This seems tangentially relevant: 12 stores that were essential to your childhood that don’t exist anymore
Of the lot, the only ones I miss are Borders and Tower Records, mostly because for a time they were my circle of friends hangout of choice when we had to kill some time before going to a movie or grabbing dinner.
Borders, because books.
Chi-chi’s, which was a serious hangout for my friends in high school. I discovered how much I like pickled jalapenos there. The grocery store still carries Chi-Chi’s branded food.
I shopped at Circuit City, but don’t miss them. Blockbuster I felt deserved to die, no love lost there.
Some of the names on the list aren’t really remarkable - retail chains come and go, and I don’t recall anything special about Sam Goody, and I never stepped into an Ames.
My first ever real job in high school was at Chi-Chi’s. While I can’t say I miss the food all that much (except for the diablo ranchero salsa…), they were pretty much the grandfather of casual sit-down Mexican-American dining, and they should probably get at least a small share of the credit for the success years later of places like Don Pablos, Qdoba and Chipotle thanks to the imprint they made on the food psyche of just about everyone from my generation.
I miss Circuit City mainly because of all the big box electronics stores they always had the best sale promotions and prices. In the heyday of the rebates craze I could show up at CC on a Sunday morning and buy $200 worth of stuff, get $125 back in rebates, sell some of it for $75 on Ebay and end up with free electronics. For a couple of years there it got to be a pretty fun game, especially around big sales like Black Friday.
One store not on the list that I miss greatly is Eletronics Boutique. Yes, I realize that they still sort of exist in the sense that Gamestop bought up most of their locations, but I miss the old late 80’s and all through the 90’s version of EB. You could walk into an EB and there was a whole glorious wall filled with computer games. In the late 80’s it was Atari ST and Commodore Amiga stuff, and in the 90’s it was all PC games. They had a huge selection, and one hell of a bargain bin. Long before Steam I was picking up some classic games for $5 in the EB bargain bin. Best of all, the people that worked there knew games, especially computer games, and often had stellar recommendations. After EB went away, it became impossible to find stores that carried that wide of a selection of computer games. Gamestop never really bothered with computer games in any serious way, and Circuit City and Best Buy slowly shrank their PC gaming sections in the late 90’s down to a rack of shame in the corner of the store. Hell, I couldn’t even tell you where to go today if you wanted to find computer games at a brick and mortar store.
One store I don’t miss, Blockbuster. Oh I still rent physical DVDs on a whim, especially for my kids, but now instead of standing in line and paying $4 to some schlub that wants to tell me my account is on hold because the previous shift morons never checked in my returned movie properly and it shows as late or still out, I can spend $1 at a kiosk at the grocery store and get no hassle at all.
Tower Records had two stores within spitting distance of each other in Seattle (Queen Anne & Seattle Center). Spend many an hour haunting those stores and miss them greatly, or at least miss the memories.
The rest of the list though: meh, whatever. Although I miss the days where I could wander into a mall and hit up at least a couple of bookstores (Waldenbooks, et.al.) and music stores.
And, as above, Electronics Boutique, in the Amiga days, and a bit later on, PC games.
You know, I certainly don’t “miss” Blockbusters for the same reasons that people outlined above: the fees were ludicrous, the staff was generally pouty, etc… But at the same time, I really have fond memories of that era. In the late 80s and early 90s even kids in the lower-middle class like me had access to a Beta or VHS machine… and the idea that you could go out and pick up a goddamned Hollywood movie (maybe with actual, bare, R-rated boobies!) and then play it on your home TV whenever you wanted was novel and exciting.
Going to the local movie rental place (it wasn’t Blockbuster way back then) and browsing through the dozens - maybe HUNDREDS! - of movies was a rare treat for my family and just incredibly liberating. Prior to that you either saw a movie in the theater or waited for the edited version to appear two years later on one of the networks. We were living in the future!
Be kind. Rewind.
Some of the stores are franchised out so they’re not corporate and are given much more leeway with how they are run. This might be why some Radio Shacks are still nicely stocked and others are just glorified cell phone kiosks. It was the same thing with Blockbuster, all of those that still remain which in my town is still 5 or so is because these guys were able to make changes at the local and regional levels to adapt while corporate stores generally aren’t and are forced to do whatever HQ tells them.
Ah, Tower Records. When I was in high school there was one at the local mall a couple of miles away from the school. On short days we’d walk over there and smoke weed in a grassy area near the mall parking lot. Then we’d walk to Tower Records and go to their head shop, yes they had a head shop, and shop for pipes. Not bongs because you couldn’t walk home carrying a bong with any degree of stealth. Also they had awesome collections of posters to check out, which was the closest thing to internet porn we had back then.
Blockbuster was the only one that was really relevant in the UK, and it was shitty even when VHS was the dominant format. Your local independent or small chain store would most likely be cheaper with a better selection of anything that wasn’t brand new (I remember renting Megadrive games from an independent video place). Blockbuster’s business model seemed to be to have entire racks devoted to a handful of new releases. Which is fair enough, I suppose, but not very interesting to a film buff. Tower Records existed, but always played second fiddle to HMV and Our Price (and then Virgin, which took over its flagship stores).
Aw man, I don’t remember if it was an EB or not, but there was a store just like that I frequented back in the mid- to late `80s whenever I had money burning a hole in my pocket. :)
That was also true over here, or at least in my neighborhood. Our local rental place was also closer to home, so I was really peeved when BB drove them out of business; I had to walk a lot further to get my vids and pay more for the “privilege” of being a BB member. I suppose BB was a triumph of marketing muscle & brand recognition over customer service & pricing.
Can’t say I miss it, but sifting thru a Redbox or Netflix menu isn’t quite the same as browsing thru aisle after aisle of VHS (and later DVD) cases. OTOH, I can now stream entire TV series thru Amazon or Netflix without leaving my house or even putting my pants on, so fockit - vive l’avenir!
Dunno about writing, but cataloging, there does seem to be yes - http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
I feel sorry for whoever had such a crappy childhood that Sam Goody and Howard Johnsons were considered essential components.
Radio Shack has “hired” Nick Cannon to be their new CCO.
The hope is that Cannon will help with “innovating in the consumer electronics space and particularly the space that empowers young people,” RadioShack Chief Marketing Officer Michael Tatelman told USA TODAY. Tatelman declined to discuss Cannon’s compensation.
The role isn’t necessarily surprising for Cannon, who has carved out a niche for himself in the entertainment industry as not only a performer, but also as a businessman and entrepreneur, particularly in electronics.
Radio Shack is still around?
Nick Cannon is still around?
Abe Vigoda is still around.
I googled Nick Cannon and I still have no idea who he is.
Somebodies ex husband who is slightly entertaining in a very limited set of circumstances.
Is this some sort of shack with a radio in it?
I dispute the suggestion that Nick Cannon is at all entertaining in any circumstance.
And bankruptcy again…