Businesses that are defunct that you are pissed about closing

[1995hoo]

There was one Levitz I know of in our area. It was located at one end of a small strip mall that had a Best Products at the other end. Needless to say, that strip mall faded quite quickly in the 1990s. The Levitz is now a self-storage place and the Best is a Chinese supermarket. I think the Five Guys located between them may now be the busiest business there!

[djsinco]

I might be in a small minority, but I miss Woolworth's. Growing up in northern NJ, they had everything a youngster could ask for. Candy, cheap toys, and a soda fountain with real food that would put most, if not all, current comparable restaurants to shame.

My favorite was the cluster of balloons over the horseshoe shaped counter service area. If you ordered a banana split, they would bring it to you, and you would pick out a balloon. The waitress (no "servers" back in the day,) would pop the balloon. Inside was a small curled up scrap of paper with a number written on it. The number was between 1 and 50. This was the price you would pay for the banana split, 50¢ being the full price. Once in a while, you would pick the right balloon and get your treat for < 10¢!

[DandyDan]

I saw Blockbuster mentioned here, and while I liked that place, I much preferred the "mom and pop" type of video store.  There was one near me that used to host Nintendo tournaments, always had a few games popped into a console I could try out while my parents looked for movies, and even had an infamous "back room" my friends and I would attempt to peek in as kids.  Ha ha ha.

I am in agreement there.  There used to be one here called Couch Potato Video which had as good a selection as Blockbuster, but then Blockbuster and Hollywood Video killed them off.  Now that Blockbuster is gone, there's really no good place around here to rent old movies, because it seems like Redbox has only the most current movies.

Family Video?  They're very much still around, but I don't know how far outside of northern Illinois they exist.

They have one in Bellevue, NE,  but I'm not driving to the part of Bellevue it's in just to get a movie.

[roadman65]

I might be in a small minority, but I miss Woolworth's. Growing up in northern NJ, they had everything a youngster could ask for. Candy, cheap toys, and a soda fountain with real food that would put most, if not all, current comparable restaurants to shame.

My favorite was the cluster of balloons over the horseshoe shaped counter service area. If you ordered a banana split, they would bring it to you, and you would pick out a balloon. The waitress (no "servers" back in the day,) would pop the balloon. Inside was a small curled up scrap of paper with a number written on it. The number was between 1 and 50. This was the price you would pay for the banana split, 50¢ being the full price. Once in a while, you would pick the right balloon and get your treat for < 10¢!

Dollar Tree is the new Woolworth.

However, yes the new $ stores do not compare to the original five and ten stores, and Woolworth used to have a lunch counter and very good quality bargain stuff.

[Pete from Boston]

Anyone remember Farm Shop in Connecticut?  They were very like Friendly's (or rather, since this was the 1970s, Friendly).  I can't remember the timing of the demise of the Waterbury (Exit 25) location, but a Friendly showed up around that time. The building is still a reataurant, and the setup was about the same when I last went in there in 2006. 

The oddest thing about this story, to me, is how strange the idea of Friendly's expanding now seems.

[roadman65]

Chesapeake Bay Seafood House.  They were a chain that was in two completely different regional markets that all but one went under.

They had stores in the Philadelphia area as well as the VA suburbs of Washington.  Only the one at Potomac Mills still exist, or did back in 09.

Vallies Steakhouse, big in Connecticut and Massachusetts and also had a second market in Virginia, was great as they had steaks and seafood and was famous for two large dining rooms. 

I miss both of these bi regional chains.

[PHLBOS]

Thread Title: Businesses that are defunct that you are pissed about closing.

While not one company/business per say but rather a type of business/venue: gas stations in Marblehead (my hometown) & Nahant, MA.  If one runs out of gas inside either of those twos towns (especially Nahant); one's going to have a longer walk or wait to get gas from a neighboring town.

When my family first moved into Marblehead in 1963, there were about 14 gas stations located throughout the town (way too many IMHO even for then), including one Citgo situated at the mainland end of the Marblehead Neck Causeway.

The last one, a Citgo located along Pleasant St. (it was originally an Old Colony station), closed well over a decade ago.

[cpzilliacus]

Gifford's Ice Cream parlors in Maryland and Virginia, not a very large chain, but very, very good.  Mismanaged into the ground by an heir to the business.

Hot Shoppes cafeterias (the business that started the Marriott empire long before anyone heard of hotel chains like Courtyard).

Little Tavern hamburger joints in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.  Open 24/7, a great place to go for some late-night "deathburgers" (why they were called deathburgers is left for the reader to ponder).

Sinclair and Phillips 66 gas stations (in the East), mostly because I liked their trademarks.

Chevron (also in the East), having left the east coast market twice now.

Washington Star and Baltimore Evening Sun newspapers, which were independent of their morning competition (though the Evening Sun was under the same ownership as its namesake morning operation).

[Pete from Boston]

Spag's

[RG407]

Lechmere? 

I really liked the Lechmere in Duluth, GA near Gwinnett Place mall the few times I went there.  We moved to Florida not too long after it opened.  I still have the nifty horizontally-oriented Canon scientific calculator I bought there, but I'm not sure where it is. Now I just use my smart phone.

[RG407]

Like other posters, I still miss Borders.  It was a much better store than Barnes & Noble.  I find B&N to be cluttered and crowded.  Borders's layout was much more open.  And I think their selection of books was better.  Their CD prices always seemed kind of high, though.

