I’ve been feeling a wee bit nostalgic as of late. Despite my best efforts to mature as little as possible, I am definitely getting older, and missing a few things from the good old days. My social media accounts are often peppered with videos and posts about products, entertainment, places and people from days gone by (there are lots of Gen Xers on YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter producing these things), and I admittedly seek out You Tube compilations of old commercials sometimes as a relaxer before bed time.

All this combined with doing an amazing amount of running around store to store this weekend got me thinking about stores that have closed down which I miss. Sure, I do a lot of my shopping online but sometimes you need to go to a store physically to see what you are buying, and other times you just want to.

So here’s a list of some shut down stores that I miss and would love to see come back.

Payless ShoeSource

One odd thing about me is that I hate spending a ton of money on shoes. I’m not sure why footwear is where my line is drawn about spending money, but here we are. Just today I was in a store looking at the clearance section and everything was still about twenty dollars more than I wanted to pay for it. As a result I walked away with no new purchases.

This made me realize how much I miss Payless. Even without their BOGO offers (which probably helped lead to their decline now that I think of it) I was always sure to find a decent mix of styles for a price I could afford, and the shoes tended to be good quality for the price as well. The loss of Payless has been felt by pocketbooks around the country.

Good news though, they do still exist in an online form. This doesn’t really help me as much as I would like since one of my feet is slightly bigger than the other and I pretty much have to try on every pair of shoes I buy since I am a different size in different brands. Rumor has it that they may be bringing back their brick and mortar stores too, so there is a little bit of hope here.

Borders Books And Music

Wow do I miss Borders. Don’t get me wrong, Barnes & Noble is a decent replacement, but it can’t hold a candle to the old Borders stores. Borders always had a great selection for actual book, movie, and music enthusiasts. Each store had a slightly different inventory beyond the best sellers, but they always had really cool stuff. These stores were stocked by people who really cared about the product they were selling and the staff were always willing to go the extra mile to make sure you found something awesome. I can’t tell you how many oddball DVDs, small press books, and even indie CDs I bought at Borders. They were a store for collectors and geeks run by collectors and geeks, which made them superior to any other large chain or mall based stores out there. The combination of Amazon’s rise, and B&N’s Nook device (which I still despise-give me an old fashioned book with paper and a cover any day) led to their quick demise, and the loss of Borders is a sad one I still feel to this day.

K-B Toys (or Kay Bee Toy and Hobby if you’re old school enough)

Okay, yeah, the big stand alone stores like Toys R Us and Children’s Palace technically were bigger, had more toys and aisles to wander through, and were probably better both on paper and in person.

But.

Being a kid and being dragged to the shopping mall by your mother (years before you went there to hang out and be obnoxious with your friends) was only made bearable by a visit to K-B. You’d spend what felt like hours going store to store while Mom combed through every conceivable rack of clothes, often leaving you sitting outside the fitting room in that chair that was always inexplicably sticky, and then she’d make you try on all kinds of stuff too. Then there’d be the stores full of knick-knacks, accessories, home goods and whatever else was on the agenda that afternoon. If you were lucky, maybe you got a hot pretzel out of the deal. If you were really lucky however, you got to go to K-B.

What a thrill it was to roam the aisles of the only store in the mall that was all for you. You got to see all the latest and greatest stuff. Immediately upon entering you’d start making out your birthday/Christmas list in your head. There were toys you knew your parents could never afford (but you asked for anyway), and there were smaller toys you could buy with your own money if you saved your allowance for a few weeks. There were toys for toddlers, school age kids, some model kits and packaged cards for hobbyists, and even a few bikes, scooters, and skateboards. Digital games too! It was a shining reward of a store for all us long suffering kids.

Then there were those times when you actually went home with a toy. This was the ultimate score in kid-dom. It didn’t matter if it was the newest, coolest doll or action figure, a pack of Garbage Pail Kid cards, or a set of Colorforms (remember those?), leaving the mall with anything from K-B was an absolute win. I kind of feel sorry that kids today don’t get to experience that.

