Crestwood was my first Mall. We even went there for one of my birthdays, either the 7th or the 9th, which would have been mid 60s. I just thought it was the coolest place on the planet at that age. 😊🎉😊

Is that logan from tek syndicate ?

purchased my first laptop from compUSA back in 2004.

Those catalogs made for fun reading on the toilet. Every November or so I used to write down what I wanted for Christmas and give it to my dad for Santa to buy. We were well off so I got most of the stuff.

Your content is WAY too good to only have a few thousand views per video. I enjoy Company Man, but your content is so much better.

If you live around south Florida go check out Micro Center. It's pretty much the successer to this and it's a big store

We have 18 Toys R Us locations about an hours drive from our house right now. Walmart Canada's toy sections have always been and still are pathetic compared to Toys R Us. This must be why they are still around here. Mastermind Toys on the hand are closing left and right.

My go to Music Store as a kid in the 80s. Bought my Sony Walkman there as well. Everything we loved growing up seems to leave. Miss that Store.

Great video, thanks for creating it! ⚜️👍

This plaza was a second home in my youth. High school hangout.

in the 1970's i worked at the first famous store that open in st. louis county. that would be the northland FB. i believe it opened in 1955. it was the perfect part time afterschool job. closed by 9pm and never open on sunday. there were people that bought soap or lightbulbs, just to get the famous-barr box. always free gift wrap too! the store was air conditioned, but i worked mostly on the loaded dock.

I worked for CompUSA in Overland Park KS from 1992 to 1999 - Sales then Corporate Trainer from '93 to '99. I loved working there. I was hired away by Gateway Country (Another sinking ship) and then the spiraling death of the Dot Com Bomb kicked in in 2001, killing that opportunity. I guess Comp lasted (somewhere) until 2006. Oh, and re-record this with some more volume on the voice over. It's really subdued and hard to hear. Eh??

This is such an interesting find! I've been doing family research, and I just found that Jack W Holley is my 5th cousin 2x removed. Love seeing this.

I grew up in Austin , I bought many records at Sound Warehouse. I liked it they were open 24 hours I could get buzzed and go browse the records in middle of night and just chill. One night I was there ( about 3am ) and freakin Meatloaf came in ( late 70s) he was filming a movie in town called Roadie. He was a BIG DUDE and was sweating like crazy, looked like he was coked out of his gourd. He had got a stack of records and bolted.

I shopped at CompUsa in Addison, TX for several years in the 90’s including buying my copy of Windows ‘95 after waiting in line for several hours. Once buying computer components online really took off in 1997-1998 I didn’t need to go back to find things at higher prices than I could just get online.

I worked there in 89-90. It was a train wreck. They did have an incredible management training program at the time where they sent assistant managers to a dedicated training stores for a 6-8 weeks to complete training course with a dedicated training manager. I didn't know it at the time, but no other companies were investing a fraction of this on training and developing their management.

I remember when the renovation/expansion opened in 1984. I can’t even begin to count how many hours I spent in that mall when I was a teenager in the 80’s, through the late 2000’s. The recession and online shopping were the last nails on the coffin for most malls.

I bought my GameCube from CompUSA

funny story. the local blockbuster by me closed and then hollywood video opened in the same building and then they closed down and blockbuster opened up again, ,lol.

Some corrections here: • Best buy reported $40 billion around the time of the Musicland Acquisition. • Best Buy Did add video games to Sam Goody stores, but took out musical instruments, licensed trend product, and other items to make room. Best Buy didn't add any significant electronics, and under purchased electronics, leaving most stores with empty shelves for months at a time. • Under Best Buy Music Land formed a partnership with Virgin Mobile, and became the number one source for Virgin Mobile customers. • Under Best buy, music and video inventory levels were greatly reduced to free up capital resulting in a loss of sales and customers. • Under Best Buy, stores were forced to push specific high margin categories, as well as specific metrics like memberships, pre-sells, magazine subscriptions, and warranties, taking most of the focus away from overall sales, inventory management, merchandising, shrink, and customer service. It was during this time that Best Buy stores themselves, developed a reputation for toxic sales tactics to sell more warranties and other metrics. • Best Buy were days away from just taking the financial hit, and just shutting down all Music Land stores before finding a much better alternative in giving the company away to Sun Capital. • While Sun Capital did make some improvements to undo the damage Best Buy had done, their efforts were minimal. The toxic environment of pushing metrics on customers above all else had only increased. Many of the problems caused by Best Buy continued, including under purchasing of electronics. • Transworld did NOT buy Music Land out of bankruptcy, the Music Land company was dissolved, the HQ offices were closed. Transworld purchased about 300 of the remaining locations, and the rights to the brand and website. Employees of purchased locations were hired by Transworld as new employees, losing all seniority, and some restructuring in pay was implemented. Additional info: • After the initial public offering, Musicland used the funds gained and implemented a tactic of over saturating markets with stores. Some shopping malls would have as many as three Music Land Stores, a Sam Goody, Musicland, and a Sun Coast store. in the mid-late nineties, they switched directions and consolidated stores into larger stores, doubling their average foot print in shopping malls making stores higher volume, more efficient and more profitable. It was around this time they launched their Media Play and On Cue concepts, both proved to be failures and almost drug the company down.

