brebro - 14 February 2008 07:43 PM

We used to have one in the Asheville Mall. Is it not there anymore (or are you saying we need one downtown as well, or are you saying that the urge for Pooh headgear is not powerful enough to brave Tunnel Road.)?

If it ain’t downtown, it may as well not exist.

WHAT I would like to see downtown is a Fry’s Electronics (think Best Buy on steroids)... I went to one in Vegas a couple of years ago and have been in love every since.

Yes, I know, big box store but there is really no reason not to have them downtown.

Ralph Roberts - 14 February 2008 10:56 PM

WHAT I would like to see downtown is a Fry’s Electronics (think Best Buy on steroids)...
Yes, I know, big box store but there is really no reason not to have them downtown.

Fry’s is a great store! Everything you could ever want in electronics at the lowest possible prices. Currently almost all of them are out West, except for a couple in Georgia.
But where would they put it downtown? That’s a BIG store requiring a BIG parking lot.

Merrimon Avenue… heh, heh… with a really BIG sign and lots of trucks unloading 24/7.

But, yeah, probably outside downtown in a mall situation.

Say, what about casinos downtown? We’ll have to get the city council recognized as an Indian tribe but that should be relatively simple.

How about a cannabis cafe/hash bar?

Since The Natural Mystic died a rightful death.

What about a food rental store - that really is an untapped market.

zen - 18 February 2008 04:14 PM

What about a food rental store - that really is an untapped market.

In high school, my friends and I were so tired of the onslaught of failed boutique stores downtown (this was mid-1990s, when rents were cheap enough for that kind of thing to happen regularly) that we came up with the ultimate bad-idea store.

Shell-Mart: The store that only sells eggs. I’d go there. Once.

zen - 18 February 2008 04:14 PM

What about a food rental store - that really is an untapped market.

I do not want to work there and check the rentals back in.

Steve Shanafelt - 18 February 2008 05:11 PM

zen - 18 February 2008 04:14 PM

What about a food rental store - that really is an untapped market.

In high school, my friends and I were so tired of the onslaught of failed boutique stores downtown (this was mid-1990s, when rents were cheap enough for that kind of thing to happen regularly) that we came up with the ultimate bad-idea store.

Shell-Mart: The store that only sells eggs. I’d go there. Once.

Your brains were scrambled on that one, eh?

But… what the heck… hire a bunch of Mexican chickens and get started.

Remember that old SNL sketch about a store in a mall that ONLY sold scotch tape? Not even various kinds of tape, but just transparent adhesive tape like for gift wrapping. That was a stupid idea (for a store, not a sketch.)

we need more ‘going out of business’ stores in downtown. ... In NYC, there are ‘going out of business’ stores that have been doing it for decades!

in Asheville, the only one I can think of is out on Patton Ave West, the Leather Warehouse… they have been ‘going out of business’ for years there.

it’s evidently a quite lucrative retailing concept.

I guess they are just going out of business so slowly that it doesn’t seem like they are going out of business.

Like the way we are all dying. It’s happening so slowly we seem to not have a terminal case of life.

Ralph Roberts - 19 February 2008 02:24 AM

we need more ‘going out of business’ stores in downtown. ... In NYC, there are ‘going out of business’ stores that have been doing it for decades!

in Asheville, the only one I can think of is out on Patton Ave West, the Leather Warehouse… they have been ‘going out of business’ for years there.

it’s evidently a quite lucrative retailing concept.

In a moment of homemaking panic, my wife bought an oak bookshelf at one of those “BANKRUPTCY SALE!!! GOING OUT OF BUSINESS FOREVER!!! DON’T EVEN TRY TO RETURN THIS STUFF, BECAUSE WE WON’T BE HERE!!!” places over the weekend. For a place that claimed to be going under, they sure had invested an awful lot of money in signage explaining that fact.

What’s worse, the didn’t actually say what the sale prices were, but instead had to “work the numbers,” giving what seemed to be whatever it was they think you’d pay. It was a creepy and desperate kind of experience. It was like all the sleazy used car salesmen shoved out of work by CarMax had moved into the furniture-selling game.

The most awful part was that after we bought the thing, they told us that they didn’t have any in stock. If we wanted to get it without paying the laughably overpriced delivery fee, we had to literally go to a bunch of abandoned warehouses at the edge of town. (Does a supervillain run the furniture store? I wonder.) So, we did go, and had to find the one not-abandoned warehouse (denoted by a 3X3 cardboard sign attached to the loading bay door with packing tape) in the unlit complex, and have them putter around looking for the bookshelf while hinting not too subtly that they’d like very much to be tipped (in fact, there was a battered cardboard box that said “Tip appreciated” next to the bay door).

On the bright side, the bookcase seems to be in fair shape, apart from the little bits of it (finish, some splinters of wood) that came off when removed the packing tape. All in all, I wouldn’t recommend the experience.

You know what I think we really need downtown? A cheap, fast, reasonably good place to eat. About the best I’ve found is the Grove Corner Market, but I’d like a little more variety.

Was it SOFA EXPRESS and More? There was a news 13 story this weekend about their obnoxious and pervasive signs all about town. Now I guess we know what the “more” part of it is. Next time, you should go to the warehouse with a box marked, “Service Appreciated.”

brebro - 19 February 2008 01:48 PM

Was it SOFA EXPRESS and More? There was a news 13 story this weekend about their obnoxious and pervasive signs all about town. Now I guess we know what the “more” part of it is. Next time, you should go to the warehouse with a box marked, “Service Appreciated.”

There will be no next time, I assure you. And, while I’m not keen on naming names, I won’t specifically deny the name of the business you suggest at being the one in question.