54light15 I remember Monkey Ward. And how long ago did Gimbel's go out of business?
I remember Monkey Ward. And how long ago did Gimbel's go out of business?
Back in the late 80's, they were bought out by a conglomerate. It's a complicated story, easy to find if you Google it.
Convicted OneEnjoy this trip down memory lane: List of defunct retailers Note the section headed "Department and Discount Stores" is deeply nested, with store origins and eventual amalgamation with surviving entities pretty well documented. Well worth a look.
Note the section headed "Department and Discount Stores" is deeply nested, with store origins and eventual amalgamation with surviving entities pretty well documented. Well worth a look.
Amazing the number of the defunct entities I remember having dealt with over the years.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDAmazing the number of the defunct entities I remember having dealt with over the years.
I worked for a good long while for a mall developer. it's amazing ~who owns who~ in the retail sector. Of course when you are a landlord looking to fill vacant space in your mall, you are always looking for new players to add into the mix of tenants you have.
An ambition that often runs contrary to store chains consolidating with competitors to cut costs, or to manipulate their markets.
That list of defunct stores was fascinating but I didn't see Polk's Hobbies in NYC at Fifth avenue and 32nd street. I used to go there whenever I was in the city. In The Godfather the scene of Tom Hagen being nabbed by Virgil Sollozo was filmed in front of Polk's.
Other defunct hobby shops were Madison Hardware (on Madison avenue, naturally) that specialised in Lionel trains and America's Hobby Center on (as I recall West 22nd street at Seventh avenue) where there were no shelves full of stuff to look at but you had to look at catalogs on the counter and the guy would bring it out to you. They had everything there, trains, planes, you name it.
Also, here in Canada we still have Rexall Drugs and Esso (not Exxon) stations.
I didn't see Polk's on the list either, but I guess they slipped through the cracks, either that or the lister was more interested in chains than independents.
I only went to Polk's two, maybe three times. Wow! Those were special trips, Hiway Hobby in Ramsey NJ was closer and more convenient.
I didn't see Radio Shack either. Anyone know if they're still around? The've disappeared from this area and I thought they were defunct nationwide.
Yes, there were several companies that were familiar to me. Among them is Liggett's; when I would go up to Charlotte to see my orthodontist, I would eat lunch in the one at the corner of Trade and Tryon--and I jerked soda in the one in downtown Baton Rouge the summer before my last year in high school (yes, I was a jerk).
Johnny
Flintlock76I didn't see Polk's on the list either, but I guess they slipped through the cracks, either that or the lister was more interested in chains than independents. I only went to Polk's two, maybe three times. Wow! Those were special trips, Hiway Hobby in Ramsey NJ was closer and more convenient. I didn't see Radio Shack either. Anyone know if they're still around? The've disappeared from this area and I thought they were defunct nationwide.
Radio Shack was among those listed - also Layfayette and Allied.
While, to my knowledge, it was only a single location - All Nation Hobby Shop in Chicago was my favorite haunt - back in the day.
Another item of lost chains were the many cafeteria chains. S & W is one I remember. It may be that the many buffet chains will need to become in some way a cafeteria chain due to covid-19 restrictions on buffets ?
blue streak 1It may be that the many buffet chains will need to become in some way a cafeteria chain due to covid-19 restrictions on buffets ?
Buffets were pretty disgusting before COVID. People are nasty.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
zugmann blue streak 1 It may be that the many buffet chains will need to become in some way a cafeteria chain due to covid-19 restrictions on buffets ? Buffets were pretty disgusting before COVID. People are nasty.
blue streak 1 It may be that the many buffet chains will need to become in some way a cafeteria chain due to covid-19 restrictions on buffets ?
You're not kidding! There's a buffet restaurant in our area, the food was always very good, always freshly stocked and refilled, and very resonably priced, all you could eat in fact, and the buffet areas always spotless, but some of the clientele! Good Lord!
The wife and I don't consider ourselves snobs by any means, but it got to the point we started calling the place "The Freak Show" before we gave up going entirely.
No, I won't say who it is (they're still there), that doesn't matter. We still miss going though.
