As I post this, I pray for the safety of all of my family, friends, and blog readers during the terrible weather events unfolding all across South, East, and Central Texas and Southwest Louisiana.
Here is the final Hastings I documented during their final days of business in 2016. This was the closest store to where I live, so I spent a good amount of time here over the years.
There is not much to say about this location that has not already been said. This location was in a former Randall's that moved from a different location in the city.
We will start with photos from the beginning of the sale.
These two look like they accidentally clicked on two girls one cup for the first time, lol.
Fast forward to about a month into the sale. Junk from other clearance sales was brought into the store including the Blockbuster movie grab boxes.
The last round of new release music that Hastings ever received.
Each Hastings store I visited had several of these during the liquidation sale. I wonder how many of these were sitting around collecting dust in the US.
The Hardback Café was a decent place to sit back and chill. A few locations had drive throughs.
The magazine racks were mostly empty at this point. They later filled these shelves with Prince and Elvis tribute items.
The store did not look too bad in this photo, the Blockbuster box almost looks like it should be there normally.
Here we fast forward a couple weeks later. Discounts were deeper and as you can see in the first few pictures stuff from other closeouts was brought in to sell.
Steering wheel covers?
Additional sporting goods items which I suspected were from Sports Authority closings.
Sports Authority was in the final month in their going out of business sales when Hastings started their own closing sales.
Baby and kids clothes?
Tons of socks and boxers on this aisle, same brand as they had at the Sports Authority stores.
A little later on in the sale, we can see the store is getting emptier.
Near the store entrance, the overhead sign helped you to see what side of the store these items were located.
Caption this photo, what are they laughing at so hard?
Here is the roadsign on I-45 with Radio Shack, Sears, Hastings all in the same shopping center does not bode well. The Sears is a small appliance store.
October 16- final two weeks of the sale. Backpacks and random junk that was brought in for the sale were still plentiful. Discounts of 60-90% off at this point.
This whole section of the store had been cleared out, but lots of CD's, books and movies were still left. Some collectables were still left as well.
October 20- Last 9 days of the sale. As you can see from my last pictures, the store was getting cleaned out rapidly except for movies, books, and CD's. The discounts were 70-90% off.
October 29, 2016 the final day in the last hour of business. The deal at the end of the day was fill a large garbage bag of anything left in the store for $20. A bunch of movies and books were still left over, I found a few CD's as well.
While I was there an argument broke out when a lady started picking through items another customer had stacked up to buy. Once he saw her and said those were his things, she got mad and threw items on the floor and was kicked out by an employee. It all happened so fast I did not record the incident.
RIP Hastings October 29, 2016.
I agree with your well wishes for everyone impacted by Hurricane Harvey. I know several communities have taken on significant damage. So far everything has been fine here, but we still have a few more stormy days ahead. How are things doing on the NE side?
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see the transition of this store during the liquidation sale, thanks for the photos. This Hastings, which was the closest one to me AFAIK, actually looks like the nicest one out of all the ones you posted. It does look like a grocery store on the outside, but it looked kind of like a Barnes & Noble on the inside.
Some of those DVD racks look almost full even towards the end of the liquidation. I guess those were a hard sell. Regardless, I continue to see regular retailers selling bargain box DVDs near checkouts and stuff. I'm not sure why Hastings was having such a hard time moving DVDs, but maybe the prices were too high for those used ones. It's hard to say.
The story about the argument between customers is interesting. I'm surprised we don't see that more often at thrift stores and such, but I guess it's good that we don't see it often. At least the employees took care of the problem. I'm sure it wasn't fun for them to have to close the store.
We are still good in our area, but the floods have blocked access to anywhere else about 5 miles or less in any direction.
DeleteThis was the second nicest Hastings I visited. The Alexandria store was very clean and had only been open a few years. But this store was taken care of fairly well.
Their DVD prices were geared more towards collectors. You could find deals when picking up used items especially when they had sales. They had such a large movie collection of rentals, that it was hard to keep up.
It was an interesting argument for sure, I had to laugh at the way that lady acted.