Spinoff: Defunct Stores

[flyingdumbo127]

How I miss Waldenbooks, Daisy Duck! We had B. Dalton, too, just nowhere near as many as Waldenbooks. We even had a local Alpha Beta. Wow that was eons ago!

I also miss Pic N Sav (Now Big Lots) and Swensen's Ice Cream, so tasty.

 

[OKW8297]

Zayre, Ames, Bradlees, Caldor, Service Merchandise, Woolworth, Ann&Hope, Mars, Newberry's... @1420Elexismc, I think we are from the same neck of the woods!

Same!

 

[DaisyDuck001]

How I miss Waldenbooks, Daisy Duck! We had B. Dalton, too, just nowhere near as many as Waldenbooks. We even had a local Alpha Beta. Wow that was eons ago!

I also miss Pic N Sav (Now Big Lots) and Swensen's Ice Cream, so tasty.

I hadn't exactly thought of Swensen's Ice Cream as being in the "store" category -- more of a restaurant, as they also had burgers, fries, etc. But I do miss them too! They would include a thin wafer in the sundae!

 

[LoveSpringsteen]

Gold Circle
Hills
Uncle Bills
Zayres
Best - which was like a catalog store with display items on the shelves. You filled out a card with the item number and it came out on s conveyor belt.

 

[mylilnikita]

Phar Mor
Drug Emporium



Zaire’s: it would be open 24 hours leading up to Christmas (which was a big deal back then) and my dad would get off work like 2 am and I’d meet him and we would go shopping for Christmas wonderful memories

 

[barkley]

Not really. I do remember Levitz. Once I needed a desk and they had a special in the newspaper for maybe $30. My dad took me there and we got it, but it was more or less unassembled in a box and similar to what one might get a Ikea today. But they had lots of assembled furniture that generally required professional delivery.

We also had a regional furniture chain called Breuners. That was back when lots of furniture stores also sold some electronics like home stereos and console TVs.

breuners was the higher end furniture chain back then. b/c of their buying power and reputation they could get manufacturers to give them exclusive rights to items so they couldn't be sold within a certain radius of one of their stores. i remember levitz (theme song was 'you'll love it, you'll love it, you'll love it at levitz').

 

[ronandannette]

Sears. I'll never get over it - never. And I also really miss Payless Shoes.

 

[BrianL]

Phar Mor
Drug Emporium



Zaire’s: it would be open 24 hours leading up to Christmas (which was a big deal back then) and my dad would get off work like 2 am and I’d meet him and we would go shopping for Christmas wonderful memories

Interestingly, when the Zayre near me closed, the first thing to move into the space was Phar Mor. My grandmother worked there for a short time. If I recall though the store didn't last long.

 

[kanne323]

I'm from the East Coast!
Also:
Weathervane
D&L
5/7/9
Merry-Go-Round

Northeast here, and so many of these! Weathervane was THE place to shop in middle school. I still remember my favorite outfit from there! I definitely shopped at 5/7/9 and Merry-Go-Round, as well. Other mall stores I loved were Sam Goody, Koenig (art supplies), and Waldenbooks.

The main department store in my home state was G. Fox. D&L, Filene's and Steiger's were the other department stores around.

Non-mall stores we frequented included Bradlees, Caldor, Ames, and Lechmere. And Child World was the big toy store when I was little (80s) and KB Toys was the mall toy store. I vaguely remember Zayre. And from my teen years in the 90s, I remember Media Play, Borders, Noodle Kidoodle, Linens & Things, Sharper Image, The Limited, Lerner NY (I think this became NY & Co.)

Every now and then, I catch myself saying Bread & Circus. I lived in Boston when they still existed but were starting to close or change to Whole Foods.

For almost 20 years, I lived out of the area where I was born and raised, and I recently returned to New England. I'm learning that some stores I thought didn't exist anymore still do, I just never knew they were so specific to New England!

 

[Threehearts]

I lived near the original Filene's basement. There was nothing like it. The high end clothing was priced incredibly low. The store would have these markdown sales and you could spend the day in there going through all the discounted items. Once a year they would have their bridal sale and my grandmother would take me in on the streetcar to watch the brides line up. It wasn't like the TV shows. No appointments. Everyone just rushed in and the photos would always make the front page of the Boston Globe the next day.

All the Filene's Basement stores that came after the original were a poor copy and not worth going to in my opinion.

