PS the Woolworths at our local mall had a sporting goods department that had bins of Mosins and even SKSs (maybe even some.303 Enfields) covered in cosmoline--starting at around $69--early 1970s--I actually bought an AR7 with the plastic floating stock there--probably mid 70s--I think it was around $120---those were the days...

PS: Me again,

Mr. Anon, about those lunch counters...

When I was a kid (late 70's into the 1980's) there was a Woolworth's with a lunch counter in the nearby plaza.
The local Kmart had one too...
https://tinyurl.com/5ep33fee

Vidler's is pretty cool, Mr. Moderator.
(There is no shortage of snow in East Aurora.)
Not many things in Western New York worth seeing.
But there are a few...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Flame_Falls
https://www.worldatlas.com/r/w1200/upload/fa/b3/63/shutterstock-756546268.jpg

*Many thanks to Mr. Alarmist for turning me on to 12ft.io
It works like a champ on many different websites...
Thank you. 🙂

Also, cheers to Messrs. Kief, Blanc, Krug and Hail.
I hope you're all having a great evening. 🍺

☮

PS Nicely done Mr. Klapperschlange.

PS: Thanks for the mall update, Mr. Anon. I recall something like that in Target but now just a Starbucks inside near the front door. I wonder if those hot dog/coke counters died during the COVID panic. When I was checking out the website of Adam Smith's Vidler's 5+10, I first wondered whether it was still open for the same reason. It's still there though, as there was news from this year.

PS

I once saw a Woolworths in a shopping mall, as recently as the 80s.

My hometown had a Ben Franklin's - it even had a lunch counter. I guess Targets nowadays have something like a lunch counter although I can't imagine ever eating there.

PS: Thanks for chiming in, Mr. Klapperschlange. About the clerks, most of these stores are in the rougher parts of town (not the rural ones), so I guess these clerks must deal with a lot of trouble. Yet, to make money like this, you've got have a whole lot of people passing through the register. You'd think they'd appreciate guys like us, but I dunno...

No more ice machine? I'll pick any excuse to quit going to some place I don't need to anyway, like McDonalds. There's one fast food - stuff I shouldn't be eating - food place nearby that I went to once. I know I'll never be tempted again,, as service was completely 3rd-worldly. At one point, I didn't care if they got the toppings right on the burger. 10 minutes later, yeah ... no mas!

PS Dollar Stores are a construct of the white male patriarchy and will be redistributed for the good of the glorious people's unity collective.
All kidding aside, business is way down at the $1.25 store since the unity price hikes went live.
They removed the ice machine and I haven't been back.
Also some clerks don't want Traditional Americans or the Neo-Kulaks spending their filthy capitalist pig money there.

PS: Great spoof about McDonalds and Russia, Dieter! I saw your word "satire", but by the time I got into it, I'd forgotten and kinda believed it until "UMSHIT**** researcher'.

McDonalds or Vodka, pick your poison.

Mr. Smith, that Vidler's 5 and 10 looks great. It was a classy look in that picture with snow falling. Thanks for the report on the 2 dollar stores near you.

PS: Good afternoon, Gentlemen,

This is the coolest five and dime I've ever been in...
https://www.vidlers5and10.com/

When I was a kid you could buy some stick candy at Vidler's for 10c, but not much else.

Dollar General charges more than a dollar for pretty much everything.
Dollar Tree used to be a buck for everything, now it's $1.25 and more for some items.

“Go long on lamp-posts and piano wire.”
“If there is any justice they will certainly feel the ropes tightening around their necks.”

How about one of these?
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/2/2a/Garrote.jpg

Looks like a nice way to handle the criminals masquerading as “government”.

☮

PS
Mod. - a little bit OT - but otherwise a great satire about US food commerce in the times of war - so: If you don't mind:

"But recent Russian research has shown that McDonald's also played a role in Russia's decline: "We discovered that the high-calorie, high-carb, addictive, chemical-soaked drek served by McDonald's accounted for nearly half of the massive loss of life expectancy that Russia suffered after its defeat in the Cold War," said UMSHIT**** researcher Morgansky Spurlockowitsch. Spurlockowitsch explains: "This means that McDonald's has killed almost as many Russians as Hitler in the last three decades! Expelling McDonalds from Russia will save millions of Russian lives and go a long way in addressing our demographic deficit.”

PS: Thanks, Alarmist for the story of the wonderful old days. No "leave a penny, take a penny" now involves more REAL money than "leave a quarter, take a quarter" would now. I do see people leave some nickels or dimes in there occasionally. During the PanicFest, I noticed that these little ash trays or whatever they were were taken out, cause, germs!

