I've always had an interest in the slowly changing landscape of my hometown and the surrounding area. I'm interested in the arrivals of new stores and the deaths of old stores. Last time I blogged about places I once shopped at but now no longer exist, I mentioned New England Video, Blockbuster, and Ames. Here are three more places from my past that are forever relegated to the world of my memory.
Shop n' Save
Back in the nineties, we had two big grocery stores to choose from: Shop n' Save and Grand Union. Since Shop n' Save shared a building with the almighty Ames, my family would frequently visit both stores in the same day to get all of our shopping done in just one trip. We had no loyalty to Shop n' Save, though, and visited Grand Union frequently too.
I remember walking into Shop n' Save. For all intents and purposes, it was your average grocery store - the automatic doors led past a corkboard with ads and bulletins posted on it, then you grabbed your shopping cart and made your way through the produce section before wandering through the aisles. Now, for whatever reason, I strongly associate Shop n' Save with high ceilings and the color silver. Whether other stores featured just as much silver or had ceilings just as high is irrelevant to my wild childhood imagination. That's the weird thing about memories.
Shop n' Save's death was a sudden one. After the falling of Ames, Shop n' Save plugged along on its own for a while. Then, when word spread that Shaw's Supermarkets was going to move into Ames' old space, I wondered what would become of Shop n' Save. Surely two grocery stores sharing the same building was an idea doomed to fail. Apparently Shop n' Save wasn't willing to compete, because they vanished at the exact same time Shaw's showed up.
Circuit City
This is a unique one - there was never a Circuit City in my hometown. You see, even after my family discovered how easy it was to buy things over the Internet, I still liked to occasionally shop in brick-and-mortar stores. My mom hates shopping, as does my brother, but I don't mind it much at all, despite my aversion of large crowds. Shopping in a physical building provides a unique feeling, and you get a different experience with different stores. They're also good for when I don't know what I want to buy - just browsing the shelves can turn up things I didn't know existed, whereas when I'm shopping online I usually have a single specific thing in mind, or at least a particular brand (Like, I may want "a Godzilla toy" but have no further specifics).
Anyway, since I still liked to shop in real stores, and especially in the first half of the 2000s, before my mom was totally comfortable with buying online, occasionally we'd go on a road trip to more populated areas with big stores. In the early and mid-2000s, we liked to shop at Wal-Mart in New Hampshire. A little later we started going to Williston, which boasted a Toys R Us and a Circuit City, among other things.
I realize I've been talking a lot and not really mentioning Circuit City, but that's because I don't have too much to say about Circuit City itself. I got a lot of GameCube games there, and the last time I went there I got some on deep discount when the system was on its way out, although due to the distance we missed the big liquidation sales. I don't miss it much, since on our next road trip, which I think happened before they went out of business, was to the nearby GameStop. I'd completely overlooked the place and I like it a lot for buying video games, especially used ones.
Dollar Depot
Next to Ames and New England Video, this is one of the stores I have the most fond memories of. Dollar Depot, which I always knew of as just "the dollar store", had a green dollar bill for a logo. True to its name, everything inside cost a buck. I remember visiting it many a time, impressed by the variety of things I could get for only one dollar. Generally, whenever I visited, I'd head straight to the back of the store, which was where the toys were. After poring over the shelves, I generally would move on to the right-hand side of the store. This was where the art supplies and books were, and I would frequently get something here as well. My most common purchases were plastic animal toys and notebooks to doodle on. I still have a couple old, worn, and doodle-filled notebooks from the Dollar Depot, as well as many of the toys I bought there.
The most memorable Dollar Depot acquisition for me is when they suddenly acquired a horde of Pokemon figurines. These 2-inch toys seemed like genuine official products (they may not have been, but they seemed equal in quality) and they were even imported from Japan (I recall the packaging being loaded with Japanese characters and very little English). My brother and I flipped out at this tremendous bargain (Ames charged a good bit more for Pokemon toys than a buck) and gathered up a bunch before they all sold out within a couple weeks.
The reason Dollar Depot went under is simple - in 2006, Dollar Tree took up residence in our town by moving in where Shop n' Save used to be. Dollar Depot was only a few miles away, and it couldn't compete with Dollar Tree's larger selection. Dollar Depot attempted to branch out by adding items that cost more than a dollar, but it didn't last long. In less than a year, Dollar Depot was wiped out. I love Dollar Tree, and Dollar Depot had been declining in terms of stuff I liked, but I still collected plenty of fond memories of the place.
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