Just after Christmas they would put calendars on sale at 50% off, so that's when I would by my calendars for the upcoming year.  And they would put DVD's on sale buy 3, get 1 free. 

[SD Mapman]

Like other posters, I still miss Borders.  It was a much better store than Barnes & Noble.  I find B&N to be cluttered and crowded.  Borders's layout was much more open.  And I think their selection of books was better.  Their CD prices always seemed kind of high, though.

Just after Christmas they would put calendars on sale at 50% off, so that's when I would by my calendars for the upcoming year.  And they would put DVD's on sale buy 3, get 1 free.

2nd!
BAM! isn't as good either.

[roadman]

When I moved to Wakefield (MA) in 1990, there was a local two way radio installation shop called Air-Vue that also had a small retail store that sold electronic parts, as well as some Ham and CB gear and antennas.  One of those fun places I could spend hours in going through the inventory.

In 1993, Air-Vue closed the retail shop, which was shortly replaced by a Chinese restaurant named Formosa.  Although I love good Chinese food, I was so PO'ed at losing the radio shop that I couldn't bring myself to go to the new restaurant for almost two years.  One Christmas, my oldest sister, who was even more of a Chinese food junkie than I am, convinced me to go there.  Once I tried the food, which my sister proclaimed to be some of the best she'd ever eaten, my grudge about losing the radio shop immediately went away.

Unfortunately, in about 2004, Formosa was sold and a different Chinese restaurant, called Bamboo House, replaced it.  Went there a couple of times and found the food, although passable if I needed a quick Chinese fix and other places were closed, to be far below the standard of Formosa.  So first I lost a fun radio shop, then I lost a really good Chinese restaurant.

[texaskdog]

In 1985 Super America bought all the 7-11s in Minnesota.  I couldn't get a slurpee after age 16.  Now in Austin they are on every corner.  I don't have them often but I sure enjoy the hell out of them.

[hm insulators]

How many of us who were boys in the 1960s and '70s remember hobby shops? Just about every community had at least one. Riding our bikes to the local hobby shop and spending hours looking at the plastic model kits and spending our allowances on them, as well as glue and paint for building them. Once we got our purchases home, we would try to piece together what was supposed to look like those nifty muscle cars or those cool new jet fighter planes pictured on the box. Of course our models rarely turned out the way they were supposed to, especially as beginners. Not a problem: we would take the glue-smeared model (with the big fingerprint in the paint job) outside and blow it up with a firecracker.

The vast majority of those hobby shops are gone now.   

[Brandon]

The vast majority of those hobby shops are gone now.   

They are?  We have two in town; the same two we had when I was a kid in the 1980s.

[Pete from Boston]

The two I went to are gone.

[GCrites]

It really depends on the town. Some towns are hobbies-and-interest towns, whereas now in others people only think about sports.

[DaBigE]

My home town still had one up thru the mid-late 1990s. It was the go-to place on Maxwell Street Day. There's still a few prominent HobbyTown USA stores around -- not quite the same thing as an independent hobby shop, but it's about as good as you'll find in most areas.

[hbelkins]

The Hobby Lobby stores I've been in lately have a fairly decent selection of model cars and accessories.

[Pete from Boston]

The Hobby Lobby stores I've been in lately have a fairly decent selection of model cars and accessories.

I've been to one.  I was disappointed that it was half stocked with very tacky home decorations.

[GCrites]

My home town still had one up thru the mid-late 1990s. It was the go-to place on Maxwell Street Day. There's still a few prominent HobbyTown USA stores around -- not quite the same thing as an independent hobby shop, but it's about as good as you'll find in most areas.

I worked at a HobbyTown for a year. It wasn't a bad job. I was an R/C Tech.

[RoadWarrior56]

Borders

[briantroutman]

The vast majority of those hobby shops are gone now.   

They are?  We have two in town; the same two we had when I was a kid in the 1980s.

In my home town, the couple hobby stores (places that sold model kits, model train sets, model airplane and rocket parts) that once existed were gone by the end of the '90s, I believe.

The Hobby Lobby stores...

Despite the name, I wouldn't consider Hobby Lobby to be a "hobby store" . It's more of an arts and crafts store–heavy on the tacky Middle American crafts–attracting a more housewife-y audience. Closer to Michaels or A.C. Moore...rather than a place where middle school-aged geeks and grrls would buy Estes rocket kits to blow up in the back yard.

[thenetwork]

Some of my favorites now in that retail shopping center/mall in the sky:

-  Zayre's  -- One of my favorite discount stores in Northern Ohio, along with Uncle Bill's and Gold Circle -- also long gone.  I loved their long glass enclosed storefronts with the giant individual neon letters spelling out their name on top. 

-  Circuit City -- Not as caffeinated and hyper as Best Buy.

-  Camelot Music -- For the most part, a very reasonably-priced record store back in the day.  Yes, I worked for them for two stints, but they were still much better than Musicland and National Record Mart.

-  Under the neighborhood pharmacy umbrella, any drugstore affiliated with Rexall -- I loved the old purple-on-orange signs!

-  Many of the mall-based Woolworth's (at least in NE OH) had not only a lunch counter, but a Harvest House Cafeteria connected to the store for more relaxed dining.

-  And finally, for you Canadian residents or visitors -- Mother's Pizza...Worth the trip over from Detroit.