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God, I also distinctly remember this video from way back in the day. Also, I have slowly moved eastwards over the past decade or so, and was deeply disappointed when I found out a year or two ago that Ollie's is not the place depicted in the video, and it's even more disappointing that Building 19 closed altogether and I'll never make it to one. I was fooled by the similar branding style! Thank you for making that video and for making this thread, though. Stuff like this and the americana thread is deeply fascinating to me, especially as someone who came from more economically disadvantaged places than my peers did, giving it a weird twinge of nostalgia rather than just pure gawking.
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Jan 29, 2021 05:10
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Pekinduck posted:Half the fun was wondering/figuring out why the various stuff ended up at building 19. Strongly agreed. To the point where if you couldn't figure out why something was there, sometimes it's best to avoid it. Like, the smoke damaged Denver the Last Dinosaur bathrobe for a buck fifty makes sense and you know what you're getting. The boxes of vegan stuffing that show up in December? Guess they didn't sell. But then it's like, this drywall compound is suspiciously cheap. Exactly what could be wrong with it? Those Pop Tarts are cheap, because the package is opened and there are grease stains on the box, but the protective mylar sleeves are still intact right? On the other hand, those sugar wafers are totally un-smashed. Completely pristine. What the gently caress is wrong with them, anyway?
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Jan 29, 2021 05:17
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Sometimes poo poo gets thrown out/sold for next to nothing because it’s close to expiration but not expired. That’s how I got 96 Dahlman’s stroopwafels!
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Jan 29, 2021 22:38
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Empty Sandwich posted:I poked around and that one is a real typewriter platen cleaner, but thanks for telling me that. somebody once told me about huffing VCR head cleaner and I had no idea what the gently caress was going on. Yeah they were with other typewriter stuff iirc so I guess it was real. Uhhh I found this http://www.mosife.org/dr-scat-typewriter-platen-roll-and-type-cleaner.html "This cleaner was invented in 1949 and was widely used in 1950s to 1960s. For safety reason, it stopped production in 1972." 
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Jan 29, 2021 22:42
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Pekinduck posted:Yeah they were with other typewriter stuff iirc so I guess it was real. hahahaha... holy poo poo. I wonder if it was ether or something
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Jan 29, 2021 22:45
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I'd put my money on carbon tetrachloride
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Jan 30, 2021 00:00
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CPL593H posted:Ten years ago I made a youtube video with a friend where I toured the store which I posted here on the forums at the time. Inexplicably people still remember it and after seeing it posted in another thread and derailing it a bit I decided to make a thread devoted to the store.  I've had this video saved to literally every computer and phone I've owned in the last ten years. A few years ago I spent ~10 days trapped in Alberta living out of a truck without internet access and I probably watched this at least a dozen times just in that time. You are my hero
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Feb 1, 2021 04:08
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Stingwing posted:
You must have been having a real horrible time if willingly listening to my voice that many times for that long seemed like an attractive option. I still can't wrap my mind around this making the impression on people that it did.
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Feb 1, 2021 05:49
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I remember Building 19 being from RI, man the amount of shareware games I bought from there as a kid sometimes you'd find some gold like a Doom WAD, I think I also bought a map making book for the doom engine. I feel like they sold food there too..did they sell doughboys or am I just craving a doughboy
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Feb 1, 2021 05:57
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Photex posted:I remember Building 19 being from RI, man the amount of shareware games I bought from there as a kid sometimes you'd find some gold like a Doom WAD, I think I also bought a map making book for the doom engine. I feel like they sold food there too..did they sell doughboys or am I just craving a doughboy They probably did at some point. The fun of Building 19 is you never knew what was going to be there because they just sold whatever the gently caress showed up. Even if it was something smashed to bits or literal garbage. Maybe you'd find something good in there under a pile of rusty socket wrenches. Maybe they'd have a big stack of Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction VHS tapes. The possibilities were endless!
