My wife and I have a joke about her “shoe museum.” Recently, though, all of the acquisitions have been for the purse annex.
And now may I direct your attention to my CD collection and museum of musical instruments?
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once the supermarket here reorganised the aisles and I didn’t found the butter anymore. Because of Manly Manliness I never asked and bought only peanut butter. for half a year.
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Edison’s! Oh, wow. That place was just out there all by itself – seems weird to have not been at least part of a strip mall. I bought a stereo there; I think the store may have become Service Merchandise by then.
I can’t think where that may have been – in Arlington, anyway. In Ft. Worth, there was a Crystal’s Pizza on Camp Bowie Blvd. That place was awesome (there was another in Irving).
But in Arlington, I can only think of one large arcade (besides Chuck E. Cheese or Showbiz, and bigger than either of them), and that was Forum Fair at Forum 303. (I should clarify that I’m essentially taking about the years 1980 through 1988, so I wouldn’t be very familiar with any arcades before or after that.)
Which brings us back on topic – if I had a quarter, or no quarters, I could always wait in the arcade, which (even if I didn’t play anything) easily beat sitting in some chair while waiting for the rest of my family to finish shopping. (Later, Six Flags Mall had its own arcade, but not as big as Forum Fair). I think Red Bird Mall (Dallas) had an arcade bigger than that – or at least it didn’t have a carousel taking up space where more games could sit.
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There’s a Safeway near me where, for as long as I’ve shopped there, I have been unable to find frozen bagels. Doesn’t matter now, I’ve quit buying them anyway. But, still, I can’t believe a supermarket would not sell frozen bagels at all.
This wasn’t a huge arcade, and it wasn’t in a strip mall. IIRC, it was about the size of a Del Taco, but absolutely packed with cabinets. And the time period was 80-82. Yeah, Edison’s was a weirdo in the middle of almost no retail, but they had toys, and that’s all that mattered to me then. 
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I can’t believe I wouldn’t have known about a place like that. But it’s entirely possible that its existence was deliberately hidden from me. I wonder if it might have been close to the University, which could’ve supported a standalone place like that (and we didn’t make it up there very often).
ETA: @IronEdithKidd It wasn’t the Taco Bueno on South Cooper, was it? They had maybe a dozen games. I wouldn’t say it was packed, but the games (and a few dining tables) did take up an entire room, and probably had more than anywhere else right in that area.
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They’ll never catch a pic of me, because I’m sitting out in the parking lot drinking the juice from my 60 amp cell charger and blasting tunes. Take your time, sweetie!
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Beats the snot out of me, it’s been over 30 years. Funny what you do and don’t remember from being a wee thing. I can’t tell you where that arcade was, but the stern, scornful face of my 4th grade teacher is burned into my memory, smoker’s lines and all. Oh, and my gym teacher, I disliked her soooo much. Thanks to her, I positively hate softball and volleyball to. this. day.
Was there a self-serve car wash next door, or very nearby?
We had a very irascible gym teacher who, I’m hoping, would not be allowed to work with children in this day and age. She made us line dance to “Peg” and “Hey Nineteen,” which itself wasn’t so bad, but just one more thing that I associated with her. As a result it was many years before I could tolerate (much less enjoy) the music of Steely Dan.
Not sure; there may have been. Within a few blocks there was also a health food store (which in hindsight seemed very out-of-place in Arlington) and a fast-food joint called Burger Box – their logo was a styrofoam clamshell container; ironic because those started to fall out of favor a few years later.
The Taco Bueno’s still there and looks the same as it always did. (Burger Box is still down the street, too, but without the styrofoam clamshell logo.) ETA: At the time you lived there, So. Cooper was under constant construction and your parents probably grew aggravated with any errand involving that route.
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That is the maniliest man thing I have ever heard.
Do you also abandon your cart in the middle of the aisle, leaving it in one place while you run from place to place picking up items and carrying them back to your cart like my Dad? (He has, on more than one occasion, returned to where he left his cart to find it gone, because if you abandon your cart they reshelve the items.)
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If they move what I’m looking for I don’t go looking, I just don’t buy it. I’m there to buy food, not play hide and seek. I’m not going to see something I wasn’t looking for and buy that too, I have a list and that’s the maximum of what I’m buying, not the minimum.
Play stupid games with me, you lose my business.
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You are in the minority then. There is a science to how stores are laid out. We know that if we put the essentials far apart, like bread and milk, that people buy more simply because they spend more time in the store, there’s equations for time spent in store to dollars spent in store. Entire schools of research behind this stuff. You think you’re not being influenced… but you are. 
Edit to add: we even know where the eye-line is, which shelf people look at most of all (hint: its the one with the expensive name brand items on it, 2nd or 3rd from the bottom) - that shelf is the most expensive shelf to get your product placed on, because we monkeys are lazy lazy beings and grab what is in our eye-line most of the time.
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I know that. I just don’t play (or like to pretend to myself that I don’t).
I can do maths and work out which size offers the best price per content, while also being able to avoid buying three times as much as I wanted just because there was a ‘special offer’.
But I’m very short on patience in supermarkets, so I have abandoned my cart and walked out mid-shop when I kept getting stuck behind the annoying person over and over again).
Online grocery shopping is a godsend.
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Interesting… so your complaint is not actually the grocery store itself? But the other customers? (and moving of products).
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Everything. I hate absolutely everything about any kind of shopping without exception. But especially grocery shopping.
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LOL really? I love every type of shopping, grocery shopping being the best! 
Awesome, another commando shopper. If it ain’t on the list, it ain’t coming home. If they move it, and I can’t find it in 5 seconds or less, it ain’t coming home.
@Gyrofrog: it came up on another thread, but I fucking hate Steely Dan. Unrelated to the evil gym teacher who never let us play soccer, but there it is.
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My local supermarket in China used to be like this, except it was older people who would prowl the aisles looking for unattended shopping carts. They’d just empty the carts, then walk off with them and do their shopping. I don’t know why they wouldn’t get a cart at the entrance like everyone else, but that generation had been through the cultural revolution and couldn’t care less. It happened to me once and I was left with a small pile of shopping and most of a shopping list, but no carts on that floor.
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This is a sore spot with me. Especially when the narrow aisles are crowded (and why the hell do stores put stacks of special items blocking the aisle?), I park on the edge of the aisles and go down and back. One store I used to go to was annoyingly zealous about re-shelving stuff and I would get so pissed off at them after spending all that time getting the perfect produce and meat selections. Problem was it was the closest and biggest so it was hard for me to not go there anymore. But they closed (Albertson’s) so I guess I won!
(edited for the BBS assigning the wrong person to the quote reply)
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