Thanks subby... I feel old now...
Different world...

why?

People smiled in K-Mart back then?

Definitely

What is crazy is that in the 60s and 70s, Wal-Mart shoppers were only 200 pounds overweight on average!

Always preferred shopping at "Venture" in the 70's. I got a cheap pair of metallic silver keds knock-offs in the 5th grade. Talk of the town, baby.

/Secretly misses Venture sometimes.

All I remember was the ICEE/popcorn station and that there were ashtrays at the end of the aisles.

It was a Saturday morning ritual to go shopping at KMart. It was like the Wal-Mart of the 70s.

didn't get to K-Mart back then, all I got was older brothers hand me downs.

eh, not much has changed.

blue light hell

I bet people were making the check out to K-Marts even back then.

sneezing_rabbit: FIRST BABY FIRST

I bet there wasn't a car in that lot that got more than 17 mpg.

Of course, with gas at 36 cents a gallon, who cared?

Yep. Them and Kresge's. I remember when they had a GRILL and a Soda Fountain, and there was no Wal*Mart, Meijer, Target, Costco, or Sam's Club.

If you wanted groceries you went to a grocery store (usually a locally-owned chain) and if you wanted general merchandise you went to Kmart, and if you wanted electronics or appliances you went to Highland Appliance, Fretter, or ABC Warehouse (or one of your locally-owned appliance/electronics stores).

A typical shopping day would entail going to Kmart first, having lunch at their grill, and then moving on to our local A&P or Kroger's for groceries. If we were lucky, we'd get to see a $1 movie at the strip-mall theater that played second-run films, had no stadium seating (all flat on the ground), and sold the leftover popcorn from the first-run theater at a discount.

I'm not that old. I'm only in my late 30s. I'm still amazed how much things have changed in just twenty years, let alone my lifetime.

Huh...not to be rude, but I don't see a difference. Seriously, my Kmart is so damn old, there's cobwebs on the signage all around the store.

Maxway

GC Murphy's

Roses

Yeah, I remember K-Mart was the place in the mid-70's. Trax tennis shoes, everyone had them.

/I'm that old to remember
//My lawn, get off of it!

sneezing_rabbit

FIRST BABY FIRST!

Welcome to the Fark version of that spinning-mirror prison thing from Superman I.

/Enjoy your stay

GratuityIncluded: I bet people were making the check out to K-Marts even back then.


This is a language quirk in the midwest, particularly Michigan. People put a possessive "s" on the end of words that don't require one, and then they spell it without the apostrophe.

Thus we have:

Meijers
Wal*Marts
Kmarts
Blockbusters
JC Pennys

etc.

When none of those should have that "s" on the end. It drives me crazy, and I've lived in the midwest my whole life; I just never took to the midwest way of mucking up words. We also drink "melk" instead of milk, and far too many people "take and do something" rather than just DOING something.

I could go on and on, but picking on someone from this area for putting an "s" on the end of "Kmart" is kind of like picking on a Briton for dropping "the" before "hospital" (as in, "I went to hospital", rather than the American "I went to the hospital.") -- It's just a regional thing.

Shiat, anyone remember G.C. Murphy stores?

ZeroCorpse: Yep. Them and Kresge's. I remember when they had a GRILL and a Soda Fountain, and there was no Wal*Mart, Meijer, Target, Costco, or Sam's Club.

If you wanted groceries you went to a grocery store (usually a locally-owned chain) and if you wanted general merchandise you went to Kmart, and if you wanted electronics or appliances you went to Highland Appliance, Fretter, or ABC Warehouse (or one of your locally-owned appliance/electronics stores).

A typical shopping day would entail going to Kmart first, having lunch at their grill, and then moving on to our local A&P or Kroger's for groceries. If we were lucky, we'd get to see a $1 movie at the strip-mall theater that played second-run films, had no stadium seating (all flat on the ground), and sold the leftover popcorn from the first-run theater at a discount.

I'm not that old. I'm only in my late 30s. I'm still amazed how much things have changed in just twenty years, let alone my lifetime.

yep.
a standard outing with one of my grandmothers was to go to kresge's or k-mart. we'd get an item we needed (like socks, whether we needed them or not), and item we needed (balsa wood airplanes for me) and then have lunch at the counter.

K-Mart always smelled like carmel corn and piss.

I want to see that site do Twin Fair.

I've never seen a Kmart that crowded in my life. I do remember the cafe they had a the back of the place, though. They never replaced the different colored tiling in that area.

NANCY'S MEAT PUPPET: K-Mart always smelled like carmel corn and piss.

Remind me not to visit your town.

It sure is nice how the two white checkout ladies, being overlooked by the black manager, are properly dealing with the old lady,,, this time....

http://bp2.blogger.com/_Ei2Ik5quiI0/SCuzf8SiKhI/AAAAAAAAA8g/2YlVwNcLbr8/s1600- h/ kmart+oxford+oh+1976.jpg

Wow.

Zayre's, Kresge's, Fazio's, A&P, Pick n' Pay, K-Mart, nostalgia for days.

My first, crappy, actual job was stock and warehouse for a Zayre's.

ultraholland: Shiat, anyone remember G.C. Murphy stores?

First store I ever shoplifted from. It was either a pack of gum or a Matchbox car, maybe both.

