Blockbuster Video, 399 Silver Bluff Road (Aiken) : March 2012 29 comments
12 March 2012:
11 March 2013:
11 March 2014:
I took an annual trip to Aiken last week, and was amazed at the amount of storm damage over there. I had though all the "worst tree kills since Hugo" headlines were a bit of hyperbole since I didn't see anything like that here in Columbia.
Not that that has anything to do with this post. While I was there I also noticed that the Blockbuster in the Bi-Lo parking lot on Silver Bluff Road is finally getting a new tenant. Given how many Blockbuster closings I've done here, I figured I might as well add this one too. (Eventually, I'll get the Litchfield Beach store as well).
UPDATE 5 October 2020: Updating tags, adding map icon.
29 Responses to 'Blockbuster Video, 399 Silver Bluff Road (Aiken) : March 2012'
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Blockbuster Video, 399 Silver Bluff Road (Aiken) : March 2012'.
-
rick
17 Mar 14 at 11:32 am
-
A few more that I remember, some not so technologically advanced as others. Record Stores, Pay Phones and Phone Booths, Service Stations, The Milk Man, Convenience Stores without gas pumps, Movie Theaters on Main Street, Stores with signs saying "Air Conditioned Inside", Only three or four TV stations, Saturday morning cartoons, Shows coming on TV saying "In Color" then "In Stereo", Balsa wood airplanes. I could think of more.
rick
17 Mar 14 at 12:04 pm
-
I am aware that my last two comments were not the most eloquent I have posted, if I have ever posted an eloquent comment but, I hope I have given thought to you in what I was trying to say. Things that are not around anymore, or things, etc. that are almost gone, with the exception of businesses, as this site is devoted to, due to the changes that seem to happen so quickly. And as I age, things do seem to change quickly. Like 10 cent draft night at the clubs on Rosewood Drive back in the 70's, I don't know where that came from, just another thought from a 58 year old has been. Then again, I would prefer to say "A 58 year old used to be."
Rick
17 Mar 14 at 1:35 pm
-
@Rick - I think you have summed up a lot of the things that have been mentioned by us baby boomers on here in the past. I'm almost 56 and recall everything you mentioned. I'm just gonna toss out a few memories for good measure (not all technology related)...
...Drug store lunch counters and soda fountains
...Multi-party telephone lines
...Drive-in theaters (thank you Big-Mo for hanging on)
...CB Radios (when everyone seemed to have one, thanks 'Smokey & The Bandit')
...Insurance agents that came to you door to pick up your premiums
...Video game arcades from the Pac-Man era
...Animated Main St. Christmas window dressings
...2, 3, 4 or more for one happy hours
...To get an adult beverage on Sundays, you had to be a member of a private club
...Actually hearing music on AM radio
...When companies called their employees personnel and not human resources
...TV and appliance repair stores (I still wonder how Whitehall TV repair is still in business)
...Jukeboxes (45's & CD's)
...Fast food restaurants without drive-thru'sAnyone else out there want to add anything to the list??
Homer
17 Mar 14 at 11:35 pm
-
I may be younger than Homer and Rick but here are a few things I've seen fade away in my lifetime:
- being able to walk into the gate/boarding area an an airport without a boarding pass
- 35mm cameras
- dial-up internet
- Windows 95 & 98 (now XP is fading off as well)
- JB White
- Continental Airlines
- Northwest Airlines
- Independence Air
- Atlantic Southeast Airlines
- Comair
- TWA
- ATA Airlines
- large CRT-type TVs and computer monitors
- Revco
- JB White
- Eckerd
- Phar-Mor (remember shopping the Harbison Court location with my mom when we were in Elementary School)
- movies on VHS
- 3½" floppy disks (1.38 Megabytes)It won't be long before US Airways and AirTran Airways will fade off into the sunset...
Office Depot and OfficeMax are in the process of a merger as well that will result most likely in the OfficeMax name fading off into the suset...