When, I'd leave a few pennies, the cashier would just sweep them up! Therefore, if there's no tray, that is, I'm in the habit of putting the coins where a customer can see them but the cashier can't.

Mr. Blanc, thank you for that description of olde Chicago and the changes that occurred. You're in the burbs though, now, as I recall?

I'll knock out that dupe in a little while.

PS I barely remember Chicago before the blacks and then the Mexicans and Asians and Middle Easterners moved in. I do remember that my great uncle Frank lived on the 4400 block of south Drexel Parkway. I’d play on the parkway while my grandmother and mother visited my uncle. That neighborhood is now a crime-ridden ghetto where no white person is safe. The South Shore neighborhood was still largely Jewish when I started grad school in the late 1960s. It’s now a violent black ghetto. Until recently, most North Side neighborhoods were reasonably safe, but since the Summer of Floyd the fellas have learned that they can export their crime and violence all over the city with little fear of consequences more severe than perhaps being arrested and released on their own recognizance with no charges filed. Now muggings and carjackings are regular occurrences even in high-dollar neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park. Things have been on the downhill slide for decades, but things have now passed the point of no return under Lightfoot and Kim Foxx. The only possible alternative to Detroit Southwest is if the Mexicans, who are about a third of the population, manage to take political control from the blacks. In that case, we’ll have Juarez North.

PS

My introduction to taxes also came very early. I dutifully collected the savings stamps my mother received at the grocery store, and when I had enough, I took them to the redemption center just down the street from my elementary school (yes, in 1960’s America, an 8 y.o. could still walk home from school and even make stops along the way). I had bought things like candy (no sales tax) before using Coke bottles I picked up as I walked on (yeah, people just threw 2¢ bottles into other peoples’ front yards ... go figure), so I had a little pocket money, but not much.

Anyway, I handed a few books of stamps over to the clerk for my airplane building kit, and as he handed it over, he said, “That’ll also be 8¢, please.” When I asked why, I got my first lesson about giving the Governor his piece of the action. Man I hated that Governor guy!

I only had 4¢, but the clerk took pity on me and put up the other 4¢ from his own pocket, in the days long before “take a penny, leave a penny.” I still remember that guy’s generosity, when 4¢ was near a half Milkyway®️ that was still 133% the size of one you get nowadays for a buck-fifty.

PS: Mr. Blanc, would you say Chicago was a pretty livable place 25 years ago? I've been there a number of times since, but didn't stay long enough to really see its downfall.

When I was really small, I would go with my brother to one small store to buy a pack or two of baseball card for 5 cents apiece. The guy running the place told us that we'd have to pay 11 cents if we bought 2 packs together, due to something about the Governor. Our Dad explained what that was about, but I didn't get the part about no tax on the one pack for a while. I thank the gentleman at the store for starting me off on the road to tax avoidance. He may not be around, and the store is surely not.

Really, I liked the special gum with the powder more than the baseball cards.

PS: Alarmist, I am not sure if you meant 133% larger, or 133% of the size (33% larger). When I think about this I try to take into account that when you're a kid, the whole world looks bigger, event candy bars. Milky Way was my favorite. I' d go with dark chocolate now - 75-85%, not the stuff that tastes like chalk.

I do remember gumball machines with very big pieces of gum for a quarter. One time at the drug store with our friends and no parents, we found that the handle on this particular one could go round and round with no additional money. I've never had so many big-ass grape gumballs in my life since.'

A penny would buy the size gumball that costs a quarter today.

Agreed about the oligarchs.

PS I fondly recall the Woolworth’s on Main Street of my hometown. It had a large table with bins of toy WWII soldiers, either die cast metal or plastic. They couldn’t have been more than a nickel a piece, maybe less. We’d buy handsfull of them. There was a Ben Franklin in the next town over. My aunt worked there. In the larger suburb a half dozen stops down the railroad, there was a larger Woolworth’s that had. popcorn machine (I always got a bag when we shopped there) and a G. C. Murphy’s. As late as the 1990s, the Woolworth’s on State Street in the Loop was a go-to place for a lot of items. You’d have a hard time coming up with something more genuinely American than a dime store, something that the evil people who rule us have destroyed. If there is any justice they will certainly feel the ropes tightening around their necks.

PS

I went to a Dollar Tree a few months back, and apparently Brandon’s economic miracle had caused it to “break the buck,” albeit in the direction opposite to the original meaning of the term when applied to money market funds.

I remember way back when a dime would get you a Milky Way bar roughly 133% larger than the one you get nowadays for a-buck-fifty.

That sucking sound you hear is the value of your banked human capital being sucked into the pockets of our oligarch class, with ten percent to the Big Guy and his political cronies, of course.

Go long on lamp-posts and pIano wire.