The Good Old Days thread

[|iR|Focalor]

A place to remember the good old days.

Like porn in the 1980's. Is that her boob? Is that her knee? It's whatever you want it to be!

[QwazyWabbit]

HA! I had a demodulator for that channel. Total hack. Unstable as hell, I was constantly fiddling with it. It was a kit as I recall. If you wound the torriods wrong there was no hope of making it work. The porn was always late night.

[Sgt. Dick]

I did the same, half-assed worked 

[|iR|Focalor]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciLEWR_ugI4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVp6AiRbxvs


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3ctZI9_oyo

[Sgt. Dick]

Anybody remember Montgomery Ward

Our local Montgomery Ward close probably 30 years ago.
It is currently a public storage place.

[|iR|Focalor]

Think I heard either my parents or my grandmother mention the name before, but I've never personally shopped at one or seen one anywhere where I've lived in Georgia (NE and E sides of Atlanta metro area). I googled it, and Wiki shows a pic of an empty one at the old now closed Regency Mall in Augusta.

Just got off the phone with my ma. Mentioned it to her, and she said she remembers the Montgomery Ward catalog (says they used to call it the "Monkey Ward catalog") (... I dunno was that a thing, or just my nutty folks being nutty?), but doesn't really remember any of the stores. She grew up in the Avondale Estates and Stone Mountain area and doesn't remember ever seeing one, but said that there might've been one somewhere in downtown Atlanta.

I do remember Rich's though, perhaps they had one in Florida somewhere too. Rich's was Macy's biggest competitor in the southern states. They did very well for many years, even diversified into having some "general merchandise" stores (kinda like Walmart, Kmart, Target) that were called Richway. I remember shopping at the Richway a BUNCH when I was growing up, going there for back to school clothes, christmas shopping, toys, housewares, etc. Eventually Target bought them out I think, because if I recall correctly sometime between probably 1988 to 1991 they closed the store for a month or two and it became Target.

I posted somewhere else about Rich's before I'm pretty sure...

... Here in Georgia, we had a major department store known as Rich's.
Rich's. My grandmother worked there in the 1950's. They were a main fixture in Atlanta since the 1920's or earlier. They branched out and had Walmart/Target style stores called Richway. I remember shopping there as a kid with my folks all the time. But alas, Rich's was swallowed up by Macy's, and Richway was eviscerated by Target. But Macy's was nice enough to hijack all of Rich's christmas tradition that Atlantans have enjoyed for years, like the Pink Pig ride that I remember riding on with my dad every year as kid at the old Rich's downtown location. Actually... that ride used to scare the living shit out of me, lol. It was a rusty old suspended chain driven ride that was mounted on the edge of the roof of the old Rich's building. The cars would sway and creak and had rust all over them. Being on the rooftop, it was exposed to the December air, and the cars had no windows or heat in them, so you'd freeze your balls off riding in this thing, looking about 6 stories down off the side of the building, thinking that any moment the thing was gonna break and send you hurtling to the street below where you'd surely die in a heap of twisted pink rusted metal and bodies of other passengers. Good times. As far as I know, Macy's redid the ride at their Lennox Mall location and it's now an indoor MUCH LESS DANGEROUS choo-choo train kinda thing rather than a suspended rusty coaster thingy. I think they still have the old Rich's pink pig cars on display there though. I feel sorry that my nephews will never get to know that special Holiday terror like I did.

Picture of the old Pink Pig ride on the rooftop of the old Rich's building in downtown Atlanta, not sure when it was taken.



My dad says he remembered it as a kid in the late 50's when it was suspended from the ceiling in the toy department on one of the upper floors of the Rich's building in Atlanta. In the mid-60's, they moved it to the roof where it ran until the store finally closed in 1991.

Like I said in the part quoted from 2017, I remember going to Rich's on Christmas Eve that last year it was open to ride the Pink Pig. It was cold as FUCK that day. The cars had no windows in them or heaters, and the last part of the line to get on the ride was outside on the 6th floor rooftop in the winter air. We froze our asses off! It made it VERY memorable... because to this day, I still remember how insanely cold it was. Kinda made the whole thing all the more depressing too. By then, the ride was all rusty and fading and needing paint. And I remember walking all through the store that year as we headed up to the roof. We encountered many areas where you couldn't get to certain escalators because those portions of the store were giant junk heaps of empty clothes racks, mannequins, and all sorts of other fixtures. They managed to hollow out a path through the mess on the 5th floor leading to the only open escalator that went to the 6th floor, and the escalator was dead. The whole store was very depressing like that, not very Christmas-y at all.