We have Chinese buffet restaurants called "Mandarin." I worked for a company that had its Christmas party at a Mandarin. My boss got a little ticked at me because I wasn't making a pig of myself. So, I got up and got a clean plate and put one stringbean on it and sat back down. No, he was not pleased with me. Glad I left that stupid job.
I didn't see Horn & Hardart on the list. We used to go to the automat when my parents took us kids to the city. They never had anything I wanted to eat. My father bought me a bowl of franks and beans. Nasty and no wonder they call it rat turds and dog turds.
Flintlock76Maybe in your part of the country Charlie, but not in mine.
I beg to differ -- it was sickly almost everywhere I went except, well, parts of Paramus and anchor stores in brand-new malls. The Lord & Taylor on 4 in River Edge, Best & Co., J.M.Field -- and then came the great Federated kerfuffle (perhaps the very fact that all these stores could be 'had' for the combining) and all the familiar big names in New York lost the distinctive 'something' they had when I was a boy in the '60s. Meanwhile J.C.Penney's got its 'second wind' going upscale, in the first wave of 'not bad' Asian trade at cheap prices; Walmart managed the trick (you wouldn't have caught me dead in any Walmart before the supercenters) but Caldor's and Woolworth's and Krolick's in Tenafly went ... replaced by mall culture, which was and is an alien thing in New Jersey. Even the Fashion Center had a few bad years there ... perhaps they still do.
Macy's here is like a kind of upscale H&M now. Sears limped and imploded and lost their core business (precisely as it was exploding in other hands) and isn't a shadow of how it used to be.
Overmod ~snip~ Sears limped and imploded and lost their core business (precisely as it was exploding in other hands) and isn't a shadow of how it used to be.
~snip~
Sears limped and imploded and lost their core business (precisely as it was exploding in other hands) and isn't a shadow of how it used to be.
Sears went bankrupt and disappeared from Canada several years ago. Upper management managed to wipe out the employee pension fund on the way out the door.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
GERALD L MCFARLANE JRSears is basically Kmart rebranded, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what it is(when the guy that controlled Kmart Corp. initially they were kept separate, eventually he rebranded Kmart Corp. to the Sears name).
We still have a Kmart. Last time I was there (~6 months ago?) they were doing the trick of putting cases of water and rubbermaid containers on the empty shelves so they didn't look so empty (and there were a LOT of empty shelves).
That store pretty much died 5-10 years ago - the carcass just somehow survives.
Of course the place looks exactly the same as it did the day it opened back in the early 90s. Probably something to that.
Well, we could go 'round and 'round on this Mod-man, and bore the hell out of everyone, but let's take your points seratim.
Lord and Taylor, and everyone else not in malls getting in trouble? Of course! "Location, location, location!" With the malls like the Garden State Plaza, The Bergen Mall, and Paramus Park drawing people like flies to honey of course those stores that weren't there had trouble attracting shoppers. Add to that the fact that malls became the new "center of town" it's no wonder shops in the old town centers started to hurt. Paramus didn't have that problem because it never had a "center of town."
The Fashion Center? That was kind of an "upscale" place before the term was invented, so it had its issues finding it's clientele. The other problem with The Fashion Center was they advertised themselves as being in "Ridgewood-Paramus", which was an insult to any potential Paramus shoppers. "What? Paramus isn't good enough for you?" But they're still there.
Mall culture not "A Jersey thing?" I hate to differ, but then it depends on personal experience I suppose. All the malls I mentioned above were always busy (At Christmastime a nightmare!) and they're still there. Farther out Route 80 and 46 Willowbrook Mall in Wayne is still healthy, although there was a lesser place out that way called "Wayne Hills" that's gone. Never went there myself, never needed to.
Some places like Service Merchandise (Originally Value House) with low-priced brand-name merchandise made inroads for a time, but S-M was a place where YOU had to know what it was you wanted and everything about it, the staff wasn't much help. A staffer might have been in housewares the week before, electronics the week before that, and furniture the week before THAT, so they weren't much help at all if you had any questions, they had no product knowledge at all.
I never saw a Wal-Mart until we moved to Virginia, and we got here before they did. I've never had a problem with Wal-Mart except for the traffic around them.
