An historic place to me!

[Unknown Primate]

Yep!  Two cents here, also.  When it went up to 5, I felt like a millionaire!

[Moonshadow]

I was 11-12 years old and would search the numerous (unfortunately) junkyards and alleys to find pop bottles (or "soda" as some might say).  I'd cash them in at Ross' Hardware & Supermarket, just a couple of blocks from Bob's Store.  Less than two bucks would get me an FM (50 cents), a Creepy or Eerie (35 cents), an Eerie Publications gore mag like Horror Tales or Tales of Voodoo (35 cents), and a bottle of Coca-Cola and a Zero candy bar!  I would read and re-read these mags off and on, all month long - till the next bunch arrived at my favorite store, evidently owned by "Bob"!

Bottles were a major supplement to my allowance as well. Comics were 20 or 25 cents when I started my 'crusade'. The refunds from those bottles really helped! I'd hunt down my books, then hit Taco Bell and get lunch for under a buck, and top it off with Hostess Cupcakes from the 7-11 next door! Those were the days, weren't they?

I like how you and other kids in those days had the independence to just get on your bike and go to wherever you needed to go - as opposed to kids these days who are driven everywhere by their parents.
 

It was a very different experience growing up in the 70s than it is now. No one ever worried about kids getting kidnapped. My parents kept us in line but gave us a lot of freedom too. I'm glad I had a chance to grow up like that, to plan my own days and find a way to do all the things I wanted to do. Also, I had to work for what I wanted -collecting bottles, riding all over town. I earned those comics, and I treasured them.

[Unknown Primate]

When I was "growing up", comic books were 12 cents, with the big annual issues being a quarter.  I was dismayed when they went up to 15 cents!!  A few of my older neighbors would sometimes save bottles for me - I'd repay them by mowing their yard or something, even though they'd insist I didn't have to.  What nice people.  Never told them I was buying gruesome monster magazines with the cash!

[Scatter]

Bottles were a major supplement to my allowance as well. Comics were 20 or 25 cents when I started my 'crusade'. The refunds from those bottles really helped! I'd hunt down my books, then hit Taco Bell and get lunch for under a buck, and top it off with Hostess Cupcakes from the 7-11 next door! Those were the days, weren't they?

It was a very different experience growing up in the 70s than it is now. No one ever worried about kids getting kidnapped. My parents kept us in line but gave us a lot of freedom too. I'm glad I had a chance to grow up like that, to plan my own days and find a way to do all the things I wanted to do. Also, I had to work for what I wanted -collecting bottles, riding all over town. I earned those comics, and I treasured them.

Exactly how I would describe my experience growing up in the 70s. Better days for sure.

[Hepcat]

One of the characteristic features of the New York City streetscape during the traditional monster kid/baby boomer years was something called a candy store. The traditional New York City candy store was a combination of a more modern convenience store with a newstand and lunch counter/soda fountain. As such, they sold everything from milk, bread and cigarettes to soda pop, comic books, baseball cards, school supplies, model kits, carded rack toys, bubble gum and penny candy in a space much smaller than in a present day 7-11 store.  People on their way to work would grab a coffee and buttered roll with a newspaper at their local candy store in the mornings. Newspapers were a particularly big business since New Yorkers would buy as many as two or three newspapers per day in the early sixties. As such the candy stores were badly hurt by the New York newspaper strike of 1962-63.

Here's an excellent writeup by a fellow whose parents operated Harry's Candy Store on 164th Street in Flushing, Queens:

Harry's Candy Store

A candy shop still in operation to the present day is this one at Lexington Avenue and 83rd Street in Manhattan:



Unfortunately though I understand it no longer has kid friendly prices since the Upper East Side neighbourhood in which it's located has been yuppified for decades.

There was a store exactly like one of these New York City candy stores on Richmond Street in my hometown of London, Ontario.  It was directly across the street from St. Peter's School where I was obligated by my parents to attend extracurricular language classes between 4:00 and 5:30 Saturday afternoons. Davis Variety was its name. It had the obligatory lunch counter which the fellow worked himself. I was never drawn to get anything at the lunch counter though (not that I would have had the money anyway of course). Unlike the lunch counters at the downtown Metropolitan, Kresge and Woolworths stores a few blocks away, it was pretty spartan and dingy and just didn't appeal to me. Mr. Davis himself was almost a comic book caricature of the old guy working a hot grill and his lunch counter never seemed to have any customers on Saturday afternoons. He probably got the bulk of his business frying up breakfast and lunch for the teachers at St. Peter's. And of course everybody smoked and read newspapers in those days including the teachers and the respective bishops, priests and staff at the adjacent St. Peter's Basilica and St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral. 

The Davis Variety had most everything else to tempt a young boy with a quarter or two in his pocket though. It was one of the very few stores I knew that stocked Black Cat Bubble Gum which was licorice flavoured and was somehow chewier than Bazooka or even Dubble Bubble. I remember happily chewing on Black Cat and blowing black bubbles for hours!



I also very clearly remember buying baseball cards at Davis' every so often:





The wooden magazine rack was located on the other side of the store from the lunch counter and was thus well situated to sneak a peak at the insides of the titty mags. There would of course have been something wrong with any little boy who wouldn't glance at pictures of bare naked ladies given a chance. In fact, I'm sure that the priests from St. Peter's and St. Paul's, if not the bishops themselves, would have been taking the occasional peak as well.

It was at the Davis magazine rack though where I first encountered Green Lantern 26, 28 and 29 and the excitement I felt seeing those issues for the first time is still seared in my mind to this very day. In fact, I'm sure those comics are the reason why I still remember Bill's so vividly.







While St. Peter's and St. Paul's cathedrals are still there, 1979 was the last year for St. Peter's School and the Davis Variety has also been gone for decades. Sadly, I never got to sample a cheeseburger and shake at Davis'. You never know what you've got till it's gone.

