Olde tyme video stores of GR

Renting movies from video stores has been a favorite activity for a good part of my life. The recent news that the last of Blockbuster's stores will close seemed to make official the ending of the video store era.

Of course I enjoy Netflix. I watch a ton of stuff online for sure but there's something about browsing the aisles of a video store that will always seem so right.

I used to frequent the Blockbuster on Leonard, attached to the side of Ralph's grocery. The layout was different from most of them, kinda maze-like. It seemed particularly old-school to me. The building has been abandoned for a few years now. I think Ralph's is using it for storage.

...Allow me a moment to brag that when Eastown Blockbuster closed down, I snagged their copy of Revenge Of The Nerds 1 and 2 for $5! So that's a win I guess-- but I will kind of miss that place and really I'll miss a ton of different places that used to be around Grand Rapids that are no more. It's maybe a little ironic that quite a few of the smaller chains were most likely driven out of business by Blockbuster.

Some friends and I were trying to brainstorm a list of local video stores we could remember:

-Video Palace
-Video Tyme
-Video Master
-Eye On Video
-Hollywood Video
-Crazy Larry's and Believe In Music both rented video
-Meijer and Rite Aid used to have a rental section
-Magnum Opus
-My Video Shoppe
-Hypnotic Eye
-And of course Blockbuster

...I am sure the list is missing some! 

As of 2013 the only video rental that I know of still around Grand Rapids is Family Video....

On this particular night, the Spice Girls movie "Spice World" was showing on all the monitors inside, which enjoyably  heightened the time-warp vibe I now feel when I go here.

So is Family Video the last video store open in Grand Rapids?  Are there some others we didn't think of?

Updates

So my retro shirts made a splash on facebook a bit ago and from that it seems some new folks are finding my blog (Hi!)

If you want to get an automatic notice whenever something gets added, follow me on Twitter.

I update less frequently in the summer months but as the cold season sets in, I get more active here.

Thanks for stopping by and sharing the memories!

Photo Gallery: Monroe Center, mid-70s

A little time-portal to the Monroe Mall area downtown, courtesy City of Grand Rapids archives.
Click photos for a larger view...

Electric Avenue

Electric Avenue was a dance club that existed during the 80s on West 28th St. between Kalamazoo and Breton. I try to mostly post about things that I remember well-- so that I can have maybe some interesting stories to tell at least. Honestly though, I only went to Electric Avenue one time, sort of dragged there by a girl I was hoping to get with (didn't happen!) though we got to slow dance and make out to The Cure.

I remember the place being quite busy and full of flashing neon hanging all around the ceiling. It had a two-level setup, similar to Top Of The Rock, where there was sort of the "dance pit."  I also remember them playing some music videos, including Bronski Beat, "Hit That Perfect Beat." ...Actually, how did they spin videos back in those days? From VHS tapes?? Wow.

I think at some point in the early 90s, it became "Dick's Resort," then sat vacant a bit, then got demolished. Currently, "Xtreme Car Audio" sits on the spot it used to occupy.  Actually, an exclusively car-audio business still being around is kind of impressive.

Here's the tiny handful of photos I could find of the goings on at Electric Avenue (click on them to get a larger view). 

If you used to go there and have any stories, please share 'em in the comments!

DJ Mark McConnell, Danny Douglas (KLQ, Pepsi Dance Traxx), and--some guy

Maybe this is Halloween. I prefer to think people just dressed crazy there all the time. 

Shit gets crazy when Spuds McKenzie shows up!

Party in the front AND party in the back, ladies!

North Kent Mall shirts!

I dunno, I just thought it'd be cool to make a faux vintage North Kent Mall shirt. 

I'll do one for anybody else who wants one for $12. I can do any color combo you'd like too, though I think the green and white looks "correct."

 Get one through my etsy shop!



 

NORTH KENT MALL Photo Memoirs

There is pretty much nothing to be found out out there on the internet about North Kent Mall so I thought it was cool that my previous post about it had become a little online meeting spot for people who remember it fondly to come and share memories. And wow, I got linked by deadmalls.com.

Anyway, a post on the NKM facebook recently caught my attention (and made my NKM blog post seem like the work of a 1st grader!) A guy named Mark A. Lenon posted some personal memories and photos of the mall from just before it closed. 

With his kind permission I'm reposting it here. All credit for the writing and photos go to Mark.  Thanks for letting me share your memories on GR-Retro.

My NORTH KENT MALL Photo Memoirs

-By Mark A Lenon
These photos are my eyewitness memoirs to the final decline and death of the once magnificent Grand Rapids architecture known as NORTH KENT MALL.

