Cape Kennedy Retail

  Some of my favorite things to find, when road tripping towards a mall, are unexpected things. I'll generally scan my route, and set a few pinpoints, but a lot of stuff is found as I go. And in this case, I found a wonderful old Dairy Queen. One slightly sketchy u-turn later, I was able to stop in for myself. For the curious, they still do serve all-beef hot dogs, though a sign in the window noted they had switched to another brand because of a supply shortage, for the time being. The star of the show is the main building, and it's wonderfully restored neon sign, oh how I'd love to see what this looks like at night. The location is fully retro, walk-up only ordering and all. To further fit that feel, the parking setup is a little bit janky, probably hacked in after this area was made less-pedestrian friendly, I imagine. I didn't get too many photos here, so we're already at the end! We'll finish off with this picture I snapped of a Dennis The Menace themed surf...

 Is it retail related? Nope. Is it at a thrift store, and at least mildly interesting? Certainly. Welcome to the Thrift Trawl. Wonderful font on display Very monolithic design here on this paper. I wish my copy paper still came in a cool box, and not just a cheap crappy paper sleeve... This is only here because it's the cheapest looking DVD player I've ever seen. Those cheapo bubble buttons, eugh. Take to the skies with this recordable CD! While a lot of cool blank design died with cassettes, it held on for a little bit with CDs. Sometimes I regret not buying things I find. Just for kicks and grins. MILITARY FONT for the highest quality clip art. No idea where the name comes from- maybe it's art for printing onto CDs? Pre-internet Getty Images, all on one little disc. Gotta make the image out of rectangles, otherwise it's not modern enough. Just some neat aesthetics in general, here.          

Babcock St is one of the old retail corridors of Melbourne, and unfortunately one mostly abandoned. Even where retail persists, like at the intersection with Palm Bay Rd, it's morphed and scattered- Kmart turned to Uhaul, Winn-Dixie split into several tenants, etc. In general, the street is home to many retail relics from days gone by. And today, we get pretty retro. 421 S Babcock St - Blt 1978 Starting off with our most "modern" building, dating to 1978. It's a late example of the "Mission" style Taco Bell, with added round entrances and a partial solarium. It's been operating as a bar called On The Rocks for the past couple years, and has been a bar since 2007 at least. If I had to throw a guess at when this closed as Taco Bell, I'd say 1999, as that's when a newer store was built at 4855 Babcock St NE. 433 S Babcock St - Blt 1970 We now jump to my favorite, a sad looking and well disguised A-frame, a Der Weinerschnitzel to be exact!  I have a ...

 So, a bit of a spoiler for upcoming feature content on MyFloridaRetail, but I recently completed a trip out to Polk County to visit two dead malls- Lakeshore Mall in Sebring, and Eagle Ridge Mall in Lake Wales. However, to get there, I first had to brave the untamed wilds. Clip: Spongebob S1E5a "We're In The Middle of Nowhere!" While people tend to think of Florida as a carpet of suburbia, developed in all directions, there's large swaths of the state that are basically undeveloped, except for very scattered houses and farms. They're the "flyover country" of Florida, except in our case it's "drive through country". One of the most significant gaps is the area between the Brevard County line and St Cloud in Osceola County where civilization starts to return. Now, if you swoop south around St Cloud, then you get even more desolation, and you have basically nothing until you hit Lake Wales. Measuring from the outlets on the edge of Vero Beach...

 Welcome to Memorabilia Roundup, where I put together all the memorabilia I find on my travels. Most of this will be related to retail, though occasionally things that are just "generally neat" will show up. Walgreens drinking straws, which are probably from the 90s-2000s if I had to guess Radioshack, Rolodex, digital planners... can't get much more defunct than this. A toy train from FAO Schwarz; it's quite big, and honestly I love it. Child me would have lost. their. mind. for this thing. A twofer here- vacuum bags from both Kmart and Drug Fair. Drug Fair was mostly in New Jersey, so these have travelled quite far just to end up in a thrift store. Now we move into non-retail. This mug has both a neat design, and mentions Biloxi, a city in Mississippi that has a unique enough sounding name that its been etched into my brain ever since I read it in a Retail Retell blog post. I really enjoyed the design on this old MGM Grand Hotel mug. 70s? Speaking of the 70s; check o...

 Welcome to another episode of mall updates, this time on Merritt Square Mall, the other major (but sadly more dead) mall in Brevard County Spirit Halloween is gearing up to move into Sears, which finally closed in early 2021. The light's gone out on Yankee Candle, which was unfortunately always one of the more popular stores I thought. But these days, chain stores are slowly dropping more and more every month. A new tenant! Though not exactly an A+ chain. But hey, cool socks are cool. FYE has permanently closed, as I suspected a few months ago. It's sad, but all together not surprising. It was in competition with a BAM thats next door, and FYE still has a store in Melbourne relatively nearby. Combine that with Merritt Square being fairly dead, and its more of a shock it didn't close earlier. A tenant is already lined up though; Gregg's Marketplace, a sort of antique mall-style rent-a-booth store as far as I can tell. There's one at Melbourne Square already, so I gu...