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Feb 1, 2021 06:26
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Our Building 19 closed about ten years ago. It’s a Carmax now. Not nearly as fun, but it smells a lot better. My favorite find there was just a big pile of used prison shoes for sale. All sizes mixed together.
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Feb 1, 2021 06:40
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CPL593H posted:I still can't wrap my mind around this making the impression on people that it did. The editing is really good. The comic timing on revealing things like the soiled undies or the bottles with visible mold on them is perfect and each scene gets just enough time to breathe without dragging. Same with your (comparative lack of) commentary letting the weirdness of the place shine, whenever I've introduced friends to the video they'll usually follow it up by playing their own video of a YouTuber at a store and it's usually just them yammering a mile a minute at someplace totally pedestrian like Big Lots and it sucks. My favorite thing about going to its modern successor Ollie's is doing meme archaeology and trying to figure out when the products were originally made.   The book section is also great because it's basically the publishing equivalent of failed clickbait.   Same with toys, seeing what kids never took the bait for.  
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Feb 1, 2021 07:29
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When I was taking my kids to the movies once, there was someone working with the theater to try to get people into a test screening for this movie. A full year later, it shambled into theaters after its director was fired for feeling up female animators and nobody else was interested in taking on the director credit. I’m amazed that they made toys for this lovely movie no one wanted in the first place, but this sort of store is exactly where I’d expect to find them.
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Feb 1, 2021 07:44
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I don't have Archives but like ten....? years ago or so there was a hilarious & lengthy Building 19 thread on here and I did a tour of the store with tons of photos. I think it was Waffleimages at the time though so probably RIP. Building 19 was a horrendous thing and should be lost to time. I live about 2 minutes from an abandoned one which is now where they park all the Amazon vans. Also gently caress you for making me remember Dollar Bill's. My grandparents had it on/went there religiously.
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Feb 1, 2021 18:40
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Finally, Building 19 getting the notoriety it deserves. I got my first (horribly out of date) programming book about assembly from there when I was a kid. Anyone else remember the piles and piles of CueCats they were desperately trying to give away for free back in the day?
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Feb 1, 2021 20:33
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AotC posted:Anyone else remember the piles and piles of CueCats they were desperately trying to give away for free back in the day? Holy poo poo. That memory just hit me like a slap in the face. I definitely had a CueCat. I know it failed horribly, but wasn't it essentially the forerunner to QR codes? In Houston atleast QR codes are becoming extremely popular in bars and restaurants to pull up menus so that you aren't passing around a physical thing during Covidtimes.
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Feb 1, 2021 20:49
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Ironhead posted:Holy poo poo. That memory just hit me like a slap in the face. I definitely had a CueCat. I know it failed horribly, but wasn't it essentially the forerunner to QR codes? In Houston atleast QR codes are becoming extremely popular in bars and restaurants to pull up menus so that you aren't passing around a physical thing during Covidtimes. It was really just a barcode scanner. I believe there was a popular re-use for them for people cataloging their book and DVD collections by scanning the barcodes. The problem was that it was intended to replace...typing in web site URLs. You know, because dragging a magazine to your probably-desktop PC, holding it open and swiping a cat-shaped wand over a barcode is easier than just typing in “wired.com/article-with-popup-ads”. QR codes are largely successful because they store the data they represent in the image. A barcode just gives you a small amount of data you have to look up and cross reference using additional software. And in CueCat’s case, that’s software that A: died with device support in 2001; and B: cross-references everything you scanned against your email address, gender, and ZIP code to sell to advertisers.
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Feb 1, 2021 21:14
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OP I remember the video from the first time around and was just thinking about Building 19 the other day. Thank you for reposting it!Tim Whatley posted:I don't have Archives but like ten....? years ago or so there was a hilarious & lengthy Building 19 thread on here and I did a tour of the store with tons of photos. I think it was Waffleimages at the time though so probably RIP. I remember your photo tour too!