Radio Shack

Radio Shack was THE store for electronics. Back in the day, you had multiple components to all of your electronics in the house. Your VCR, TV, video games, stereo equipment, and pretty much anything else that plugged into the wall all had multiple cords and plugs needed to make them work. Nowadays a lot of this stuff is self contained, or requires one lousy USB cable. Back then you often had three cables just for your VCR. Not to mention the cable/television antenna and adapter for your Atari system. Anyway, back in those days, pretty much everybody had to know a little bit about what plugs and adapters got hooked into where. So when one of those cords went bad, or you needed a new one for your most recent electronic purchase, you went to Radio Shack and took care of business.

It wasn’t just cords though. Radio Shack were among the first electronics stores to sell home computing systems. They also sold phones, both landline and cellular. They had radios (duh) and other portable audio. Radio Shack also carried remote control toys and handheld electronic games, ham radio equipment, cameras, microphones, head phones, you name it, and all at prices your average Joe could afford. Was it all high end stuff? No. But it worked, and it was decent quality nonetheless. Everybody went to Radio Shack and used their stuff, and you could always bet that come Christmas morning, something under the tree would be from the Shack.

It feels like we are not as much of a DIY society as we used to be, which is kind of sad. However, it seems that Radio Shack does still have an online presence, and a few stores kind of willy-nilly throughout the country. I think they mostly do supplies now as opposed to selling electronic products, but it’s nice to know that you can still use them if you look hard enough and have the need.

Fotomat

Ah, yes, the old Fotomat. Those goofy looking kiosks in random parking lots that have all seemed to turn into snow cone places or drive through coffee joints.

In case you forgot (or somehow never knew), we didn’t always carry hundreds of pictures around in our pockets. They weren’t stored on our phones, or on digital cameras and in computers. Used to be that cameras had actual film in them. Once the film was used up, you’d drive the canister over to the Fotomat to be developed, drop it off, wait a few days and then pick up your pictures and see how they turned out. You’d never know exactly how they’d look. Would they be too light or too dark? Would the people in the photos have no heads because your viewing window on your camera was too far away from the actual lens? Would you get just a close up of finger? You never knew-and that made the waiting and the reveal exciting!

I mean, it’s actually better now, since you can instantly see if your picture sucks or not, and you can edit on the spot or just take another one. It’s infinitely more efficient, but maybe there’s a bit of charm lacking, and the whole enterprise is maybe not as much fun.

Show Biz Pizza Place

All right so it’s not a store exactly, but a part of me is still annoyed that these got shut down. Plus, it’s my list and I can do what I want.

Show Biz was a kid’s paradise, it had everything you could possibly want for a birthday party or just a way to spend a rainy day with a friend or two. Pizza? Check. Video games? Check. Skee Ball? Yup. Ball Pit? Some locations!

They also had an animatronic house band called the Rock-A-Fire Explosion. These characters would not only “perform” songs, but they would perform skits as well. They had fleshed out characters who interacted on stage, called out the birthday boy or girl by name, and presented a quality product. I loved Billy Bob, Beach Bear. Mitzi Mozzarella, and my favorite, Fats the gorilla. This was great stuff, and there are still fans of Show Biz out there on the internet preserving the memories of this wonderful restaurant. Some have even recovered/restored the old animatronic characters and there are numerous You Tube videos of the band rocking out to modern songs.

As a side note, I’m pretty sure that Show Biz pretty specifically was the template for the restaurant in the Five Nights At Freddy’s horror video game series. Cool idea, that game, but the actual, real place was awesome, innocent, and fun. I swear!!

Anyway, there were other establishments that used a similar idea (even one pizza place/arcade I remember that featured magicians and had a castle theme for some reason called AbraKDabra), but none came close to the level of fun or quality to be found at Show Biz Pizza Place.

Which is all to say that Show Biz did, and still does, kick Chuck E Cheese’s sorry butt.

Okay, well, that was fun. I hope you enjoyed my little nostalgia trip. Maybe it brought back some good memories for you too. Perhaps we’ll revisit this topic another time. Come back next week and see what lies in store on the next edition of MonDAVES! Bye, y’all.