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Which In Danger of Extinction Business or Job do you Miss Most?


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TV repair, I could have rocked that. At least I can keep my own vintage sets running and watch whatever I want on them through a RF modulator, and not be concerned about damaging the screen just by cleaning it. Also, photo processing, whether it be at a pharmacy or a camera shop, 1 hour or a week. I had the most fun taking pictures with my Hanimex 110 film camera. My next camera was a Polaroid Impulse AF, expensive to use even before film production changed hands so it wasn't used nearly as much. Now I have a Canon compact digital camera, convenient but not satisfying to use.

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Handmade comic movies. Animations are plain awful.

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Small, independent bicycle shops. There are a few left in my region, thankfully, but most have gone out of business. The kind where you could bring in a classic bike, say a 3-speed Schwinn from the 1960s, and they'd dive into a chaos of parts in the back room and come up with what you needed. Sometimes the owners were eccentric enough to be memorable themselves.

 

Sadly, the bicycle industry seems to be falling into the planned-obsolescence  mindset of the Auto industry. I needed to find a new shifter for my older Marin (9 speed cassette) and it was a bear.

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I'm sure everyone looks back upon the era of their youth with glowing nostalgia that makes them think they lived in a uniquely special time, but I am really glad that I was a teenager when there were still music stores and video rental stores. There was an independent video rental store close to my house as a kid where we could rent Beta tapes and NES games. There was another independent video rental store about a half hour walk from my house that had free popcorn and a lot of campy shit that was fun to go to when stoned in high school/university. Then there was a more artsy rental place in a hip part of town that was fun to explore at other times. None of those are still around, of course, and they dissolved in that order. The artsier one merged with a used music store that changed ownership for a while and is now going out of business. The mall by my high school had an independent used/new music store where I spent so much money on CDs and t-shirts. I'm so glad these places were nearby and independently owned, and I'm so glad they were a part of my environment in the 90s and early 00s. It seems like if there was ever an era to have these kinds of places, it was then.

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I can't believe I left out record stores o_O

 

I used to love going to some of the larger ones in my cities, when I was producing a lot of music with my friends. 

 

Just that feeling of picking up a rare record, and going through it. Nothing compared to it to me. 

 

Or music stores where you could hear samples on headphones. 

 

So many music stores have had to desperately restructure their offerings to survive.

 

From moving to strong online presences, and the trend am seeing in my city--becoming more of a gift and gadget store, that happens to sell music in order to diversify their portfolio and avoid the fate so many others have. 

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Door to door mail service (at least in my region), is slowly becoming obsolete as Canada Post struggles mightily to compete with Amazon as well as to the major changes in how we communicate with one another.

 

As they grow in might (Amazon), so do their logistics offerings, slowly making companies like USPS and Canada Post become obsolete in terms of demand and struggling to turn a highly profitable delivery service (other than deliveries to areas so remote not even the private companies want to touch them, to name one). 

 

FedEx and UPS still benefit as Amazon still leans on them. 

 

I'd be curious on full impacts south of the Canadian border. 

 

In my city, Canada Post has invested in building centralized mail boxes on streets where door to door mail service was once offered. 

 

The sheer volume of staff required to meet that demand, simply was no longer realistic. 

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Not that long ago I used to enjoy going into internet cafes whilst abroad on holiday. Now that was a business model with a short time-span.

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Duke Memphis

With the decline of telephone operators, how can anyone sing "Hello My Baby"?

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8 hours ago, Perspektiv said:

centralized mail boxes on streets

I see those in many areas where I live, but I don't know it it is a new or growing trend here.

 

I think the US Postal Service gets a good portion of its revenue from things like bulk mail ads and junk mail and such. All that stuff most people complain about and/or toss right in the trash.

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9 hours ago, Perspektiv said:

Door to door mail service (at least in my region), is slowly becoming obsolete as Canada Post struggles mightily to compete with Amazon as well as to the major changes in how we communicate with one another.

 

As they grow in might (Amazon), so do their logistics offerings, slowly making companies like USPS and Canada Post become obsolete in terms of demand and struggling to turn a highly profitable delivery service (other than deliveries to areas so remote not even the private companies want to touch them, to name one). 

 

FedEx and UPS still benefit as Amazon still leans on them. 

 

I'd be curious on full impacts south of the Canadian border. 

 

In my city, Canada Post has invested in building centralized mail boxes on streets where door to door mail service was once offered. 

 

The sheer volume of staff required to meet that demand, simply was no longer realistic. 

I opt for Canada Post delivery of online orders whenever I can. It's simply superior service to private shipping companies like UPS and FedEx because they have collective community mailboxes. I live in a large building. There are our individual mailboxes for letters and flyers and whatnot, but there's also a parcel locker. When I get a parcel that fits in a compartment of that locker, I get a key placed in my mailbox to open it. I give the key back in the outgoing mail slot in the locker. It's very convenient, and private companies don't offer anything close to that. 

