyland… The stories I could tell… Sheesh.

We had a massive bash… Because we had only lost 600 million dollars, less than expected… Over 5 million was spent on it.

I worked in IT, fixed assets and general ledger… We had this guy John, I’ll omit his last name… And he would come down at the end of each month and have us run the numbers… Making us change the calculations till they came out ok… Then we would run production… Every month I’d be like “uhhh, is this legal?” I was always told “You want your job?”

Every month, on the first business day, was layoff day. We would come in and have no access to the mainframe. They laid people off based on salary. It was not long before we were operating with a crew where nobody had more than two years experience… It was a total shit show.

That not even scratches the surface.

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Caldor's, Waldbaum's, Genovese, McCroy/HL Greens, Gimbels, Software ETC.

A five and dime (Also gone!) store in the midwest.

that we loved, in downtown STLMO. A classic, which since I worked downtown, it was a joy to go explore the nine floors of the dept. store.

Got my first brand new, not from the police department recovered-but-unclaimed, bicycle there. PeeWee Herman would have been jealous!

It was a huge store on the main wide street of the city and had great lunch and snack menu. Prices were amazing for quality products. I miss it.

Yep K-mart is also another store that was wonderful. Not sure if all their stores closed but the one near me in NY did. I miss it.

Alphabeta

I used to go there all the time to buy my CDs.

Last edited Tue Apr 2, 2024, 05:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Christmas, some of the most fascinating diverse people would be in there listening to music on headphones in armchairs in the various genre sections of the store. Cool people worked there too. I definitely do miss it.

I grew up in a small town and we had a little record store but they wouldn’t sell the type of heavy metal I liked at the time (it was too “satanic”) so my mom would take me two hours to the nearest Sam Goody. She didn’t like the music I was listening to but I was 15 and she was pretty libertine so she let me listen to it.

Was bummed out when it closed.

I miss the 5 cent ice cream cones. My faves were pistachio or rainbow sherbet.

Ed Lampert. He's an Ayn Rand nutjob who thought the best way to run the store was for different departments to compete against each other for funding instead of... oh, I don't know - looking at the financials to see what people are buying and what they're not and making decisions based on that.

Can't think of Ollie Fretter without also thinking of Detroit TV commercial icon Belvedere Construction.

Owner Bud Lezell (aka Mr. Belvedere) with his deadpan catchphrase "We Do Good Work!"

I remember many times as a teen driving into Wichita from my small farming community to go to TG&Y because it was the closest store that had 5 1/4 inch floppies.

And I know that dates me, but that's okay. Nobody else will.

My friends and I would spend many Saturdays there, mostly browsing... then on to Schrafft's ice cream parlor for our favorite -- Coke floats.
Ahh. the early 1960's!

We shopped there when I was kid bc we were in Washington Hghts and sometimes easier to go drive there, than down to the one on ?59th & Lex or so

this was back when folks could make a living as a salesperson there. It was in our shopping center, and I would always cut through when it was too cold. And never got hassled....imagine that!