Tuesday, July 04, 2006

my neighborhood | Georgia Retail Memories

Were you sad when Rich's departed? Do you remember Cumberland Mall in its glory days? Did you find "everything under the sun" at Richway or buy your cereal at Big Star? Do the names Davison's, Levy's, Kirven's, Kessler's or J.B. White ring a bell?

My friend J.T. has created Georgia Retail Memories, a blog dedicated to photographing, preserving, documenting and capturing what has been lost in terms of retail in Georgia (with some content from Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina). Anything retail is fair game here including malls, discount stores, catalog retailers, small tenants, restaurants, drug stores and fast food places.

Anybody who visits J.T.'s site is free to contribute information, photographs or anything else they'd like to make this site even more interesting and informative.

He states, "I want this to be as fascinating for everybody else here as this is to me, and this will give me a chance to feature the highlights of my work in researching and photographing so many of these places I grew up with that now have either died or changed drastically."

It's a wonderful website, and I highly suggest checking it out.

5 comments:

  1. Totally off-topic (well, not entirely) but I saw my first ever Belk's a few days ago. They just built this massive pedestrian mall in Branson, MO called Branson Landing, and they have a Belk's. You blog about Belk's occasionally, and I had never previously been in the presence of one!

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  2. That is a cool new blog. It's the Georgia version of Lost Retail City.

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  3. Carrie: I totally forgot about Belk opening in Branson. From what I've herd about that store, it's a pretty typically-sized small-town Belk. Did you go in? I'm sure it's not impressive, but it should heve been fairly nice.

    Billy: Retail history (and historians) are everywhere. J.T. is one of the first person I met that shared our hobby.

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  4. The best thing about the Internet is that it allows people with similar interests to share with each other, no matter how obscure those interests may be. I'm really glad to know that there are many other people out there who have an interest in retail history.

    J.T.'s site is off to a great start. Having never been to Georgia (aside from the Atlanta airport), I'm learning a lot. Thanks for sharing this one!

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  5. Your point is well-taken. I thought I was the only person who was obsessed with this stuff, but thankfully I was wrong.

    I haven't been to Georgia in about 5 years, and I haven't been to Atlanta in about 20 years. a lot has changed, and I mean a whole lot. Seeing what's going on with the local retail is always great for me, and having J.T. share it with us is awesome.

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