From June 1998 until that sad day in 2001, I still frequented the mall on a weekly basis. I worked at the old Meijer offices (the old Turnstyle building) at the corner of 5 mile and Plainfield Ave. On periodic breaks and lunch periods, I would walk over to the Mall to purchase a snack from General Nutrition Center or pick up my developed film from CPI Photo Finish. Other times, I would just stroll down memory lane and enjoy the quiet atmosphere of nostalgia. Every time I visited the Mall, it was truly a bittersweet experience for me.

NORTH KENT MALL was my proverbial playground. I have such fond childhood memories of my parents taking my brother and I there. I remember how wondrous and huge it seemed. So many things to see and experience! It was always a time I eagerly anticipated and would constantly ask my parents, "When are we going to the Mall next?" "This weekend?" "How about today?" "Are we going soon?"

But alas, when I finally got my driver's license on my 16th birthday, the very first place I drove to was the Mall and the Movies at North Kent Theater. I spent so much time there at my favorite stores...Record Land, Music Land, Walden Books and of course, the Arcade. I am so proud to say I am an original Video Whiz Kid thanks to Aladdin's Castle. Before I turned 16, that is where I spent all of my hard earned allowance, lawn-mowing and farm work money. I am so thankful I had these experiences...sifting through record bins looking for my favorite band's new LP album and playing all the classic upright cabinet video games in the arcade atmosphere.

Besides going to the Mall, my next favorite thing to do was seeing movies at the theaters at North Kent. I saw SO MANY movies there during my high school years and during the summer after graduation (1984). Those were some awesome years for movies! I have always loved going to the movies and most of my cherished cinematic memories are of times at that theater. I took a lot of dates there as well as seeing movies with my best friends. I also saw lots of films there just by myself. I loved cruising solo in my bad ass Plymouth Fury III...blasting my stereo and making NORTH KENT MALL and the Movies at North Kent my favorite destination any day of the week.

Decades later, in the year 2000, I saw that the end of an era was drawing nigh. I asked my brother to meet me at the Mall one afternoon in December...ironically right before Christmas. We decided to walk through the Mall together to reminisce and I would photo document the interior for preservation. Sadly we both knew that very shortly, this place that created so many treasured memories for us, would be gone forever. We took in every detail we possibly could before finally walking out the main doors one last time.

The following Spring I decided to photograph exterior shots of the Mall and the movie theater as companion images to the interior images I had taken. It was a chilly Saturday morning in April of 2001 and the clarity of that early morning light manifested the sadness of the reality of the scene...abandonment.

Even though I vowed I would not take pictures of the demolition, I allowed myself to observe on a very depressing, rainy and dreary afternoon the destruction of the pyramidal entrance way overhang. I am not ashamed to say I shed tears while I watched before I finally decided to drive away and not look back. As the old adage goes; "All good things..."

Please enjoy these photos and hopefully they will bring back pleasant memories for you as they always do for me.

~ Mark A. Lenon

Hot In The City "Grand Rapids!"

I was working on putting together a sweet "summer" music mix and thought of "Hot In The City" by Billy Idol. This caused me to have a flashback to 1988...

Me and a couple of my "new waver" friends were hanging out dying our hair black and listening to the radio. "Hot In The City" comes on and I was kinda half listening to it. So it gets to the part where Billy yells "New York!" BUT-- instead he yells "Grrand Rrrapids!"
Over the years, any time I randomly hear the song, it always makes me think of this. After so long, I sometimes question whether some of my memories actually happened or maybe were just a dream.

Anyway, this afternoon seemed like a good time to learn about the possibly imaginary "Grand Rapids" edit of "Hot In The City." (It actually is really f'n hot in the city right now)

According to wikipedia: "Although the released version of the song contains a verse in which Idol shouts "New York," other versions of the song were recorded for various radio stations, including one in which he shouts "Amarillo", "Minneapolis", or "New Haven."

I hit up Danny Czekalinski, aka Danny Douglas, who was an on-air personality at KLQ in the late 80s... "yes....he did customs for every city in the top 100 markets and Grand Rapids was one of them. You are correct!"

So obviously, the happiest of endings to this story would be me making available a download of an mp3 of the song. I would love to get a hold of a copy but I imagine it to be impossible. 

According to Danny "It was on reel to reel tape from the record company. Phil Tower at WOOD radio may have a copy."  

I'm half tempted to pursue it but sometimes I have to stop myself from bothering folks with these weird little scavenger hunts of mine. Anyway, it's kinda sweet confirming that this did exist!

Hope everyone's keepin cool and enjoying summer. I hope to have some new stuff to post soon!