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Defunct Restaurants/Stores


Jedigoat
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Ah man, independent music stores are amazing. I also miss the baseball card and comic book shops. They were at least three baseball card stores and two comic shops. They're long gone except one comic shop still surviving somehow.

There's still some comic shops around, though they are dying, unfortunately. Card shops, though, man. Those were some fun ****. Sports cards, comic cards, all kinds of things. It's kinda weird to think how popular and ubiquitous cards were back in the day and how they just kinda... stopped.

In Maryland, we had Lionels Kiddy City. Is that the same thing?

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I think I have been to those places less than 5 times in my life. FSU had a Hardees in its union and I got so sick after eating there. I think I went one other time afterwards and did alright. It was just such a crappy choice of fast food burger place to have on campus.

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I'm not sure if it's the stores themselves or the fact that I actually fit into the clothes n things but dudes...GadZooks, 5*7*9, dElia*s, County Seat (OMG THOSE JEANS FIT SO PERFECTLY!!)...ugh.

Plus, Wicks-n-Sticks and The Discovery Channel Store!

Fun fact, my grandmother used to live less than a mile from the Wicks-n-Sticks factory and it was heavenly being outside.

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There was a great store in my hometown that theoretically was an electronics store that specialized in sound systems, but was primarily a used record store. It was run by these old guys who would just sit and listen to music all day, and they knew everything. And the stuff was cheap. I would go in there with 20 bucks and come out with 20+ CDs, and several were just free because if you want Miles Davis you have to have John Coltrane, so take this one with you.

 

At one point I know I left with Green Day, the Misfits, Tim McGraw, Thelonious Monk, a couple CDs of African music, and stuff that got even weirder than that. It was a great time to be young and into music.

 

Unfortunately, Best Buy moved in down the road and put them out of music.

 

Threshold - I still miss you, 20+ years later.

Ours is called Corner Record Shop, and its still thriving.

 

We have two other independent record stores that specialize in vinyl, too - one focuses on new, one on used.

 

We also have five? indie comic book stores.

 

Which reminds me - the big loss from the 90s and early 2000s for me other than Media Play was an anime and manga shop called Magnum Opus that would rent anime dvds back when no one else would carry them. The rental business was what kept them afloat, and when CrunchyRoll came along they tanked.

 

Funny thing is, nothings been touched in the store, the building still has the same faded Ghost in the Shell wall hanging in the front window. Apparently the space is rented as an apartment as-is, with all the old anime posters and bookshelves and display cases. And someone was murdered in there by a tenant sometime around 2010.

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Restaurants

Pancho's...raise the flag for seconds!

Bonanza

Pistol Pete's Pizza

The Sizzler

Swenson's

Farrell's

 

Stores

Gemco

Kmart

Sears

Kay Bee Toys

Yellow Front

Alpha-Beta grocery (later ABCO)

 

 

Malls

Metrocenter Mall

Valley West Mall

Fiesta Mall

Sizzler! Steak and all you can eat shrimp. That was fine dining back as a kid.
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Metro center mall isnt a thing anymore?

Officially closed June 30th this year, but it had been a ghost town for at least a couple years. Once the anchor stores like Dillards and Sears left, the smaller stores went out of business one by one.

 

 

Fun fact: Metro Center was the mall used in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

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Ah man, independent music stores are amazing. I also miss the baseball card and comic book shops. They were at least three baseball card stores and two comic shops. They're long gone except one comic shop still surviving somehow.

There's still some comic shops around, though they are dying, unfortunately. Card shops, though, man. Those were some fun ****. Sports cards, comic cards, all kinds of things. It's kinda weird to think how popular and ubiquitous cards were back in the day and how they just kinda... stopped.

 

My old shop is still going and it's a Pokemon Go Stop too! But I stopped reading comics about 15 years ago. Sadly.

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Metro center mall isnt a thing anymore?

Officially closed June 30th this year, but it had been a ghost town for at least a couple years. Once the anchor stores like Dillards and Sears left, the smaller stores went out of business one by one.

 

 

Fun fact: Metro Center was the mall used in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

I guess Im not surprised, malls in general are dying. I just spent a ton of time at Metro growing up. That and Arrowhead were our usual malls

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I used to like going to Blockbuster to rent movies. There was also another video rental place where I lived at the time (late '80s, early 90s), but I forget the name of it. No point to video rentals now, of course, when you can buy or rent almost every kind of movie you want from Amazon.

 

When I was a kid in Cleveland, there was a place called Burger Chef. They were cheap, so my mom would take me and my best friend there for lunch sometimes.

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Arrowhead Mall is still doing alright. The area near Metrocenter has a crime problem, and the mall had a few shootings and sex assaults in recent years. They tried to revitalize the mall about 8 years ago, but was unsuccessful. Even adding a Walmart didn't help. Still up in the air what they will do with all that real estate. My guess is it will be torn down for apartments.

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Electronics Boutique - I bought my NES from the one in our mall. I also remember them having a huge clearance sale on Commodore-64 games and buying Ducktales, one of the only games we actually bought since most were pirated copies.

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Waldenbooks was great, at least the one in our mall. It was small and crammed with books in every possible space. Exactly what a book store should be.

 

Barnes and Noble is open and has a lot, but damn they should have like 10x the stock for the size of the place.

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When we went to London in high school, we were amazed that we could just buy porn. Everyone else was scared to do it, but they let us go off without chaperones one day, and I bought a magazine.

 

I then had to hide it, so I sat through the entire play of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" with lesbian porn magazine shoved in the back of my belt, and going up my back. And the funny part was, I didn't even want it. I gave it away to my roommate on the trip, I just wanted to show everyone else I wasn't scared.

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Oh man as a kid I always god excited when my mom wanted to go to Waldenbooks. Id go to the magazines. They didnt hide or cover up the Playboys. They were wrapped in plastic but it was still a marvel to see the cover for a pre-teen, early Internet me.

You open the plastic and start flipping through until an employee yells at you, ya pu$$y!

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