Friday, December 28, 2018

How long before the nostalgic crying about how people LOVED Sears!

No you didn't.! You didn't love Sears or Toys r' US, or any of those other stores - or else they would not have gone out of business.

7 comments:

  1. As a late 40's GenX'er, I'm beginning to think the 80's was the optimal time of American society. I kind of enjoyed looking through those catalogs.

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  2. I never got into the Sears catalog. But I seriously do have one of those J. Peterman catalogs around here somewhere.

    Sometimes I go though old boxes and run across a catalog from time to time and feel astonished at the stuff we would buy for no reason at all. And the paper was so thick.

    It's nice to see a rare unicorn GenXer around here. You know we are practically an endangered species.

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  3. I grew up in a 'burb north of Minneapolis, the local mall had a Sears. This location even had a Sears gas station. As a kid I always liked their huge candy counter. My older brother earned his bachelors at the University of Minnesota by working part time at Sears. This was around '70-'75. Minimum wage back then was probably less than $2/HR, yet this was sufficient to put him through. He did live at home during this time. We had Kenmore appliances and Silvertone electronics because brother had employee discount on purchases. Can't say I loved Sears but good memories from early teen years. Don't think I've set foot in a Sears in 10 years.

    P.S. Anyone recall when Ford Motor had Philco-Ford electronics?

    Jim

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  4. Capital of Texas RefugeeSunday, December 30, 2018 2:56:00 AM

    I haven't set foot in a Sears store since they sold off Craftsman Tools.

    Here's how bad the situation was for Sears even before Batshit Crazy CEO got involved: Sears used to have its West Coast catalog operations in Seattle at 2401 Utah Avenue South, which is a fairly tall brown brick building off 1st Avenue South that you can't really miss ...

    Back in 1990, Sears sold off the building and it got redeveloped as "SODO Center" for some wanna-be New York naming reason.

    Now it's Starbucks HQ, and it's called Starbucks Center.

    BUT BUT BUT ... there used to be a smaller Sears retail location in it!

    Until 2014, when the Sears on the south side of the Starbucks HQ main entrance got "liquidated" in what has become a repeating trend.

    So Sears fucked up enough that it couldn't even keep a midget-sized tenancy in the building that used to serve as its largest West Coast HQ ...

    I can understand why the offers for Sears pretty much involve gutting the company, liquidating the assets, and having very little to do with Batshit Crazy Former CEO in the future despite his wanting to be involved.

    Apparently Sears has a seriously expensive pensions problem.

    The bankruptcy liquidators for Sears want what would become one of the largest pension defaults in American history.

    The death of Sears is like watching the security state gangster in "V for Vendetta" ask V why he won't die after somewhat uselessly pumping him full of more lead ...

    "WHY WON'T YOU DIE?"

    YEAH, WHY WON'T YOU DIE, SEARS?

    But this has all happened before ... in Canada.

    Sears Canada got a judge to rule that it could stop payments on pensions with guaranteed benefit payouts.

    I've been in some pretty miserable Sears stores in Canada as well, and again I have to ask ...

    SEARS, WHY WON'T YOU DIE?

    But ... the old Sears at Eaton Centre in Toronto used to be awesome. I actually liked shopping at the Eaton Centre Sears, even after that one was no longer Eaton's. They had actual things for sale that I actually bought.

    That arrangement was never really meant to last.

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  5. Oh..I think I get it now. People love Sears because they haven't been there in a REALLY long time. I however have been in January and it wilsl tell you exactly why Sears is closing. You can read about it here..

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  6. Capital of Texas RefugeeSunday, December 30, 2018 6:48:00 PM

    You forget ...

    I FUCKING LOVE DEADMALLS

    :-)

    Who I actually feel sorry for are the Mall Chinese who sell decent enough American Chinese food (for the price, anyway) in these places ...

    Here, have an obligatory DeadMall Wing: The former Dillard's wing of the Dead Cent-REE of Tallahassee.

    BTW, this Sorta DeadMall hides the fact that it's a Sorta DeadMall to casual observers who don't actually go there by presenting a directory on their Web site instead of an actual map. This hides the fact that there are roughly 50 shops that closed there, leaving less than 25 remaining shops open.

    BUT HOW THE FUCK DOES A SARKU JAPAN GO OUT OF BUSINESS?

    They also killed off Subway by sucking so hard.

    Even a total marginal like a church got the hint and fled to higher ground.

    So why would I go there ... oh, yeah, right, there's a sorta decent BBQ joint in the Dead Cent-REE, and I can marvel at the Shopocalypse(tm) while I'm there.

    Now I'm sure there might be someone from the Dead Cent-REE of Tallahassee who may read this and wonder why I'm heaping such scorn on the Dead Cent-REE ...

    This Sorta DeadMall has the lowest number of open shops in the entire state of Florida. Because that's not depressing enough, I looked at neighboring states, and this abysmal number is also lower than any mall in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Mississippi that isn't a midget-sized outlet mall or in the process of being bulldozed away.

    Even failing Sorta DeadOutletMalls have more shops open than this.

    Wise-cracking Floridians will point out that this vortex of shopping is the result of Talla-ass-see's collapsed neutron star level of suck, but still ... :-)

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