[|iR|Focalor]

Clash of the Titans (1981)

This was one of my favorite movies growing up. Made in 1980, released in 1981, featured lots of great classic stop-motion animation. Some of scenery in it doesn't hold up well compared to today's movies, but for the time, it was pretty awesome and epic. I was also a fan of all the old classic monster movies when I was kid (King Kong, Wolfman, Dracula, Godzilla, etc), so the excellent elaborate usage of stop-motion animation in this sort of classifies it alongside all those older ones, at least in my opinion. Sure, the animation in movies like Star Wars was much smoother, but I kinda like the way they animated Clash of the Titans - sort of reminds me of Jason and the Argonauts, another even older movie with some great stop-motion animation of sword-fighting skeletons that totally blew peoples minds back when it came out.

DEAD LINK://wwwyoutubecom/watch?v=wVdVlYUsRpA
(youtube link: Clash of the Titans - 1981 - full movie - just in case they ever remove it and someone wonders what the hell this link was)
Edit: oct 16, 2023 - yep, they removed it. Here's the trailer instead, hopefully it'll stay up longer than 2 freakin' months.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojw1sau98Jg

I remember when I was a kid and went into the hospital to have my tonsils removed, my grandpa came by afterwards and gave me a Golden Clash of the Titans graphic novel get well soon gift. It was one of my favorite books that I re-read probably 100 times or more. I still have it somewhere around here, probably on the bookshelf with all my old pc game boxes. I think it's probably worth maybe 10 or 15 bucks now. I see them online going for anywhere from 10 to 25 bucks (original price was $2.50). Like I said, I read it TONS, so the edges are well worn like the one in the picture. The pictures inside look like typical comic book stuff, nothing like the cover. For the most part, it mirrors the movie, although some of the monsters like the Kraken were drawn a little different, and Calibos is green. Also... In the comic, he throws his shield to whack Medusa's head off. In the movie, he uses his sword.

   


   

[|iR|Focalor]

I miss HBO in the 90's when they actually had shit worth watching.

And the funky graphics. So rad, so gnarly - cowabunga dude.



Also figured I'd quote some posts from the Whatcha Listening To thread with pics of bands and musicians from the Good Old Days...

No video, just an interesting pic I found.

Left to right:
Leon Wilkeson (bass - Lynyrd Skynyrd),
Lou Reed,
Ronnie Van Zant (vocals - Lynyrd Skynyrd),
Leslie West (guitar/voc - Mountain)

Another interesting pic...

Ozzy Osbourne and Sam Kinison. ...



...

And adding one more...

The Rolling Stones in 1966

Pictured L to R: Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman (seated).

[|iR|Focalor]

Kinda "wankerish" in the style of the 1980's "we are the world", but kinda cool.

Never been a fan of Kevin Dubrow and Quiet Riot. I first heard him on a Quiet Riot: The Randy Rhoads Days cd I bought in my young teens when I was studying Randy Rhoads stuff on the guitar. I do not like his singing.

Kinda funny, you can clearly hear Rob Halford cutting through everyone else during the first chorus. Dudes got some lungs.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5H94GHb-10

[QuakeDuke]

Just got off the phone with my ma. Mentioned it to her, and she said she remembers the Montgomery Ward catalog (says they used to call it the "Monkey Ward catalog") (... I dunno was that a thing, or just my nutty folks being nutty?), but doesn't really remember any of the stores. She grew up in the Avondale Estates and Stone Mountain area and doesn't remember ever seeing one, but said that there might've been one somewhere in downtown Atlanta.

Scattered all across the midwest south north to the coast - when someone mentioned the Montgomery Ward catalog it was indeed referred to as the "Monkey Ward catalog" among those who still are around it has been and will always be so
QD

[|iR|Focalor]

...it was indeed referred to as the "Monkey Ward catalog"...

Thought it was another one of those family slang things. For instance my mom still refers to cows as "moo-sheepers" because my sister called them that when she was little.

Christmas time many years ago. My folks came up early to stay the week before Christmas. We're in my girlfriends car, she was in the back seat, my mom in the front, me driving, we were heading off to do some gift shopping. We passed a pasture of cows near my house, my mom hollers out "LOOK AT THE MOO-SHEEPERS!" like a kid ...or someone with brain damage. Of course I get the reference, but my old lady has no idea what she means. I look up in the mirror and my old lady is looking back at me as if to say, "What in the holy hell is wrong with your mother?"

[|iR|Focalor]

Not sure if this really is a copy of the in-store music. Maybe. Some of it's got LP record hiss.

When I worked at Walmart in college, I know they had their own national radio that was pumped in via satellite connect from the home office I think. I also worked at a Kmart back then too, they had a similar thing. But back in the 70's and 80's I suppose it would've been some kinda pre-recorded thing they played in the store itself. Would be interesting to know how they did in-store music in the 70's since they had to be using records at the time, and records only have about 25 minutes of play on one side.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQt5umECcdo

[|iR|Focalor]

More K-mart shit.

From what I've been reading online, there's now only TWO K-mart's left.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heg2OmKVVFM

I remember back in the early 2000's, my then girlfriend and I went to the Winder GA K-mart store that was a week or two away from closing because her friends told her they had everything about 50% off to get rid of everything. Apparently the sale worked, because they had almost nothing left in the store. So many sections of empty shelves, shelves with one or two sparse items. And none of it was anything you'd really want. We thought we'd get some furniture and housewares kinda stuff for good deals... pretty much a wasted trip. The only thing I saw that I liked was these little funny looking horses heads eraser ends for pencils that were about 50 cents. 

