Not the Friday 5: Bonus Questions #6

From Scrivener's Friday 5 site.

Bonus Questions, 6

And the hits keep coming.

1. What store’s departure from your preferred shopping mall most saddened you?
2. What’s good to eat at your preferred shopping mall?
3. What services (as opposed to goods) do you pay for at your preferred shopping mall?
4. What’s a store you’ve never been inside at your preferred shopping mall?
5. What kind of store would you most welcome in your preferred shopping mall?
6. What did you most recently purchase at an office supply store?
7. What did you most recently purchase at a book store?
8. What did you most recently purchase at a drugstore?
9. What did you most recently purchase at a convenience store?
10. What did you most recently purchase at a thrift shop?

I'm skipping the Friday 5 questions this week and just going for these.

All of the answers below refer to Ala Moana Shopping Center in Honolulu, the biggest shopping mall in Hawaii which is located about 3 blocks away from my residence.



1. Closings: The most recent store to have departed the Ala Moana Center that I miss is SEARS. Stupid center management took out one of the most local friendly stores and are replacing it with high priced town houses, Bloomingdales and other high priced stores. Ala Moana certainly has lost all the local charm it once had and it is now and has been for at least the last 20 years, an expensive high end mall... which is very sad and misses the intention of the center when it was first built in the late 1950s. Through the 1960s and 1970s it was the most popular shopping mall for local people to go to and get goods and services that were for the most part, affordable.

That all said here is the death roll of some stores and restaurants that were once at Ala Moana Center and are now all gone, mostly replaced with high-end, expensive boutique type establishments:

• Sears
• Woolworth
• JC Penney
• Zippys'
• Sharper Image (another good place to browse but I never bought anything from them)
• DJ's Sound City (record store)
• Ritz (clothing)
• Walden Books
• Honolulu Book Store
• Patti's Chinese Kitchen
• Francis Camera (was not very cheap but was a good place to browse)
• Hawaiian Airlines Ticket Counter
• Aloha Airlines Ticket Counter (the airline went out of business in 2008)
• Keiki Land
• Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor
• L and L Drive In

2. Good stuff to eat at your favorite shopping mall? In Ala Moana Center there is always a fallback to McDonald's since they are affordable and anything else you can take out of either Foodland or Longs' Drug. Otherwise I like all the Japanese bento places in the Shirokiya store. Another good thing they have at Shirokiya is a good selection of used, affordable CDs, DVDs and video games.

3. Services at Shopping Mall: The U.S. Post Office at Ala Moana Center is open on Saturdays!

4. Never Been Inside: Ala Moana Center - Many of the high end boutique stores and high end restaurants like Mortons' and Assagio's.

5. Store most welcome? In Ala Moana Center? Sears or Target. Something that is affordable for local people. That said, it is good that WalMart is only a block away from the expensive mall.

6. Most recently purchased at an office supply store? Paper.

7. Book Store purchase? Nothing recently.

8. Drugstore? Most recent purchase was toothpaste and soap at Longs.

The last two answers do not pertain to Ala Moana Center:

9. Convenence store purchase? Gas at a small place along Kapahulu Ave.

10. Thrift shop purchase: A 35 mm Minolta SLR camera a few years ago.