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Feb 2, 2021 01:13
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These kind of stores are always fun, but will likely all die off. I got some medium grade binoculars with a defect once for $4. If I squint one eye just right while wearing contacts, they work like normal binoculars!
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Feb 2, 2021 03:17
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The Butcher posted:These kind of stores are always fun, but will likely all die off. I really doubt it, Ollie's Bargain Outlet has been growing like crazy in the past few years and part of the reason why so many more people are aware of it now is because new stores have been opening across the US. One of the side effects of everyone who entered adulthood during the 2008 financial collapse onward having no money is that stores that target low-income people have exploded in number and sales volume over the past decade, it's why now when you go to the Dollar Tree the toy isle is full of actual brands like Disney and Marvel because they know that poor people are the only marketing demographic that is actually growing. 
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Feb 2, 2021 03:32
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Within the city limits, there are four Dollar Generals, a Dollar Tree and a Family Dollar. There are fewer than 20,000 people in the city. Within 10 miles of the city limits are three more Dollar Generals and a Dollar Tree. We also have an Ollie's, a Roses and a Big Lots. Roses is a shittier Dollar General these days, but was decent in the 1980s. It's wild to think that Big Lots is almost quality compared all of the other discount stores.
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Feb 2, 2021 03:53
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Bloodfart McCoy posted:Our Building 19 closed about ten years ago. It’s a Carmax now. Not nearly as fun, but it smells a lot better. Just imagine how many of those shoes had been hosed, and still contained prisoner cum remnants, So how many pairs did you buy?
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Feb 2, 2021 15:56
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I really really wish I grew up in an area that had Building 19, because it would've been extremely my jam. I no longer live in my hometown so I haven't been in years and years, but I really miss going to best local proxy we had, which was the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop. It doesn't get weirder, cheaper, or more menacing than the Swap Shop. Everyone in Florida knows about the biggest tourist attraction in the state, but like many mega malls down here the Swap Shop claims the number 2 spot on that list. By day it's an 88 acre flea market. By night it is a drive in movie theater. It is also the craziest place. Sadly, it's now at least 40% less crazy because the daily free circus was finally shut down. So, where's the bargain? AT THE SWAP SHOP! First we'll talk about the circus- Gone but not forgotten. Commercials for the Swap Shop ran about every 30 seconds on local broadcast TV, and thus I always wanted to see this mythical free circus. My mom had seen it, and thus was extremely opposed to us going, but one day we had nothing better to do and I appealed to her by saying it would be great people watching. We'll discuss that later. In any case, it was free and nearby so we went. The first thing you used to notice when approaching the Swap Shop was the smell of elephant poo poo because they had several elephants. The entire area of the Swap Shop is hastily paved asphalt for acres and acres, but off in the corner on top of the asphalt they had a circus tent sent up. This is not where the circus was. This tent was surrounded by chain link fence and this is where the elephant herd lived. They would cover the asphalt with straw to soak up the piss, and they moved the tent to a new area every few days. The space where the elephant tent was would then get swept and re-allocated as flea market space. The elephants were tied to stakes hammered into the ground as a safety measure since the chain link fence wasn't connected to the ground and was expressly to keep the tourists out. The only way to describe the elephants themselves would be "sad." The circus was actually held in the only actual building they had for a very long time. Sometime in the late 90s they kind of added some wings to this building to provide stalls for the "permanent" vendors, but it used to be that only inside the "big" building did they have dedicated stalls. Upstairs they had a pretty decent arcade, and downstairs was a bunch of vendors and in the middle of the floor the ring for the circus and a bunch of seats. They had some trapeze swings mounted to the ceiling and zero safety equipment. My mom herded us upstairs a few minutes before the next scheduled circus was about to begin. We watched as a circle of tourists took all the seats surrounding the floor, with several standing and crowding as nearby as possible. My mom started laughing at this but shushed me when I asked why. She said "wait for the tiger." The circus started, it was a couple of clowns running around doing clown poo poo. Other ladies dressed in swimsuits were swinging lazilyon the trapeze. A lady came out on a white horse dressed in one of those big feather hats. She just sat on the horse and left. Then she came back in riding on an elephant, followed by the herd. They did a few slow laps around the circus ring, elephants pooping freely all the while. Then they brought out the tiger. I will link this video because it accurately describes exactly what I saw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uolTBNGxDGo So that was the circus, which sadly was finally shut down sometime in the late 90s. The big building is now a fancy car museum as can be seen in this video (the ring used to be where the cars are spinning in place, and our vantage point was the second floor arcade that is basically unchanged since the late 80s.) Also the Mc Donalds in the big building is the only place in Florida I know of where you can buy fries by the bucket. This is way longer than I thought it would be, so I guess I'll see if anyone is interested in any other Swap Shop stories.
