Howdy folks, and Happy New Year’s Eve! In celebration of what you’ll likely be doing tonight, let’s take a look at a place where you can pop-corks. Houston’s, most prominent liquor store chain, Spec’s. We will again be taking a look at a Spec’s that is housed in a former Eckerd, making this part two of Speckerd’s! In our last episode, we discussed how overbuilding in Houston hurt area drug stores, leading to some stores that sit vacant for years if they’re ever reused. While the overbuilding wasn’t as bad for Eckerd who was the redheaded stepchild of JCPenney at …
Keep readingYear: 2021
HEBway a Rare Example in 2021
Howdy folks, welcome back to another edition of Houston Historic Retail. Today we’re taking a look at an HEB at 200 W Hopkins St, San Marcos, TX 78666 that, while not in Houston, was once part of the Houston division of Safeway and AppleTree stores. Located in San Marcos, it lost its Houston affiliation with the 1994 purchase by H-E-B. The store was built in 1984, to replace an older location on the same property. The first Safeway in San Marcos originally opened in 1972, built on most of a city block that was purchased from various homeowners and other …
Keep readingYou got me Vintage Houston Commercials for Christmas? How Remarkable!
Merry Christmas Eve y’all I hope this post finds you well on this unseasonably warm morning. Although not unwelcome by folks like me, who prefer to stay out of the cold. To mark the special occasion, we’re taking a look at some presents left by an Anonymous visitor, though not necessarily through the chimney. While I’ll leave the joy of “opening” these presents until you read the post, I will note that what we’re taking a look at today are all vintage Houston commercials that ran from the mid 80s to early 90s. Sign-On You wake up early, too early. …
Keep readingThompson’s Antique Center to close doors, leaving Northwest Mall with no retailers by 2022
Greetings readers, I have some sad news for you as we approach the end of the year. Northwest Mall’s final retail tenant, Thompson’s Antique Center, is set to close their doors for the last time December 31st. The shutdown comes with little notice to the public, and a similarly small amount of heads up for vendors. After speaking with one vendor at the antique center, they supposedly received only about a month’s worth of notice. The space occupied by the antique center is as of 2021 the only retailer still operating out of what was once Northwest Mall. While a …
Keep readingRetail News: Remarkable! Randalls Returns to Card Free Savings
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Here’s some recent retail news that I found to be quite remarkable! For the first time in almost exactly 25 years, Randalls shoppers no longer need to have a Randalls Remarkable Card, or the Safeway Club Card equivalent, to get most sale prices. I was recently reading some new posts at the Retail Watchers forum recently when I came across a post from someone indicating that their Randalls store in Austin was advertising that the card was no longer necessary to get sale prices. After …
Keep readingA “Sketchy” former Walgreens, where you can only get shoes!
Howdy folks, and welcome back to HHR. Today we’re again tackling our overcrowding of drug stores, a topic we’ve covered once before, and will come up again in a second part. However, today we’re not checking out an Eckerd but rather a Walgreens! As mentioned previously, Walgreen’s building campaign really began as a response to the entry of CVS into the Houston market. Both Walgreens and Eckerd had steady growth in Houston during 90s and early 2000s, expanding to match new neighborhoods. As well, older strip center locations were replaced with freestanding stores capable of providing drive-thru pharmacy services. One …
Keep readingDemolition Update: Game over for Garden Oaks Family Bingo, and the strange former Kroger it occupied
Howdy folks, and welcome back to a Demolition Update (This is not a full Demolition List, as that is still on hiatus due to lack of time). Today we’re taking a look at what was, up until a few months ago, the premiere Bingo Hall in Garden Oaks. Unfortunately, it seems that this former supermarket is about to meet the fate of a good number of the area’s original homes. Sitting at 641 W Crosstimbers St, Houston, TX 77018, the structure was built in 1974 by the Kroger Company. This was not Kroger’s first store in the Garden Oaks area, …
Keep readingTaco Casa: Fast Food the way your parents remember it!
Fast food is engrained in our culture, and its prevalence has led to a specific way of doing things. But do you remember a time before combo meals? A time when you couldn’t refill your own drinks? A time when neon and Earth tones were considered complimentary colors? Chances are you do, or if not you live vicariously through online reminiscence. If you’re yearning to relive those days then Taco Casa is for you. It evokes a time before fast food over expanded and the resultant quality drop. Taco Casa first debuted in Fort Worth in 1972, and has slowly …
Keep readingClear Lake’s HEB in the old Albertsons finally meets it end!
Clear Lake as a city has an interesting history, the 30,000 acres were pieced together by a wealthy businessman to build a ranch on. However, by 1938 the ranch would be sold to Humble Oil company after crude oil fields were found. While Humble began to pump oil from some areas, most of the land sat vacant until 1962, a year after NASA announced plans for the Manned Spacecraft Center. Humble Oil, announced their plans to use the Clear Lake land to build a planned community. They would do so under their Friendswood Development Company, who had already been working …
Keep readingDeseret Industries Houston: When the Osmonds met Goodwill
Thrifting is ubiquitous in Houston. There are people who make their entire livings going to thrift stores, and reselling merchandise they find there. Outside of business prospects, many of us enjoy thrifting simply for the fun of it. You never really know what you’re going to find with a megalopolis worth of donations, in a repurposed retailer. I’ve thrifted a good amount of vintage electronics in my day, including a great deal of video games. However, my focus as of late is more retail based signage, memorabilia, glassware, etc… However, these are the exact types of things that other thrifters …
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