There’s been a lot of places closing down as of late so I figured it might be time for a dedicated thread. Malls are becoming a thing of the past, as well as various brick & mortar stores and restaurants.
Just found out our local Big Lots is closing down. My late wife used to love going there.
https://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/news/2024/08/09/big-lots-conns-badcock-closing-more-stores-retail.html
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Two of my favorite restaurants in the town where I grew up are now gone.
Opie Taylor’s was a victim of COVID. They had a Caesar burger- a burger with a Caesar salad as the fixing. It was amazing.
The Irish Lion was, as it’s name suggests, an Irish-themed restaurant and bar. The real treat were the blarney puffballs, which I mentioned somewhere else on the forums, although the lamb coddle was also terrific. It’s the only time I would willingly sat through an hour of penny whistle on the speakers. It closed down when the owner retired.
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Brick and mortar stores still exist?!
Our local Krispy Kreme closed recently, but they still seem to have concessions in some of the supermarkets if I need an overpriced bit of sweetness.
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Wait, the UK has- or had- Krispy Kreme?
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Yep, we’ve had Krispy Kreme for years. Normally it’s just a little cabinet in a supermarket, but there are a few actual stores, too. It all seems a lot more expensive than I remember it being in the US, though, so I almost never get any. I think this one closed because it’s in the city center, which has a lot of other options for food.
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I thought the Red Lobster near me in Pineville NC was going to close back in May but amazingly, it’s still open.
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We had a Fuddruckers when we first moved here. I loved them because they had buffalo burgers, which I like much more than beef burgers, but they’re gone. I don’t think you can get them anywhere else around here.
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Yeah, just found out our Big Lots is closing and then that the one a couple towns over already closed! Closest one will be about 40 minutes away. 
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The Hillside Cinema was a two-screen mom and pop movie theater that feel victim to the entertainment venue closures of 2020 and 2021. It was the site at which I first saw a movie (Superman III). When my movie attending experience was at its most active, the Hillside was my preferred choice of venue, only visiting another if it looked like they wouldn’t be screening a film I was keen on catching. It also had reasonable matinee prices and didn’t gouge you at the concessions. Like many of these small-time operations, they had their charming little quirks. The most notable was how they would often give out two-dollar bills and fifty cent coins when making change. At a rough guess, at least seventy-five percent of the mutant legal tender that circulated in the state originated at the Hillside.
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I miss second-run theaters. A couple of bucks and you could see a movie that was a few months old.
Thankfully, there are still a few mom and pop theaters in nearby towns.
Drive-Ins came close to dying, but they’re being revitalized, especially now that they don’t use the hanging speakers, you just tune in on a radio frequency, so you can even enjoy the drive-in when it’s chilly.
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Malls have actually made a comeback with the young 'uns. My friend and I went to a mall recently to scout out places to take a special visitor and it was crowded with teens having fun and consuming massive quantities of Orange Julius. I was genuinely surprised but apparently that’s not just a local phenomenon.
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Can I buy a big, greasy slice of pizza from Sbarro and head to the arcade to play some Street Fighter II?
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I didn’t notice an arcade, actually, but definitely a yes on the big, greasy slice.
Don’t forget to stop by Hot Topic!
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Sweet! I could use a new plasma globe (for trapping Bellarians, obviously) and a poster for Popular Movie.
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Almost. This is in our local mall:
https://www.sandboxsocial.com/bank-of-pinball.html
$15 free play every Saturday and Sunday.
They also have this weird mini golf thing:
https://www.sandboxsocial.com/lucky-putt.html
And the mall has both an axe throwing range, which is apparently a popular thing now, and an archery range.
Plus there’s still Hot Topic, Spencer’s and FYE for the teens.
Edit: I worked in a mall arcade (Aladdin’s Castle, owned by Namco) for a while in the 1990s. I don’t recommend it if you have a time machine.
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Oh, gosh, I’ve lived here sixteen years now, so many changes. I do miss the Sears, it was less than a mile away. That mall was mostly knocked down, taking out Chuck E. Cheese and the Dollar Cinema, and converted to ‘Shoppes’. There’s one short hallway left to allow access to the theater. Far too many restaurants and stores have been replaced by student high rises in the University district.
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Sears was awesome. So many memories of going into the electronics department in the 80s and checking out the video games and computers.
Also, I would have to say that Showbiz Pizza was far superior to Chuck E. Cheese. There’s actually a whole John Oliver segment he did online about why Chuck E. Cheese destroyed Showbiz and made the whole thing suck much more.
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Here’s a couple more I miss. Noble Roman’s, which still sort of exists as a “quick pre-made pizza at the airport” sort of chain, was actually founded in my home town and the original restaurants were so amazing for kids. There was a big window where you could watch them toss the dough and make the pizza and there was a projector that showed silent comedies and cartoons on a loop.
Then in the 90s, they had this amazing sort of cold pizza thing called a vegetable crostata. I don’t really know how to describe it other than it was kind of like a salad on a pizza crust and it was delicious.
The other was nearby to the Noble Roman’s downtown, a local place called White Mountain Ice Cream. They made fresh-squeezed fizzy lemonade that was nice and tart. For a summer when I was a teenager, a vegetable crostata from Noble Roman’s and a lemonade from White Mountain was my go-to lunch. They were both across the street from the park where all the weird kids hung out.
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Walden Books.
It’s been gone for more than twenty years now, but that was my go to book store for most of my younger life. I had a membership in their science fiction club that later transitioned into their general book discount club. I found so many great books browsing the shelves of my local Waldens.
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The history of who bought and sold Waldenbooks is insane:
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