The following retailers have closed their physical stores but maintain a presence in the form of their respective (dot)com names:
- Service Merchandise
- Circuit City
- Comp USA
- Linens N ThingsJust since 2001, the following auto brands have gone out of production:
- Saturn
- Oldsmobile
- Pontiac
- Plymouth
- Hummer
- MercuryAndrew
18 Mar 14 at 12:11 am
-
@Andrew & Rick
How about....
...not just getting into a boarding area without a pass, but walking right down to the tarmac fence to watch the planes take off?
...when you could smoke on a plane
...when you could get a hot meal on a plane
...when you could get a free drink on a plane in coach
...Studebaker's (the car & the club)
...DeSoto's (barely)
...Sears' and JC Penny's catalogs (this has been a recent topic)
...The 'old' Radio Shack (another recent topic)
...when beer was sold at The State Fair (not to mention the 'risque' sideshow attractions)
...$.35 or less per gallon gasoline
...when everyone used dictation machines and typewriters
...when saying 'I work with computers' was met with wide eyes and 'Wow' comments
...when every item in grocery, drug stores, etc were individually priced (no scanners)
...when cashiers actually had to know how to 'compute' changeAny more????
Homer
18 Mar 14 at 1:07 am
-
@Rick I am only 35 and I find myself saying "I remember when..." a lot these days. My husband isn't from here originally and I am always telling him what this or that building used to be. Heck I remember when Walmart came to West Columbia! It seems like the world has changed at a rapid pace over just the last 10-15 years or so. One of the things I love about this site is the nostalgia it allows me to experience.
TahoeChic
18 Mar 14 at 9:14 am
-
@TahoeChic - I couldn't agree more. I have relived so many memories since stumbling across this site. Seems like everything is changing at a faster and faster rate as time passes!!
Homer
18 Mar 14 at 10:29 pm
-
@Homer- sometimes I can't remember what I ate one day ago, but I remember the names of stores long gone from Main St.
I'd also like to add that I am old enough to remember when Main Street was where you went shopping for school clothes. I don't think I ever set foot in the Belk at Dutch Square until the one downtown closed. As I was telling hubby the other day, you used to feel safe walking around downtown. There were a few homeless people but it was like the same five people every time. You came to almost know them and recognize them, and there was a police presence. You weren't accosted and followed by people and made to feel unsafe like you are now. I really like Cowboy Steakhouse and Mast General, but honestly I don't feel safe parking and walking a few blocks down there like I used to.
TahoeChic
19 Mar 14 at 8:26 am
-
@TahoeChic - do you remember Tots To Teens on Main St.? That's where my folks bought lots of my clothes when I was a kid. It wasn't until Dutch Square opened that we started leaving Main St. in the past.i
Homer
19 Mar 14 at 8:53 pm
-
I think Homer, TahoeChic and Rick would enjoy contemplating the things Ellen mentioned as disappearing in http://youtu.be/posVRXQlv6o as it wouldn't surprise me to they would remember quite a few of them from the heyday thereof...
Andrew
19 Mar 14 at 11:39 pm
-
@Andrew - thanks, that was a funny cool video....
Ahh - the rotary dial phone that was made out of stamped steel and bakelite. As a kid, I thought that thing weighed a ton....
Homer
20 Mar 14 at 12:13 am
-
@Homer - I sure do remember Tots to Teens! I got many an outfit from there as a child.
@Andrew - that was a funny video! I lived with my grandparents as a child, and they had a rotary phone...heck they didn't get rid of it until the late 90s!
TahoeChic
20 Mar 14 at 1:55 pm
-
Surely I'm not the only one who still has a rotary phone..
ted
20 Mar 14 at 5:04 pm
-
@ted - And AOL
Rick
20 Mar 14 at 7:58 pm
-
I remember friends that went online and never left AOL's domain. There was no need to. Play Slingo, chat, IM's, that's all one needed to enjoy a computer back then. It was like going to Florida and never leaving the hotel.
Rick
20 Mar 14 at 8:01 pm
-
Ba ding, You've got mail. YEE Haw.
