36 years ago this week the first Blockbuster opened. The video rental chain was the best place to be on a Friday night as you checked out the video boxes and tried to make a decision on what you were bringing home to watch. And on Friday nights all your friends and neighbours were there as well.
When I was a kid I lived a fifteen minute walk from the Pop Shoppe – the full service one with the conveyor belts and assembly lines filling up bottles with all kinds of flavours of pop. I’m not sure why they disappeared since in this world of recycling and reusing they were years ahead of everyone else.
Christmas shopping for wives, girlfriends, moms and grandmas was so much easier when the Body Shop was in every mall. Every one of them on your list had a favourite Body Shop skin cream and scent.
And long before there was a San Francisco there was the It Store in the city. It had the wildest things. You can still find some of those things in the touristy shops in Mahone Bay and Lunenburg, but not an entire store full of gadgets and toys.
And for a young nerd like myself, Radio Shack was where I bought my first computer (a Tandy Color Computer) and my first PC – also a Tandy 386,
Do you have any Blockbuster memories? What long gone stores do you still remember fondly?
