Sears might be going belly up

[Widebrim]

Yeah, lunch at the cafeteria was the high point of the shopping. Almost all of the malls had one. There was Harvest House at South Coast Plaza and up until several years ago there was a Clifton's at the Lakewood Mall. I used to always have custard for desert -- that's what I'll always associate with those wonderful cafeterias.

V.C., do you ever make it to Clifton's Cafeteria when you're over in downtown L.A.?

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I haven't been to Downtown L.A. in quite a while but I always go to Clifton's when I'm there.

 

[Undertow]

Well, bad news; the lady and I just realized Sears is a decent place to find ladies' quality "vintage style" underclothes. So here we have a new source for shopping and...they want to close the doors. Guess that's the way it goes!

 

[LizzieMaine]

J. C. Penney still has a decent selection of such things, although not as wide a selection as they had ten or fifteen years ago. But it's still better than you'll find at most other mall stores.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I haven't been to Downtown L.A. in quite a while but I always go to Clifton's when I'm there.

Clifton's is closed for extensive remodeling/"renovation" right now, and has been so for several months.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/investing/sears-earnings/index.html

 

[jamespowers]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/21/investing/sears-earnings/index.html

It has taken a few years but yes, it seems they just can’t keep up with the modern markets.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

So I have found out that some Craftsman hand tools are now made overseas. I remember when I first started in the mill they had a once a month Craftsman club sale where all hand tools were 10%off for club members. When I was first starting out I got close go $2000 worth of tools for a deep discount through various sales & discounts. I haven't even been in a Sears for a couple of years as the last time I was in the pickings were slim & the shelves were nearly bare.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

We sadly lost our K-Mart, here, too. They closed down the Sears a couple years ago, and then the K-Mart last year Lots of good memories of working there in High School. I still shopped there, regularly. They just couldn't compete with the Walmart right across the street.

Ace Hardware in town started carrying Craftsman tools, at least.

 

[St. Louis]

A few random unconnected thoughts referring to posts above: Undertow, your lady friend might check the Naitonal online catalog for unmentionables.

Puzzled: why was Sears' radio station called WLS? If it broadcast from Chicago, wouldn't it have to be KWLS?

We have an old Sears tower in my neighborhood. I've only lived in St. Louis for about a decade, so I don't know when it disgorged Sears & became something else (it is now empty, as are many buildings in this town) but that deco-fortress architecture is unmistakable. There was always something so immediately comforting about seeing a Sears building in any town I happened to be visiting.

 

[LizzieMaine]

K stations were generally west of the Mississippi. W stations were East. There were exceptions -- KDKA in Pittsburgh and KYW in Chicago were licensed prior to the Mississippi rule, and there were a few others. You'll also find a few W stations in the West that go back equally far -- WDAF in Kansas City and WBAP in Dallas being the best-remembered.

Sears sold WLS to the publishers of the "Prairie Farmer" magazine in the early thirties, but continued to offer a "WLS" line of radio tubes, batteries, and accessories in its catalog for several years after that.

Most Sears locations up to the late thirties were simply catalog outlets -- you'd go in and order things out of the catalog there and then the items would be shipped to the store for you to pick up. We had a lot of those around here up until the eighties, often located just across the street from the Monkey Ward catalog store. Sears started moving into full-service department stores at the end of the thirties, which led to the big downtown Sears operations that eventually evolved into the mall stores of today.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

WLS is short for Worlds Largest Store.

 

[dnjan]

WLS is short for Worlds Largest Store.

Funny - I grew up listening to that station (could even pick it up on my crystal radio!) thinking it stood for World's Largest Station.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The Original Sears Tower
-- All that's left of the original Sears Homan Square complex. At one time WLS used to broadcast from that tower.

 

[gtdean48]

Funny - I grew up listening to that station (could even pick it up on my crystal radio!) thinking it stood for World's Largest Station.

Used to pick up WLS in the later hours of the evening in South GA....

 

[LizzieMaine]

W-G-N was "World's Greatest Newspaper," showing that WLS had no monopoly on radio hyperbole.

Bob Hope made his first-ever radio appearance on the WLS Showboat Program in 1929, a hayseed predecessor to the more famous WLS National Barn Dance.

 

[ChiTownScion]

W-G-N was "World's Greatest Newspaper," showing that WLS had no monopoly on radio hyperbole.

But, score one for the good guys: WCFL was originally the radio station of the Chicago Federation of Labor.

 

[Stearmen]

K stations were generally west of the Mississippi. W stations were East. There were exceptions -- KDKA in Pittsburgh and KYW in Chicago were licensed prior to the Mississippi rule, and there were a few others. You'll also find a few W stations in the West that go back equally far -- WDAF in Kansas City and WBAP in Dallas being the best-remembered.

Sears sold WLS to the publishers of the "Prairie Farmer" magazine in the early thirties, but continued to offer a "WLS" line of radio tubes, batteries, and accessories in its catalog for several years after that.

Most Sears locations up to the late thirties were simply catalog outlets -- you'd go in and order things out of the catalog there and then the items would be shipped to the store for you to pick up. We had a lot of those around here up until the eighties, often located just across the street from the Monkey Ward catalog store. Sears started moving into full-service department stores at the end of the thirties, which led to the big downtown Sears operations that eventually evolved into the mall stores of today.

Makes you wonder, with the advent of the internet, and no need for a physical store, if sears would have been better off sticking to mail order only? In some respects, they were way ahead of their time.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

http://www.cartalk.com/blogs/craig-fitzgerald/sears-craftsman-tools-what-happened-0

 

[ButteMT61]

One of the two Macy's here in Pasadena just got leveled. The "good" one - original one still standing. Hope it stays, but I have my doubts...