 

[AppleDumpling]

I am sure I am forgetting many but here goes:

Woolworth’s
Bambergers (but name only, rebranded as Macy’s)
Alexanders
Two Guys
Channel
Rickels
Grand way
E.J. Korvette
Gimbels
Kmart
Caldor
Crazy eddie
Sam Goody
Circuit city
Franks nursery and crafts
Pier 1
Linens and things
Sports authority
Payless
Modell’s

Most of these. Also Mays and Times Square Stores (TSS). I worked at Alexander’s.

 

[nycdisneygal]

Caldor
Gimbels
Alexanders
Woolworth

 

[Oldie13]

We had several stores here in South Texas called Weiners. They were typical clothing type stores like JC Penney but cheaper and not brand names. Many dresses for my junior high dances and awards ceremonies came from there. I remember mom saying I was going to wear a dress from the year before and me saying it was too small. Mom refused to listen. Dad got home from work and saw me in the dress—I looked like stuffed sausage in that dress—and took me straight to Weiners to find something to change into right then and wear to the awards ceremony. Mom was miffed and stayed home from the shopping and the ceremony. Said I was spoiled and Dad just always gave me whatever I wanted. My parents weren’t divorced or separated or anything like that either.

 

[willowsnn3]

Another vote for Zayre's and if you are from the south, Rose's.

Still several Rose's around here.

Arlans
Grant City (WT Grant)
Kesslers
McCrorys
Richway
Treasure Island
Uptons
Zayres

 

[tallygirl]

Not a discount store, but mcalpins was the best department store ever. Nothing has come close.

I loved McAlpins when I was a teenager! As an adult in Florida we had a store named Gayfers, same parent company. To this day, I still miss that store.

 

[bcla]

How I miss Waldenbooks, Daisy Duck! We had B. Dalton, too, just nowhere near as many as Waldenbooks. We even had a local Alpha Beta. Wow that was eons ago!

I also miss Pic N Sav (Now Big Lots) and Swensen's Ice Cream, so tasty.

I remember all those. I never quite understood Alpha Beta. There were some stores that carried the "Skaggs Alpha Beta" name. They seemed to be large locations. Some research indicates they were combined drug stores with supermarkets.

I worked at a company where Pic N Save was a client. I didn't quite get it because I didn't see any more stores with that name. I think that's when the MacFrugal's name was phased in, but the corporate name didn't change. Apparently they sold out to Big Lots.

Another one that I miss was Longs Drugs. That started out with a small pharmacy in Oakland that just closed recently. They ended up with dozens of locations of the Thrifty-Payless chain before Longs was acquired by CVS. And the Payless chain had a history with its founder (named Skaggs, so there's a lot of ties). But they maintained the Longs Drugs brand in Hawaii because it had a lot of brand equity, although I heard they carry CVS house branded merch.

 

[sasywtch]

White Front.
CBSS
Best Products
Gemco

White Front brings back good memories of my dad taking us kids to get my mom a Christmas present. (ususally a sweater). Gemco was my favorite at the time. Who would know that you could get clothes, dishes and groceries in the same place LOL (Walmart figured that one out when Gemco closed). As someone else said earlier, Consumers Distributing with all their cheap crap. (I was a vault manager there for 3 years). 90% of their stuff came in crushed boxes from China.

 

[barkley]

i remember when target took over the old gemco stores-there were ALLOT of VERY ticked off employees b/c the transition happened between september and november ('86) and to keep from losing all their staff during/right before the high demand holiday season the gemco staff were led to believe that target was going to absorb them. thing was-gemco absorbed them as 'temporary holiday staff' and as such they learned they had to apply for permanent jobs just like all the other temps come the beginning of january

 

[rangerxenos]

Zayre, Ames, Bradlees, Caldor, Service Merchandise, Woolworth, Ann&Hope, Mars, Newberry's... @1420Elexismc, I think we are from the same neck of the woods!

Service Merchandise, I had forgotten about that one! I'm in CT, I assume you're also in the Northeast?

 

[DodgerGirl]

When I was a kid my town would always lose stores and gain new ones when old ones would close. Take for instance my mom and I were fans of Woolworth and we had two near us and my mom would buy some of my toys from there and it was great fun. My other favorite store was Payless Drugs and my mom and I would adore shopping there and Payless Drugs was very cool because it had nearly everything from toys to food and even a little music and movies section and my mom and I would always go there to buy snacks and stuff like makeup and lipsticks and it became our favorite hangout. Payless Drugs also owned Thrifty Drugs in the 90's which was virtually the same thing as Payless Drugs but I always perferred Payless better. This was before becoming Rite Aid and it's hard to believe that Rite Aid was Payless Drugs in the 90's
Do you remember Payless Drug Stores?
Dodger