 

For bigger packages I can go to the nearest post office to pick it up, which is way easier than having to find a way to get out to a warehouse near the airport. UPS has fairly convenient locations around the city to pick things up, but they don't always leave them there. FedEx doesn't. If I'm not at home to accept the package at my door, I have to go to their location by the airport. Their service is far inferior to Canada Post, and I live in an urban area with a lot of businesses, so the private companies can easily get to my building. They just don't bother trying to make their deliveries accessible. 

 

That being said, postal service to neighbourhoods with mostly single detached homes is changing. People will miss being able to pick up their mail in nothing but a bathrobe. But those who complain about people not talking to each other anymore should be happy with this. It's communal space where neighbours can get to know each other. It's good for parents to teach their kids to do useful things, and even to help the neighbours who can't easily leave their home. I think Canada Post has a good sustainable strategy that makes services with shrinking demand less time consuming while making services with higher demand the most practical option. 

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Elftober Country

As others have said, video rental stores, We called them, video shops.

 

My Dad used to let me rent horror movies when I was less than 10 years old.

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Duke Memphis

Do schools still have those nurses or whatever they're called who come in to check the kids' heads for lice? I loved when they came in when I was really young. It felt like I was getting a hair and scalp massage.

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Guest Jetsun Milarepa

I can only speak for the UK @Duke Memphis, but they tend to only come into school to give vaccinations colour blindness tests and give health talks. 

When I was a school nurse in Wandsworth in 2005 I found myself in the weird position of not being able tp give first aid to a pupil who had banged their head because I wasn't legally covered to do so, but the school first aider was! 

As for lice checks, these tend to be uncovered by school staff and letters are sent round to families so they can yreat their kids.

 

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2 hours ago, Snao Cone said:

I opt for Canada Post delivery of online orders whenever I can. 

I used to when I lived in a building, for the same reason. 

 

Insanely convenient and could mail out from mail room. 

As a business, Canada post is horrific. I deal with dozens of logistics companies on a daily basis and they are the worst by far for parcels. 

 

I do hope their restructuring strategies work out for them, as they are indispensable for mass marketing to demographics, as well as for regular mail which I wouldn't use anyone else on. 

 

Unless its paycheques. Time sensitive items, UPS all the way. 

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4 hours ago, October Country said:

As others have said, video rental stores, We called them, video shops.

 

My Dad used to let me rent horror movies when I was less than 10 years old.

It's good to see yourself on screen, right?

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Elftober Country
33 minutes ago, Midland Tyke said:

It's good to see yourself on screen, right?

Turd.

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Blockbuster. My family used to go there about every other week to rent a few movie and tv shows but then they were shut down in my town and replaced with an emergency care. I like netflix and hulu and such, but block buster was fun

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Back to Avalon

Renting movies was fun, but it's nice to be able to buy a DVD or blu-Ray for $10 or so (depending on the movie), the same price as renting it a few times. If you purchase, you can watch it whenever you want, as many times as you want, and never have to worry about returning it on time or being charged a late fee. Of course, if you buy it and don't like it, you're out the money and have to give the disc to Goodwill or something. 

 

This makes me think of something I miss: DVD/CD buyback stores. I miss being able to get something back for those mediocre movies that I've watched once. Discs aren't as valuable as they used to be with streaming and digital downloads, and the buyback store near me (and all stores in that chain in my area, I think) has closed.

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What I miss most, more than any specific business or job, is the way a job or craft was learned. It used to be that you would have to work with someone who knew the trade and apprentice with them for a while and actually demonstrate you had some competency. Now you watch a few videos and go right to work within a week at the most. Its the McDonalds-ization of work and it has ultimately changed the nature of what work can mean. 

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chairdesklamp
On 4/8/2019 at 1:40 PM, Jon A. said:

TV repair, I could have rocked that. At least I can keep my own vintage sets running and watch whatever I want on them through a RF modulator, and not be concerned about damaging the screen just by cleaning it. Also, photo processing, whether it be at a pharmacy or a camera shop, 1 hour or a week. I had the most fun taking pictures with my Hanimex 110 film camera. My next camera was a Polaroid Impulse AF, expensive to use even before film production changed hands so it wasn't used nearly as much. Now I have a Canon compact digital camera, convenient but not satisfying to use.

Shame you're in Canada, because I have a B&W TV running with a converter box right now.

TV/VCR/etc. repair I miss because while I need a TV repairman for my '84 console TV (probably leaking capacitor), I can fix all manners of tape player, and could open a repair shop if not for the fact the only ones left using this stuff are us enthusiasts.

That aside, Radio Shack/electronics parts stores (not Best Buy, but places that specialise in parts), which the lack of parts makes fixing things very hard (Ordering on the Web is daunting, and I've never gotten good results ordering parts. I need to see the part in person)

 

Fotomats/film developing is one for me, too--even CVS no longer develops film. 