 

[Count_Zirock]

It was a very different experience growing up in the 70s than it is now. No one ever worried about kids getting kidnapped. My parents kept us in line but gave us a lot of freedom too. I'm glad I had a chance to grow up like that, to plan my own days and find a way to do all the things I wanted to do. Also, I had to work for what I wanted -collecting bottles, riding all over town. I earned those comics, and I treasured them.

It's really sad to think that kids today just will never know that kind of freedom. I think of a joke that Woody Allen used to tell in his stand-up act back in the '60s:

"My parents told me that if a man ever pulled up to me, and offered me candy and comic books if I got in the car with him-- GO!"

If someone told that joke today, people would be outraged and horrified! But, back then, it was funny, because, of course, no parent would ever say such a thing.

I think about how, just before I got my driver's permit, I used to walk up to "The Avenue" (South Orange Avenue in Newark) and hit up the newsstands for magazines, the R.H. Lincoln 5 & 10 for new "Star Wars" figures and model kits, and walk home with everything crammed into my backpack. Maybe the next day I'd hit the OTHER avenue (18th Avenue, at the far end of our street), and see what some of the smaller newsstands and stores had in stock. And, I was a teenager now-- I didn't have to worry about the occasional teen thug that might have otherwise tried to swipe my haul because I was just a little kid. In fact, now I could STOP those guys doing it to little kids. I didn't even need to fight them, I just had to threaten to tell their moms! And the ones whose parents I didn't know? Well, I was a "husky" kid. Like I used to ask them, "You really want 160-lbs. tap-dancing on your breastbone?"

[neonnoodle]

So haunting that most of these places where we discovered these magazines and monster things, they're all gone or replaced in some way.  The Star Market in Monterey Park, that was a brick building, really old structure, and they had lots of DC comics and the "7-Up" candy bars that actually had 7 flavors in different sections.  The TG&Y store, sort of a five and dime, they had AHI monsters, comics and other cool things.  And the old Alhambra Bookstore on Main Street in Alhambra, long gone now, but in their day they were a huge bookstore with everything, including Warren publications, graphic novels and specialty books, in addition to the basic book categories.

[marsattacks666]

The 7-11 that I used to ride my bike to to get comics and Marvel Slurpee cups shut down a while back, and reopened as a Hostess outlet store. Now it's an abandoned building. Sigh...

How sad.   
It seems all our childhood places are slowly disappearing.

[Hepcat]

It's really sad to think that kids today just will never know that kind of freedom.

So haunting that most of these places where we discovered these magazines and monster things, they're all gone or replaced in some way.

Yes, so very sad on both counts.

 

[Hepcat]

...and the "7-Up" candy bars that actually had 7 flavors in different sections.

Wow, seven flavours! Cool!



Neilson's Jersey Milk Treasures was a somewhat similar Canadian chocolate bar but it too is sadly gone:



 

[neonnoodle]

Yes...back to that haunting feeling that we get thinking about places we once visited...buildings long ago razed and built over with new plastic constructions which now themselves are showing signs of age!

It's weird because in memories, these things and places exist so vividly, as if they're still around.  But they're only echoes.

You know what really lights up my day? Looking at my small box of Imagineering goodies...holding a tube of Vampire Blood from 1970, for example, or charging up the glow fangs and watching them glow in the dark.  I feel lucky to be able to do that, to hold a little piece of the 1970's that I remember.  Same thing with an issue of Famous Monsters, or an old Marvel (or DC or Gold Key!) comic book.

[RedKing]

For me the store was a tiny Mom and Pop 5 and dime called Haynor's run by Mr and Mrs Haynor. Mrs Haynor made home baked goodies which were displayed in a glass counter and they sold all sorts of stuff, but what interested me most was the HUGE magazine and comic rack on the back wall! Like Gillfan's train station shop, Haynor's smelled like ink, tobacco and fresh baked goodies. I used to get FM, Creepy,Eerie and Charlton and DC horror comics there all the time in the 70s and 80s, Unfortunately the Haynors retired around 1985 and sold the store off and it is now a Chinese restaraunt. There was also a hobby shop my Dad and I frequented in the local mall for years that also smelled like tobacco. Man this thread actually brings a tear to my eye remembering my store and hearing everyone else's similar tales. It was truly a different and better era growing up in the 60s-80s.

[Hepcat]

There was a store exactly like one of these New York City candy stores on Richmond Street in my hometown of London, Ontario....I don't clearly remember the name but it may have been Bill's Tobacco Shop or Variety.

I tracked the name of the store down today. It was Davis Variety.

Here's a traditional New York City candy store that's been operating in the Borough's Park area of Brooklyn for well over 75 years:

 

 

[Hepcat]

This picture of Almond's Ice Cream Parlour in the English Bay neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia circa 1920 meets the standards the Vancouver Archives sets for historic:



Certainly a nice place to buy ice cream, peanuts, popcorn and cigars anyway!

 

[Wich2]

Great stuff, Mike & gang!

I've tried in vain to find a picture of the long-gone Morey's Newstand, on the corner in Defiance, Ohio were I got much of my genre fix.

A quick walk from our church, that's where we'd go to get the Sunday paper. Mom liked the NY Daily News for its crime feature stories; I loved its great funnies section (full-page DICK TRACY on the cover, etc.)

That's where I saw my first FM, the 1970 Fearbook, and asked for it for my 12th birthday. Spinracks were packed with gems like scifi and horror anthologies. And there were tons of comics, including for a few wonderful years, my favorite version of same, the Treasuries.

Like most of such places in that era, it had a creaky screen door and smelled of the wood floor, tobacco, candy - and paper!

Great memories.
-Craig