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Feb 2, 2021 18:09
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Hell yes post the Swap Shop Saga.
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Feb 2, 2021 21:42
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So, the really sad circus ended and the final puzzle of the awful smell of the place fell into place. Tiger piss! My mom herds us out of the arcade (most broken or overpriced) and past the amusement rides outside (a quick way to get a broken arm) to the flea market portion. She says "let's see if Preston is out today." and she walks purposefully towards the busiest looking aisle. We get handed 5 bucks each and are told to buy whatever we want. Which at the Swap Shop is goddamn anything. As long as you have no problem with whatever your buying likely being fake, stolen, used, or otherwise suspect you can have it all. Proximity to Port Everglades made for some interesting shopping depending on what fell off the boat. I don't remember what I bought specifically on that day, because the "here's five bucks go to town" thing happened a lot but I once managed to get a 21 inch color TV, 2 ice cream cones, and a copy of pokemon red for gameboy in one trip. I never went with more than 10 dollars. This is because the place is loving SHADY. Later on when I worked for Blockbuster Video my store manager and I would go to the Swap Shop to recover things stolen from our stores, usually a day after we were "hit big." To get a stall you just had to show up and give the owner 2 bucks. That entitled you to one of the "normal" spots that were scattered all over the place where the drive in movies were at night. You could park your car or van and set up a picnic table and sell anything you want right there with no oversight from anyone. Here's a cool video of a guy checking out what's on offer. Coming across a guy that makes his own machetes was very normal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1SRERYcWk&t=100s There is a level of retailer just a step more legitimate than the back of the van merchants, which were as hit or miss as your average community garage sale. If you could win a coveted spot in one of the wings, for 5 dollars a day you get a stable place (so food vendors don't have to move their equipment every day) and you also generally got more tourist foot traffic as those spots were all closer to the big building. The problem with this was having to deal with Preston. The first day we went, Preston was out. I grew up around old people and he always impressed me as being both ancient and the definition of ornery. He looked like anyone's grandpa except he always looked pissed off and always wore a cowboy hat. Preston took the presentation and the rent receipt of his stable merchants so seriously that most days he could be seen patrolling the wings. He would motor slowly up and down in a dingy golf cart, always with a huge cane that he would use liberally. He would motor his way up and down saying hello to the merchants that pleased (and paid) him, and then shouting abuse and threatening those that did not. He also did not like shoplifters, or the police and I saw him beating teenagers with that cane on three separate occasions. Preston was a local institution because he had a lot of money for no apparent reason and he aggressively did not give a gently caress about anything. He once got tazed by the cops and then proceeded to kick out the window of a cop car. In his 80s. RIP to a real one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIFUbG6KHLw You can get a pretty good vibe of what the Swap Shop is like today on youtube as there are a whole bunch of videos of it like some kind of hosed up safari park where you can buy expired isreali army hand grenades and fake nikes at the same both. I highly recommend taking 5 bucks and going sometime, but don't go with more than 10 bucks. You won't need it and you might get robbed. At least until the whole place sinks under the ocean with the rest of Fl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyMx31034JU
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Feb 2, 2021 22:59
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Tristesse posted:So, the really sad circus ended and the final puzzle of the awful smell of the place fell into place. Tiger piss! My mom herds us out of the arcade (most broken or overpriced) and past the amusement rides outside (a quick way to get a broken arm) to the flea market portion. She says "let's see if Preston is out today." and she walks purposefully towards the busiest looking aisle. We get handed 5 bucks each and are told to buy whatever we want. This is amazing, I was thinking Preston was some random crazy they refused to kick out but apparently he owned the place? I'll definitely check it out if I ever go to Florida. To give people a sense of the zeitgeist of Building 19 it felt like a closeout sale for the entire state. The stores were in crumbling old factory buildings surrounded by other crumbling abandoned factories. They never said where they got their stuff but I always imagined they were pawing though the surrounding buildings and haggling with Bart Simpson for the adding machines in that factory he got for a dollar. We never got any circus, this was the height of animal-based entertainment: 