It's an odd thing, but there's a development in our area, a combination of apartments and retail outlets that's designed to look like an old-fashioned "center-of-town!" Ironic, huh? AND with those North Jersey malls getting more and more crowded the old "centers of town" you and I remember are having a bit of a resurgence. A lot of the locals don't want to go to the malls if they can avoid it, the places are usually swamped with out-of-towners.
The big names losing their distinctive "something" in the 60's and 70's? What was going on in New York City during those years, and into the 80's for that matter? No wonder they lost it.
Lady Firestorm used to work as a waitress in the restaurant in Bamberger's in the Garden State Plaza in the early to mid 70's and still has her Bam's credit card! Useless now, but a fun souvenir.
She also saw her first Holocaust survivors working as a waitress, but that's another story.
I guess I've bored everyone enough by now!
GERALD L MCFARLANE JR Overmod ~snip~ Sears limped and imploded and lost their core business (precisely as it was exploding in other hands) and isn't a shadow of how it used to be. Sears is basically Kmart rebranded, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what it is(when the guy that controlled Kmart Corp. initially they were kept separate, eventually he rebranded Kmart Corp. to the Sears name).
Sears and by extension K-Mart has become a victim of the Hedge Fund experience with CEO Eddie Lampert at the controls selling off the Sears brand names to other parties and leaving Sears as just a shell of a bankrupt company.
At one time Sears was my go to company for its range of products, no more. In my area all but one of the stores I would frequent have been closed and the one that remains open is only a shell of what it has been in the past - profitable years. Going to ACE Hardware to get Craftsman tools. , not that I have anything against ACE as is is the only Mom & Pop hardware store in my area that is still standing after Home Depot came to the area - previously there were 3 hardware stores.
Flintlock76 charlie hebdo Department stores were already starting to lose market shares in the 70s. Maybe in your part of the country Charlie, but not in mine. I remember the 70's, mall culture and department store culture was still going strong in Northern New Jersey and the Greater New York Area, and was still going strong when we moved to Virginia in 1987. It's still strong now, but I'll be the first to admit it's the exception that doesn't prove the rule.
charlie hebdo Department stores were already starting to lose market shares in the 70s.
Department stores were already starting to lose market shares in the 70s.
Maybe in your part of the country Charlie, but not in mine. I remember the 70's, mall culture and department store culture was still going strong in Northern New Jersey and the Greater New York Area, and was still going strong when we moved to Virginia in 1987. It's still strong now, but I'll be the first to admit it's the exception that doesn't prove the rule.
Malls, etc. we're still doing fine in booming economies but losing market share was the first insidious sign of what was coming. True nationally, not just Midwest. I saw the numbers in WWD back then, but many CEOs didn't care.
They don't even build indoor malls anymore. It's way cheaper to throw up "big box" stores that are like a mall, but you have to drive from one end to the other rather than walk because walking is unsafe when you're in basically what is a big parking lot. They are all over the place, all with the exact same stores making every place you go like every place you've been. The only way you can tell you are in a different municipality is when you see another Wal-Mart. So really, why go anywhere?
And why go to malls, anyway? They're dying. look at www.deadmalls.com They look like the Pittsburgh mall in George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead," don't they?
The husband of my mom's college roommate became a senior exec at Sears. He told us at the time that when the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg (Chicago) opened (early 70s), the Sears store there did so much business the first week it was open, it paid for the cost of building the store.
It was opened in 1971, named for Marshall Field and General Wood of Sears fame. When I was with Fields in the late 70s, it was our #3 suburban store.
DidI see some craftsman brand tools at a Lowes ?
Craftsman tools are sold in various places now, same as Die-Hard batteries. I used to work in a Sears garage in Poughkeepsie, New York. I'm installing a battery in a customer's Toyota. Guy says to me in an almost hostile manner, "Sears batteries are no better than anyone elses" I said, "Yes, you are correct. They are no better. But what you are paying for is the coast-to-coast warranty. If your battery dies in the middle of Indiana, and you bought the battery at Eddie's gas station down the street, what's Eddie going to do for you? Plus I noticed that when I started your car, the radio was on and the air conditoning was on. No battery in a 4 cylinder car is going to last five years when you treat it like that." The guy didn't have much to say after that.