Get Lost: It sure is nice how the two white checkout ladies, being overlooked by the black manager, are properly dealing with the old lady,,, this time....

http://bp2.blogger.com/_Ei2Ik5quiI0/SCuzf8SiKhI/AAAAAAAAA8g/2YlVwNcLbr8/s1600-h/ kmart+oxford+oh+1976.jpg

notice the razor blades are placed in the last-chance/impulse-buy area and not locked in a vault?

I always buy my underwear from K mart. Yeah, K-mart.

Funny thing is people keep trying to reproduce the hideous fashion and design style of those color photos today. For a while it seemed every other "hip" commercial had that pasty shade of green to it. Why anyone would want to reproduce the color blends of the 60's/70's is beyond me. It looks like someone puked on a culture. I have an instant headache just looking at it.

...the one near my childhood home still looks much like that.

hm, Fark sent me a birthday message. Aww, happy birthday to me.

For some reason I'm reminded of the gunslinger saying, "The world's moved on since then."

or something to that effect.

Fark Kmart. Lechmeres was the best electronics/appliance store in N.E. Then they were bought out and ruined. Not even Best Buy is better than Lechmeres was. People would check the Sunday papers to make sure their Sunday flyer was in it before buying the paper.

Derek313
Huh...not to be rude, but I don't see a difference. Seriously, my Kmart is so damn old, there's cobwebs on the signage all around the store.

Yeah, our Kmart here is hilarious. At least half the merchandise is on the floor in a big pile. You rummage though the floor pile until you see a color you like and when you pull it out you hope it's a shirt, and hope that it's your size. Then you take it over to a "scanner" that has been glued to a support beam and scan the price tag (if it still has one) to see how much the item costs. It's a classy system.

ZeroCorpse
We also drink "melk" instead of milk
I hate that so much. I also hate that people have "buddons" on their shirts and if you're a pair, it's "bolth" of you.
Yikes.

tonesskin: What is crazy is that in the 60s and 70s, Wal-Mart shoppers were only 200 pounds overweight on average!


People were more physically fit back in that era, because people were more physically active.

My friends and I would play football, baseball, and street hockey from morning all the way until way after dark.

Now with cable TV in every room in the house, computers, video game systems nobody gets out anymore.

Today we're nothing but a generation of tv-watching cabbages.... God forbid anybody should turn off the TV long enough to jog around the block.

DerekSD: notice the razor blades are placed in the last-chance/impulse-buy area and not locked in a vault?

Don't get me going about the razor blades.

/waiting for 16 blade heads that cost as much as a first car. each.

ZeroCorpse: Highland Appliance

Fifty watts per channel, babycakes (new window)

I stocked and blocked at Kmart for four years.

ZeroCorpse: GratuityIncluded: I bet people were making the check out to K-Marts even back then.


This is a language quirk in the midwest, particularly Michigan. People put a possessive "s" on the end of words that don't require one, and then they spell it without the apostrophe.

Thus we have:

Meijers
Wal*Marts
Kmarts
Blockbusters
JC Pennys

Trust me; it's not unique to the Midwest. I hear it in the South all the time. "Wal Marts" drives me nuts.

Tell 'em, Ray!



K-Mart sucks!

Godlick: All I remember was the ICEE/popcorn station and that there were ashtrays at the end of the aisles.

When I was a kid, my parents would take me to Bellingham every couple of months or so. Our first stop was always K-Mart. I vividly remember the ICEE/popcorn station and never ending rows of Battlestar Galactica action figures.

KMart sure sold a lot of anti-freeze in the 70's.

KMart used to be cool back in the 70's. It was on the other side of town from our house, so it was a drive to get there. Ate at the snack bar, put school clothes on layaway, played with the toys yada, yada, yada.

Now it's like a third world country. None of the checkers speak English fluently, shiat is scattered all over the store and the bathrooms...well I've seen better bathrooms in campgrounds.

studebaker hoch: I bet there wasn't a car in that lot that got more than 17 mpg.

Of course, with gas at 36 cents a gallon, who cared?

You might be surprised. The compacts back then got well over 20 MPG and some 30+ MPG. Especially with the leaded fuel. I see at least one VW bug and a Gremlin, both of which were around 25 MPG at least.

It just wasn't that long enough ago to really be that different. Back then was no so different than now.

I was mortified back in the day because my parents would eat at the K-Mart diner 5 days a week. Fark difficulty: my last name is Mart.

/Jokes about my Aunt Kay and all that weren't funny the first 10000 times I heard them and are not still.
// WTF mom and dad

I remember when Fred Meyers was the K-Mart shopping experience.
We used to get free metal toy delivery trucks when my mom took my brother and I shopping with her. FROM THE DOOR MAN!!! Those and a .59 bag of plastic army men and we were set for the afternoon. Imagination USED to be a wonderful thing. Now it's mostly used for destruction

sneezing_rabbit: FIRST BABY FIRST!

Just curious....Why don't we make fun of the ID 10 T's?

We used to go to them once in a while, but we would go to the Bradlees more often because my aunt worked there, and Zayres because my other aunt worked there (and my mom had as a teen, too). Oh, and Ann & Hope too.

\My current hometown used to have one, a looooong time ago, but it closed and became like two or three things before it and the former Almacs next to it got ripped down and replaced with Best Buy & Stop and Shop.

ZeroCorpse: I'm still amazed how much things have changed in just twenty years, let alone my lifetime.

What do you mean? Large, air-conditioned stores filled with stuff made overseas, accessible only by car? Nothing's changed, just fashions.

Kmart Ham & Cheese sandwich & cherry Slurpee rocks my universe.

That is all.