Got to looking on wiki... didn't know this, but apparently the larger Kmart company also bought up Borders and Waldenbooks, which is why you don't see those anymore.

Venting:

These companies are all assholes. All of them have been doing the same thing: they take out these ENORMOUS loans so that they can build tons of new stores all over the place in an effort to saturate areas with their presence and gobble up as much market share... but in order to sustain that, they need to continue to do crazy-good business like they tend to do when they first open and everyone is excited to shop at the new place in town. And when locations no longer rake in the same levels of profit, they can't pay back these loans, so they go through bankruptcy. They either GET bought out, or they buy out someone else in hopes of consolidating profits and operating in the green again,... and they don't. And the cycle continues until you're left with cities that have tons of empty retail spaces, and only a handful of retailers left with a severely limited selection of items compared to what they used to carry.

I don't really think K-mart's been as guilty of the practice as other newer companies. (Then again, they bought out Borders and Waldenbooks like I said above.) K-mart's just had streams of unending bad luck. Mostly, there was the Columbine thing - when it was found out that the little idiots who did that had bought their ammo and maybe one of the guns at a Kmart, lots of people boycotted them. (I think they got sued as well.) You've also had Wal-Mart making DAMN SURE they always build a Wal-Mart near any K-mart, making sure to try to screw them outta business from that side. And in more recent times, you've had the rise of Amazon serving to screw them from the other side... because pornographic double-penatration analogies are always fun. K-mart's just been trying to do what they do and make a living. It's sad. I miss the K-mart where I grew up. Working there that one Christmas  (2003 I think) was one of the best jobs ever - selling the shit outta real and artificial Christmas trees, helping load them up for people, the fun group of guys I worked with, and the inside of the store wasn't a total fuckin' MADHOUSE of pissed off shoppers like it was at the Walmart I worked at the year before. Good times.

[Sgt. Dick]

Road Trip  

[QwazyWabbit]

Kmart used to be a decent retailer. Most of their growth occurred from 1930 to 1980, with over 2055 stores in N. America in 1981. Walmart came along and competed directly with Kmart while management lost focus on the Kmart brand. Sports Authority was one such distraction. In the early 2000's upper management got greedy and used the company as their personal piggy banks. While in bankruptcy, along comes Eddy Lampert and his ESL Investments, a private equity firm who buys it at fire sale prices and he accelerated the bankruptcy. In 2004 Lampert, controlling both Kmart and Sears, has Kmart buy Sears via shell companies Kmart Holdings Corp., forming Sears Holdings Corp. and merging Sears into it. Eddie made lots of money on that deal since he owned both, they both paid fees to him and borrowed money from ESL to finance the deals. All the while, they're reducing inventory, deferring maintenance and closing less profitable locations. By 2019 Sears Holdings Corp. was going the Chapter 7 liquidation route and owed money to Lampert as the prime creditor when the bankruptcy judge ordered SHC to renegotiate the deal with Lampert (who owned majority stake in the company by virtue of his ESL Investments and their borrowing from him in the first place). SHC had to bid at auction for their own assets in order to remain in business. Meanwhile, Eddie had been stripping assets and selling off properties to recoup his money and the decline continued. Unsecured creditors were left to their own devices. Then along comes the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation and they say there will be a short-fall of $1.7 Billion in the employee pension fund and that it would have to be paid for by U.S. Taxpayers. (You see, corporations and hedge fund managers can steal money earmarked for pension funding and simply not fund employees pension funds with the "promise" to fund it when profits permit it. Then when they liquidate the company and lay off all the employees the taxpayers are left holding the pension bag.)

"In February 2019, it was announced that a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved the sale of the most lucrative part of Sears Holdings to Edward Lampert, allowing the surviving part of the company that operated both Sears and Kmart to remain in business at the expense of suppliers, landlords, employees, pensioners, the U.S. government, and other creditors. Kmart would have 202 locations after the sale was to be completed."

"The sale of 202 Kmart stores to Transform Holdco was finalized in February 2019, with the remaining Kmart locations liquidated to partially pay off Sears Holdings creditors." In other words Lampert kept the assets and profits and passed off the debts in bankruptcy.

The rot continues.

Lesson: when the words private equity, leveraged buyout or equity management appear at your place of work, you can expect layoffs and bankruptcy in the not too distant future. Nothing bodes disaster like having bean counters running your company.

There is the carcass of a Kmart store not far from here. The parking lot is roped off with flags and there are 24-hour security guards who sit in their cars near the garage entry where the auto service bay used to be just to keep people from vandalizing the building and to run the homeless off. Big pilons in the driveways into the lot to keep the 18-wheelers from camping too. I'll try to remember to post a picture.