I live ten minutes away from one of the last two Sam Goody stores around. It'll break my heart if that place closes down

I sold cars right across from crestwood mall in the 90’s. It was so busy the whole month of December we couldn’t even do test drives until January. Good times in the 90’s. I drove by there 2 weeks ago and it is a dierbergs and little shotgun houses now. June 20, 2024.

This was the best mall and died when public transit busses had routes to the mall. This created a high crime and shoplifting issues. After a while everyone went to the Galleria where it protected its safety and reputation. Now the Galleria has gone the way of Crestwood. It still has nice stores, but I don't feel safe parking the garage (which feel like a neglected ghetto).

As a person that operated the shopping cart escalator, I can confidently say that no other job I had in my life has made more people so jealous. From a kid running up and down the stairs to beat the shopping cart to an employee watching children do the same thing many years later. It was a sad day when the escalator was shut down for good.

These videos are so teemingly researched to replace a six- hour seminar

You should do a video on Bradlees

Good video, though I don't think that the slowing pace of mall construction from the 1970s into the 1980s is evidence that malls were losing popularity in the 1980s, but rather that so many malls had already been built that they were running out of logical places to put new ones. I think the peak period for malls was in the 1990s or early 2000s not the 1970s. JC Penney saw its all-time peak revenue in 2006, for example

I remember they use to have one in Danvers liberty tree mall plaza. Great memories and it sucks there's not enough computer retail stores anymore.

went here so much during high school days. it wasn't ever that busy even 20 years ago.

I can tell you, it’s more like the middle to late 90’s….I remember buying Van Halen’s “Balance” album on vinyl at the now closed Humble location, which would place this around 1995-1997.

Have you heard of S&H greenstamps?

How about one o Aldi's. Good stuff here.

I was shocked and pleased when i was in medford Oregons mall and seen a sam goody still open just couple of months ago.

I miss game crazy and Hollywood video.

I'm a 3rd gen of st louis. It's so sad to see these locations fall. There's so much history to my life that happened here. James Town, river roads and northland too. Too bad drugs and gangs too over. Even my family had to flee after 150 years.

So glad to see a video on service merchandise to conveyor belt was the best part of going there.

We had one in our town of Waukegan Illinois. I believe it opened in 1985.

4:40 Grandpa lost his cane that he was pointing with.

We'd go to the St Ann store a lot back in the early 1960s.They had everything. Long before Walmart and I think it was much better too, but childhood memories aren't reliable.

Too bad public transportation ruined it.

Bethlehem pa loved it... rented Nintendo games there

Another one that lasted in Arlington heights Illinois into the 90s that I remember

There was one in Arlington heights Illinois in the 90s that I remember.

I loved venture

Great video. I just discovered your channel and am enjoying it. I shopped at our Service Merchandise Showroom quite a bit in the 80s and 90s. It was opened in the mid 1970s and stayed the same until the end (which I thought was cool). They had some ancient computer terminals that you could key in the item number from the catalog and see if it was in stock at that showroom. I can still remember doing that like it was yesterday. I still have a nice Onyx and Diamond gold ring I purchased in 1988. They were a good store but like so many I guess they just didn’t keep up with the times.

I understand why b&m stores can’t succeed in 2024, but growing up there was nothing better than going to an actual store, loading up on snacks, going home and throwing a movie into the VCR. Streaming is great, but there was something special about the whole procedure of getting a movie in the 90s