A Reuben On The Road

Reuben sandwich
Gretchen's Grotto - Honesdale, PA

If there's a Reuben on the menu, there's about a 90% chance that I'm going to order it.  I'm very glad that I did.  I had this one in a little roadside diner on the way to Bethel.  It was thick, and cheesy, and absolutely delicious!

A Heart Attack On A Plate

Anthracite Cafe
Scott Street - Wilkes-Barre, PA

I've ordered from the Anthracite Cafe at work plenty of times, but this is the first time I've ever eaten at the restaurant.  Their food is pretty good.  If I'm being totally honest, I saw better things at other tables that made me regret ordering the Macaroni Logs and The Heart Attack Burger, but they were both tasty.

Snazzy New Walkway

Wilkes University
Wilkes-Barre, PA

I had an interview a few miles away from my alma mater last week, so I decided to stop by and have a look at some of the changes on campus since I graduated.  The main difference I noticed was a new walkway that they built between the parking garage on South Main Street and the greenway.  They've also swapped out Einstein Bros Bagels for Starbucks.

The Last Days Of A Toy Empire

Toys R Us
Kidder Street - Wilkes-Barre, PA

Late last month, I stopped by Toys R Us one last time to walk around, take in the atmosphere, and see if there were any last minute bargains to be had.  They still had plenty of stock, and I was tempted to buy one of the store displays (they're selling everything - even the shelves), but I didn't make a purchase.

The Easter signs were a little strange.  It was if they were put up in an attempt to go on with business as usual.  However, even if they weren't surrounded by reminders that the chain is closing, they're still a bit odd.  For example, the Easter signs seem aggressively generic.  They don't feature any Toys R Us logo or merchandise.  You could probably hang these up outside of any other store and they would blend in with their Easter marketing with little effort.

The signage on the inside is far from subtle, with constant reminders that the store is going out of business and everything is on sale at discount prices.

 

I guarantee that this Nintendo Switch going to end up in somebody's game room.  I was tempted to make an offer, but I have no room in my house for something like this.  Also, if I was going to rearrange everything for the sake of a store display, I would go after one of the old NES displays from Kay Bee.

Well, yeah, I guess it would be pretty hard to return merchandise to an empty storefront.

The Easter Buffet

Easter Buffet
Genetti's Washington Ballroom - Hazleton, PA

Ever year since my grandparents passed away, we've had Easter dinner at Genetti's.  There's a nice variety of things to eat, and everything is very tasty.

The mashed sweet potatoes are especially good.

I'm not much of a ham eater, but the roast beef is delicious.

 

It's not the same as it used to be when we would all get together at my grandparents house and sit around the kitchen table and talk and laugh while eating Easter Pie.  Sadly, those days are just a happy memory.  Still, it's nice to still be able to have dinner with Dad on Easter Sunday.

Hazleton's Zombie Department Store

Standard Speaker - July 28, 1989

These days, it's not uncommon for a Spirit Halloween shop to temporarily take up residence in the vacant building of a store that had closed months or years earlier.  However, the Hazleton area had its own zombie retailer throughout the 90's.  It's called Ames Department Store.

Ames first appeared in Hazleton when they purchased the entire chain of 392 Zayre's stores in the United States in 1988.  They finally got around to converting the store in the Laurel Mall from Zayre's to Ames in November of 1989.

Standard Speaker - December 17, 1993

The rebranded Ames store in the Laurel Mall lasted less than five years.  They closed up shop in February, 1994 and were immediately replaced by K-Mart, which moved across town from their old location in downtown Hazleton to occupy the Laurel Mall anchor store. 

I was living in Florida at the time, and by the time I came back to the Hazleton area in the mid 90's, I just assumed that the entire Ames chain went out of business.  However, they were still chugging along and would soon replace another failing department store in town.

Standard Speaker - November 14, 1998

Hills Department Store was the main store in the Valmont Plaza for roughly a ten year span from the mid 80's to the mid 90's.  I'm not exactly sure when it closed, but the building re-opened for business in the fall of 1999 as an Ames Department Store.

I didn't even know that Ames still existed at this point, but their acquisition of the Hills Department Store chain made them the fourth largest retailer in the United States (behind Wal-Mart, K-Mart and Target).

Standard Speaker - November 11, 2000

The second revival of Ames in Hazleton ended even faster than the first.  The Valmont Plaza location operated for less than a year and a half and closed its doors for the last time in February, 2001.  Within 18 months, the chain filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed all of its remaining stores.

The Last Ten Days Of K-Mart

K-Mart
Laurel Mall - Hazleton, PA
When the Laurel Mall first opened in 1973, this was a Zayre Department Store.  Zayre was bought Ames in 1988, and by the end of the 80's, the store in the Laurel Mall was converted into an Ames.  That Ames store closed up in February 1994 and was replaced by K-Mart, which moved from their location in downtown Hazleton to the Laurel Mall.  After 24 years, K-Mart is closing its doors, and with no replacement lined up, this anchor store is going to be vacant for the first time since the Laurel Mall first opened.

I worked in the electronics department at this store in 1997.  In fact, for a very brief time, I was the department manager, but it didn't last.  I was only 17 years old at the time and the store manager only gave me the promotion to be spiteful to the guy that I replaced (he got sent to the Photo Lab).  It was a pretty crappy place to work, but it was sort of cool to work in an electronics department shortly after the launch of the Playstation, Saturn and Nintendo 64.

