As much as I like to make fun of Banner's use of "Freddy's" to refer to Fred Meyer, there's quite a bit of evidence that it was used well before the Kroger era, at least for the toy department. This store has it signed as "Freddy's Toy World", and that name was also used in the 80s decor (though the picture showing that, at the Coos Bay store, has gone missing from Google Maps).
Also, if Blogger's counter is reliable, this should be my 3000th post on this blog! (Or 3,950th in total, including Flickr.) Not the greatest picture for that milestone, but I'm quite happy that it fell while I was posting this store, since I was more excited to visit this store than any for quite a while now.
Interesting that the nickname Freddy's dates back to the pre-Kroger era. Also, Congrats on 3000ish photos!
ReplyDeleteThanks! And yeah, I guess it is a long-term thing after all. Maybe it's just a Portland/Oregon thing.
DeleteCongrats on 3,000 posts...or 3,950 really. That's a lot of photos! I'm not sure if I've taken that many photos in my whole life...and I'm sure you've taken a lot more photos which just have not gone online yet! I can probably count the total number of retail photos I've taken on my fingers and toes! I guess it's good that you've been able to take so many retail photos without being kicked out of anywhere or anything. Well, who knows, maybe you have some good stories to tell!
ReplyDeleteWere any Fred Meyers among the Krogers that has Geoffrey Toy Box locations? If so, Freddy's Toy World and Geoffrey's Toy Box would have offered a lot of competition for one another, lol.
Thanks! Yeah, I have about 4400 pictures still waiting to be posted at this point. Hopefully in the next few years, my posted picture count will finally pass the backlog... but I'm not so sure about that, since I do end up taking pictures faster than I can post them a lot of the time!
DeleteSo far, I haven't been explicitly kicked out of places, but I have been talked to in 3 Safeways and a Rite Aid by managers who weren't happy about the pictures I was taking. (Those were all in my first year or so of retail photography, though... nothing since then, luckily!) And just this Sunday, I had a weird one at a QFC, where a security guard followed me out of the store and glared at me while I was getting my bike off the rack, but didn't ever say anything. The weirdest story I have, though, is at the Asian Food Center on Aurora (a nice store in a really sketchy area), where the security guard asked if I was taking pictures for a blog, and seemed to think that was perfectly normal behavior! 😃
I hope you'll change your mind on retail photography one day, but I totally understand not wanting to get into it. It took me years to get going with it, and then years after that to start posting on a regular basis. But I'd sure love to see more of the interesting stuff you talk about!
I don't believe that concept ever came to Fred Meyer -- at least, it never came to any of the locations I visited, and I didn't hear anything about it. It sure would have been funny seeing that in a store like this!
Now that you mention it, I do think I remember you talking about the Safeway situations. The QFC one is new and the Asian Food Center story is just bizarre. Maybe the guard reads your blog?!
DeleteI have a funny, or maybe sad, story to tell about my retail photography history. I'm currently working on a guest post for the Houston Historic Retail blog. It's going to be more of a historic look back at my local mall, which is turning 40 years old in a few weeks, with looks at historical newspaper clippings and stuff like that. These historical focused posts are the kind of blog posts I like to write. That said, I took a few photos of this mall a few years ago that I wanted to include in the post, but I can't find them! I don't know where I saved them to! I don't need mall cops to thwart my retail photography career, I do a good enough job destroying it myself, lol. Oh well, Je of the Louisiana & Texas Retail Blog has some photos of the mall that he said he'd let me use for the post. That's the nice thing about Houston retail, we do have other photographers in town and they've taken photos of most things interesting in the area!
But, who knows, maybe I'll get into retail photography some day, but for now I think I'll stick to the historical looks at retail.
Yeah, it was a weird situation. I doubt he reads my blog, since so few people do, but perhaps he had some interest in retail stuff. I didn't want to push the conversation any further!
DeleteUgh, that sucks. I don't believe I've lost any of my retail photos yet, but there were some that I wanted to put in a transit post a while back that disappeared without a trace. I keep multiple backups of all of my photos, so I still have no idea where they could have gone!
Congrats on the milestone!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteCongrats!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome!
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