Community Chat

[drizzellla]

I miss Strawbridges and Clothier and John Wanamaker's. Spent many hours and lots of my parent's money in those stores. Also, bought all my furniture for my first apartment at Strawbridges. 

I also miss J.C. Penney. I used to get custom made drapes from them. Every large window in our house was an odd size. They were reasonable and classic. Used to go to the J.C. Penney outlet for a little bit of everything when we bought our house.



PS - At least for me those were the days when shopping was fun. You saw such nice quality items. And it was an event to shop.

Now not so much. It changed for me when I worked in retail and after awhile I saw what retail stores and the people who worked in retail stores had to deal with. After I quit, I only went back into a mall about 5 times in 10 years.

[PatsShoes]

TOYS R US

For the 'kid' in all of us....

[River Song]

Radio Shack...for watch batteries, miscellaneous obscure doodads that no other store carried.

Burdines Department Store, purchased by Macy's.

The old JoAnn Fabric store when they only sold fabric, notions and sewing machines, not all the craft junk they sell now.  Department stores also used to sell fabric and sewing machines.  Actual yarn stores that sold beautiful wool yarns.  And quilt stores.  Those were the days.

I'm one of the dinosaurs still getting dvd's from Netflix.  They are stopping the dvd subscription service at the end of September and will only offer streaming.  I have an old Samsung 'smart' tv but I'm not sure it will handle the new streaming technology.  It still works perfectly fine and I refuse to buy a new tv just to stream a movie.

[stevieb]

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@sugar plum wrote:
Caldor and Bradlees. I used to get clothes, home goods, electronics, and a slew of other things at these stores. Brings back good memories.

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Oh yes, forgot about these two. Also, remember Wacamaw? Loved all of these. 

Also miss all the old five and dimes: Kresge, GC Murphy, Greens, Ben Franklin, Woolco/Woolworths, Grant, (which was actually a pretty nice store for home goods), and on and on.

[Mombo1]

@CANDLEQUEEN    I loved Pier 1 too....I can't begin to tell you how many things I purchased there.  All quality merchandise.  

[Big Joanie]

Yes .. Burdine's and Stein Mart

[FatCatinCT]

Bradlees and more recent, AC Moore as I am a crafter.

[CatsyCline]

mostly i miss the old days and the Filene's in Boston (Downtown Crossing).  and the original Filene's Basement.  there were two levels of Basement. i could spend hours there - main store and basement.  i worked in Town - Wednesday was payday so at quitting time walked over from Summer St.    and it was right by the T so i could hop right on and head home with my goodies!  you could actually enter the Basement from the street level but a Security guard was posted there so the turnstyles only went one direction - IN .

i remember Ann & Hope too. besides RI there were stores in MA and CT. they had a great gold jewelry dept.

i read Sam Walton got the idea for his stores from his visit to Ann & Hope!

[Linda0215]

@River Song  Get yourself an Amazon Firestick and just plug it in. It will stream everything on your TV. I have an old Samsung "Smart" TV that's still going strong but was never very smart. The Firestick fixed all that.

[KBEANS]

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@scatcat wrote:

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@bmorechick wrote:

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@piperbay wrote:

This is going years back, but I really liked Casual Corner.

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Wow yeah I remember them!!  Every payday, I would head to the Casual Corner in downtown Baltimore.  They had some great stuff in the 70's especially.  I must say, I looked like a model strutting in my platform shoes (at 5'11" 125 pounds) back in the day. I wore a "Dorothy Hamil" haircut and dressed so well.  I had so many clothes.  Also, Baker's shoe stores...another icon.   I still love my high heels and do wear them to work with a pencil skirt on meeting days.  Other than that, jeans and workout clothes ha!  I should have saved some of those blazers...they really never went out of style. 

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@bmorechick 

I actually said "wow" out loud when I read Baker's. What a blast from the past. I bought my first pair of work pumps from there after I graduated college. Thus the start of my "pump toes" - toes jammed in heels 40 hours a week.

Were they the store that had dyables - they'd dye satin pumps to match bridesmaids dresses?

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@bmorechick I think it was Simco that dyed the shoes. They were similar to Bakers. I loved both...and Nationals.