They've been selling off their merchandise and fixtures at pretty heavily discounted prices for the past few weeks.  The store has been picked pretty clean and is mostly a hollow shell at this point, but I wanted to get a few photos of what's left before they close up for good.

This store had two sets of registers - one for the mall entrance and one for the outdoor entrance.  This is the latter.  The area in the background at the far right was the Little Caesars Cafe. 

Until recently, this area had the jewelry counters and clothing racks.

Most of the merchandise and store fixtures have already been sold.  It's pretty slim pickens today.

My old department is looking pretty bare.

I wonder how much they want for the giant "Electronics" letters on the wall.

That's not creepy at all.  How much for the grey bottom half of the human body with the bubble crotch?

These lockers were near the break room for employees to keep their belongings.

This used to be the lawn and garden department.  Those doors lead out to an area that is completely caged in where larger plants were sold.  It would make a great spot to shoot a scene in a zombie film.

This corner was the Little Caesars Cafe.  The part in front on the far right was the customer service desk.  It's a near experience to wait in line for pizza while listening to people complain about the merchandise they're returning.

The back tile wall was part of the kitchen at Little Caesar's.  The counter started right where the checkered floor tile ends.  The heat lamps that keep the pizza warm are still hanging up.

Apparently the pizza heat lamps are on sale for $40.  I bet the kitchen would look great with these three things dangling from the ceiling.

I always thought it was a little weird to have the Icee sign above the restrooms.

Zemeckis Cube

Ready Player One
Penn Cinema - Lancaster, PA
The lobby of the theater had this awesome Rubik's Cube display... or is this a Zemeckis Cube?  Well, whatever you call this, the movie is considerably different from the book, but it was very good.  I'm looking at it sort of as if it's a parallel universe from the novel.

The Flamingo Map

Flamingo Lounge
Hazleton, PA
This nightclub hosted some big names in the 1960's, but closed around 1970.  No word on whether the closing was related to their interesting cartography.  When you offer popular prices, I suppose you can get away with cutting off the state of Texas and shrinking Florida while curving it in the other direction.  I'm also not sure that New Orleans, Miami and NYC are quite so far inland.

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Doki Doki Literature Club
Developed by Team Salvato
Available on Steam
This game is totally free with no advertisements or pay content.  I've heard good things about it, so I figured I'd give it a shot.  It is definitely not what you're expecting based on the image above, and it's worth playing.

Ball Pit Bar

Concourse Dance Bar
1635 Market Street - Philadelphia PA, 19103
video by: PennLive.com
This dance bar opened just last month and I've wanted to go since I first learned about it.  No dress code, retro music, and alcoholic Ecto Cooler... it's enough to make this introvert break out of the shell for good.

Spending Rings

What's the current rate for exchanging Rupees for Chaos Emeralds?

Monte Mart

Monte Mart: 01/01/1983 newspaper ad
Atari 2600
David Calderon shared this ad from 35 years ago on AtariAge.  This was the dawn of the crash, and it's funny to see that all of the sports titles were heavily discounted while the arcade ports were almost $25.  I wonder what the Atari game covers were.

Gaze Into My Beverage

Crystal Ball Frappuccino
Starbucks (2018)
The new Crystal Ball Frappuccino from Starbucks is a creme-based beverage cut with peach flavoring and turquoise sprinkles.  It's topped with whipped cream and "mystical sparkles" that can be either blue, green or purple.  It's a cute idea, but it's not something I think I'll get again.  It was creamy and sweet, but I wasn't able to taste too much of the peach flavor.

Carl's Pudding Bar

Carl's Chocolate Pudding Filled Bar
Astor Chocolate (2018)
This decal is on the window of FYE in the Wyoming Valley Mall in Wilkes-Barre, PA.  I didn't buy one (mostly because everything at this store is ridiculously overpriced), but they're selling candy bars based on the massive tub of pudding that Carl devoured in The Walking Dead.  They're branded as a Hethcox Foods product, but they're really made by Astor Chocolate (Hethcox is the fictitious company that made Carl's pudding in the show).

Pickle Slushie

This June, Sonic will not only be selling pickle slushies, but they'll also be allowing guests to add pickle syrup to any other frozen dessert.  Not gonna lie, I will be trying a strawberry pickle milkshake this summer.

Pimps, Nuns and Ice Cream

Big Gay Ice Cream: Salty Pimp
Market 32 - Edwardsville, PA
It's not often that a carton of ice cream advises me against undressing nuns.

On Top Of Old Hash Browns, All Covered With Cheese

Waffle House
Lancaster, PA

I've heard people rave about Waffle House for years, but I've never had the opportunity to eat at one before yesterday.  Honestly, I'm not quite sure what the hype is about.  I wouldn't go so far as to call it disgusting, but it ranks somewhere between hospital food and the flavorless, pre-packaged sandwiches that you get from a vending machine at a rest stop.

The hash browns were especially disappointing - kind of like burnt, shredded cardboard.  I would have traded them for a McDonalds hash brown without a second thought.  They looked good on the menu though when I saw them.  You could even get them covered with cheese for 50 cents extra.  See for yourself.

I suppose they technically were covered.

Maybe this isn't a typical Waffle House experience, but I can't imagine I'd ever stop at one again unless I'm starving and it's literally the only thing open.