54light15 Craftsman tools are sold in various places now, same as Die-Hard batteries. I used to work in a Sears garage in Poughkeepsie, New York. I'm installing a battery in a customer's Toyota. Guy says to me in an almost hostile manner, "Sears batteries are no better than anyone elses" I said, "Yes, you are correct. They are no better. But what you are paying for is the coast-to-coast warranty. If your battery dies in the middle of Indiana, and you bought the battery at Eddie's gas station down the street, what's Eddie going to do for you? Plus I noticed that when I started your car, the radio was on and the air conditoning was on. No battery in a 4 cylinder car is going to last five years when you treat it like that." The guy didn't have much to say after that.
Ah, yes, the warranty. I decided back around 1970 that those warranties were not worth the bother. Tires and batteries were always on sale. When you had a failure on a tire, you went back to the dealer and they pro-rated the adjustment based on the time elapsed and/or tread wear. This adjustment was applied to the "normal" list price, then you had to pay for balancing and mounting and taxes, so you wound up paying close to the full price. (Balancing and mounting were usually free originally.)
I went through two Diehard batteries which failed after after about 18 months into the five year(?) warranty. After waiting in a long line of battery claims for the mechanic to test the battery, then arguing with him about how many months it was, then paying the adjusted price on the "normal" list price plus installation and taxes, I decided it wasn't worth the bother. There was a local battery manufacturer in Baton Rouge (where I was living at the time) with an excellent reputation. Someone told me that I could buy a reconditioned battery from them for a flat $14.00 with no warranty. I bought all subsequent batteries for car and boat from them, and they all lasted over five years.
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
54light15They don't even build indoor malls anymore.
They don't need to.There is such a large inventory of distressed malls awaiting "white knight" redevelopers, it makes little sense to build new.
There are some success stories, but almost all of those have required an incredible infusion of cash. And now they sit idle? Did I mention that the real money for mall owners comes as as "percentage of gross sales" payable on top of the fixed monthly minimum rent(s)?
This shut down has gotta be killing the major players. There is alot to be said for patient capital, but the current situation is mind boggling.
Convicted OneThis shut down has gotta be killing the major players. There is alot to be said for patient capital, but the current situation is mind boggling.
But we live in a time of impatient capital - I want shareholder value and I want it increased NOW! No excuses are acceptable!
Everyone is impatient, whether it's business or politics. Regarding malls, in Poughkeepsie there was the South Hills Mall that was built in the 1970s and looked like a bunker from outside. Never mind that there was no place called South Hills in that part of New York. A consortium of developers and Boston-area retailers like Filenes and other stores that no one ever heard of spent a huge amount of money promoting the development of the Poughkeepsie Galleria just north of the South Hills Mall. They put money in the pockets of enough politicians to change the zoning to allow the mall to be built. The mall was built and all the politicians who voted for the change were thrown out at the next election. People at first resented there being a new mall next to the exisiting one, but people abandoned the the South Hills Mall anyway and everyone shopped at the new one. Once Sears moved out, the SHM went belly-up. Now the Galleria is failing too because of on-line shopping and now Covid 19.
LOL, when you are upside down and have hundreds of millions of dollars anchored in the dirt, patience can be the least unpleasant option you have to choose from.
Excert from Orlando Centinal:
he first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in people appears to be safe and able to stimulate an immune response against the virus, its manufacturer, Moderna, announced Monday.
The findings are based on results from the first eight people who each received two doses of the vaccine, starting in March.
Those people, healthy volunteers, made antibodies that were then tested in human cells in the lab and were able to stop the virus from replicating — the key requirement for an effective vaccine. The levels of those so-called neutralizing antibodies matched the levels found in patients who had recovered after contracting the virus in the community.
The company has said that it is proceeding on an accelerated timetable, with the second phase involving 600 people to begin soon, and a third phase to begin in July involving thousands of healthy people. The Food and Drug Administration gave Moderna the go-ahead for the second phase earlier this month.
Well, let's hope this really, really works, because up untill now the conventional wisdom was that an effective vaccine was at least a year away.
With towns, cities, counties, and states facing bankruptcy, to say nothing of businesses large and small, plus 36 million unemployed, the current state of affairs of lock-downs, closures, and social distancing is unsustainable. It has to stop, one way or another.
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