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Feb 7, 2021 21:34
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Pekinduck posted:This is amazing, I was thinking Preston was some random crazy they refused to kick out but apparently he owned the place? I'll definitely check it out if I ever go to Florida. This is another thing about Building #19 I forgot about. All the trailers on their trucks were obviously repurposed and salvaged from other companies and then half assedly painted with poo poo like this. A lot of times you could either see through it or the paint would chip off and you could see the names of other (often defunct) stores. Building #19 did not give a single gently caress and that's what was so endearing about it.
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Feb 8, 2021 03:55
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Ironhead posted:I'm pretty sure it was only food that was past the "beat by" date, not the "expired by". It was apparently real, they weren't allowed to say where they got them but made it obvious. 
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Feb 12, 2021 06:09
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BigBadSteve posted:Just imagine how many of those shoes had been hosed, and still contained prisoner cum remnants, Pairs? You mean pallets!
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Feb 12, 2021 06:30
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reminds me of a Big Lots ad from way back... they were selling lighters at a deep discount, but they weren't allowed to say the brand name, so they drew a cricket beside them going "CHEEP CHEEP"
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Feb 12, 2021 20:56
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Compliance for dollar stores is ridiculous and over the top (Greenbriar in particular, they own dollar tree) because they've all been sued a trillion times for things like Krusty brand home pregnancy tests which may cause birth defects.
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Feb 12, 2021 22:55
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why did you come at my girl britney like that <  >
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May 31, 2021 07:30
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Tristesse posted:Here's a cool video of a guy checking out what's on offer. Coming across a guy that makes his own machetes was very normal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1SRERYcWk&t=100s I love how this dude made a 10 minute video, and I’m like ‘cool, I can send this to out of town friends I’ve been trying to get to go to the swap shop for years’ as surely it must cover a fair chunk of the huge and sprawling thing that it is… and guy doesn’t leave the small fresh market area until like minute 7. At his speed you’d need about 10 hours of footage. It’s something special though, I’ve never done the drive in theater but was tempted to during the covid poo poo just to see what it’s like.
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May 31, 2021 14:57
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Welcome back Building 19 thread.
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May 31, 2021 23:57
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I wanted to bump it weeks ago but i felt self conscious
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Jun 1, 2021 02:42
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I grew up in the northeast part of Mass and my grandfather would take me to this store. I vaguely recall that it was actually called Building 19 and 7/8ths, and that there were other stores with different fractions tacked on to the end. Anyone else remember this or did i make it up?
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Jun 1, 2021 03:00
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HookedOnChthonics posted:why did you come at my girl britney like that < It was a different time. Borrowed Ladder posted:I grew up in the northeast part of Mass and my grandfather would take me to this store. I vaguely recall that it was actually called Building 19 and 7/8ths, and that there were other stores with different fractions tacked on to the end. Anyone else remember this or did i make it up? You remember correctly. All the stores established after the original had a fraction after the #19.
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Jun 1, 2021 04:01
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Considering all of the Ollies comparisons, I’m surprised nobody pointed out that the title of this thread is the Ollies slogan.
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Jun 13, 2021 03:05
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