Rick
20 Mar 14 at 8:03 pm
-
Man - AOHell sucked!! It should have been 'Ba ding, you've got spam'. A huge chat room/IM client that just happened to be able to browse the web. A friend of mine had it and he couldn't even attempt to do anything on the web for some danged chat or IM window popping up asking 'a/s/l'?? He was paying more for that dial up piece of crap than I was paying for broadband!!
Homer
20 Mar 14 at 11:50 pm
-
@ted - I don't have a rotary phone but I do still have one with a pulse/tone dial swith!! I also just through away an answering machine that used micro-cassettes....
Homer
20 Mar 14 at 11:52 pm
-
The sad thing is AOL bought *Time-Warner*. Think about that one for a minute. Whole books have been written about what a stupid idea that was and how such a misguided notion could ever have come to fruition.
On the plus side, I didn't have to buy 3.5 floppy disks for years.
ted
21 Mar 14 at 12:02 am
-
@ted - I made a wind chime out of the CD's, didn't make much noise but it reflected light like crazy!!!
Homer
21 Mar 14 at 12:33 am
-
PS - everyone on here knows what I think of Time Warner...
Homer
21 Mar 14 at 12:33 am
-
I first logged onto AOL around '92 with a Compaq 386 PC and a 14.4K modem. Everytime I clicked on a link the little AOL logo in the corner would spin sometimes for minutes before any portion of a site would open. The monthly charge back then was something like $9.95 for 10 hours and an additional $1.95 for each hour over that.
On the plus side AOL was adding something like 100,000 users every month and their shares were splitting every 6-8 months. I rode that train until the Time Warner merger and they were like an anvil on AOL's cape. It is amazing that AOL is still in existence today.
Terry
21 Mar 14 at 1:04 pm
-
Years ago, I used to go to the Pizza Bistro (the old Mother Tuckers) occasionally to see live music (check the links for them under alphabetical closings). They had two or three PC's in the club that had internet access for anyone that wanted to use them. It was so funny to sit down and check out the browser history on these machines. 99% porn all the time. And on top of that so many people had posted so much crap out on AOL that every pervert in the world was messaging these machines every 10 seconds. It was a riot!!!!
Homer
21 Mar 14 at 11:57 pm
-
AOL's doing pretty well as an advertising company nowadays. They're serving ads to Yahoo and Microsoft users, and to their own sites - HuffPo, Engadget, TechCrunch, among others. Company's worth about $3.5bn.
Jason
22 Mar 14 at 4:47 pm
-
Jason, you seem to have a handle on AOL. Do you work in that field?
Terry
22 Mar 14 at 8:49 pm
-
I do, but what I know of AOL's goings-on is mostly from following tech stocks.
Jason
23 Mar 14 at 4:41 pm
-
I still recall an old video that went around years ago about AOL 6.0. I'm sure a bunch of you have seen it. Two of the funniest parts are when one person says that all she feels for AOL is righteous indignation and the other is a comment one person made, 'I can play checkers with 9 year olds that say "Eat my s**t, a**hole!".'. It wouldn't be funny unless it were true. I used to get a kick out of some of the pure crap that my buddy used to put up with when he had an account with them. And yes, I have the video saved on my computer....haha!!
Homer
23 Mar 14 at 11:21 pm
-
I realize I'm about 4 years late with this comment, but it never occurred to me that the Blockbuster that I worked at from 1995-2000 would have a listing here.
radwolf76
1 Oct 18 at 5:48 pm
Ahh.. The good ole day's. How we miss the simpler times. Funny how that sounds in reference to Blockbuster Stores. Since it hasn't been all that long ago Blockbuster first opened, relatively speaking. Remember Blockbuster pavilion In Charlotte? Remember the fun of driving down to Blockbuster to pick out a movie or two to watch on he weekends.
Blockbuster closing is a clear sign of how fast technology is advancing. Think how long rotary dial telephones were around, how long radio was around before television become wide spread. Picture tube TV's. The big 10 foot satellite dish's. Bag type cell phones. Cassette and 8-Track tapes, albums for that matter. Years ago tech stuff was around for some time, now day's it comes and goes before some buy a new car.