Not a whole business, but "dial '0' for operator."

And why the heck are all the numbers in phone books these days wrong numbers and disconnected!?

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chairdesklamp
On 4/12/2019 at 12:18 AM, Perspektiv said:

I can't believe I left out record stores o_O

 

I used to love going to some of the larger ones in my cities, when I was producing a lot of music with my friends. 

 

Just that feeling of picking up a rare record, and going through it. Nothing compared to it to me. 

 

Or music stores where you could hear samples on headphones. 

 

So many music stores have had to desperately restructure their offerings to survive.

 

From moving to strong online presences, and the trend am seeing in my city--becoming more of a gift and gadget store, that happens to sell music in order to diversify their portfolio and avoid the fate so many others have. 

 

We still have a good number of independent record stores out here by Los Angeles. And mostly used, so they still have our music! Though only one lets you try the record before you buy it. Chains like Camelot are gone, though. (As are most cool mall things. Now, malls are mostly suburban wealthy family centres and rich yuppie centres...)

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2 minutes ago, chairdesklamp said:

Shame you're in Canada, because I have a B&W TV running with a converter box right now.

TV/VCR/etc. repair I miss because while I need a TV repairman for my '84 console TV (probably leaking capacitor), I can fix all manners of tape player, and could open a repair shop if not for the fact the only ones left using this stuff are us enthusiasts.

That aside, Radio Shack/electronics parts stores (not Best Buy, but places that specialise in parts), which the lack of parts makes fixing things very hard (Ordering on the Web is daunting, and I've never gotten good results ordering parts. I need to see the part in person)

 

Fotomats/film developing is one for me, too--even CVS no longer develops film. 

Not a whole business, but "dial '0' for operator."

And why the heck are all the numbers in phone books these days wrong numbers and disconnected!?

It seems I'm one of very few vintage TV enthusiasts in Canada; the TV forum I'm on is mostly Americans. Getting help with a Canadian set is next to impossible there, so I'm fortunate to have found several Canadian colour TV service manuals in one lot, two of which cover sets I have, one being the set I use almost daily.

 

What about the B&W set, is there something wrong with it?

 

I've changed many electrolytic capacitors; none in my daily watcher are original. I used it for a while with the original 'lytics, but it developed a few bizarre problems within months. As I recall it was a failed 22uF, 350V filter can (boost filter?) in the horizontal stage that caused a tremendous amount of smearing in the picture. Seems it's a common problem among most makes. Ordering parts online is indeed daunting, I screwed things up at first even after seeking information on the TV board, so I ended up recapping said set twice. The initial replacements worked but were of several different series and the lead spacing was wrong. Now I use Nichicon UPM and UPW series caps whenever possible.

 

I've been shocked twice by my daily watcher, and got zapped with the residual charge from a couple of used-up CRTs. I've never gotten full-on HV though, but even if I did the resulting muscle spasm is more likely to do harm than the shock. However, TVs from about 1950 and before use a "brute force" step-up transformer that draws power directly from the AC line, and *that* is dangerous. The HV is most CRT sets is low-current DC, and only really dangerous to an elderly person with a really weak ticker. For most people full-on HV would cause cardiac arrhythmia at worst.

 

I got my 110 camera as a gift, and got my first Polaroid at a camera shop. The Polaroid was a display unit with a film already in it with two pictures left as I recall.

 

I don't use phones that much; I didn't know that the "dial 0 for operator" feature was gone. If I need a phone number I just look it up on the Yellow Pages site. Phone books are no longer given out at my building, but one may be still be able to get them, I don't know. As for the disconnected/wrong numbers I suppose people and businesses moved or switched to cellular and the books are a bit behind.

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-Definitely miss watch repair stores. Several in my city have closed down, but yet offer a necessary service since I own a couple watches. One of my favorite go to ones went out of business recently, so forced me to find one elsewhere.

 

-Black's Photography. They shuttered their stores, but I used to love going there to check out new camera specs but more importantly--was a one stop shop for rapid passport pictures. There are other spots, but this is where I had been doing so since childhood. I mean, my passport case, is still a Black's Photography one I got with my last camera purchase where I also did the passport picture.

 

Its still in immaculate condition, but allows me to hang it on my neck (in lineups as its a high quality pouch with straps), to have a quickly accessible passport and boarding pass, vs fishing through my carry on bag.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Perspektiv said:

-Black's Photography. They shuttered their stores, but I used to love going there to check out new camera specs but more importantly--was a one stop shop for rapid passport pictures. There are other spots, but this is where I had been doing so since childhood. I mean, my passport case, is still a Black's Photography one I got with my last camera purchase where I also did the passport picture.

That's where I worked for five years! When I started we were still doing passport photos with a dual lens Polaroid camera. We had to blow dry the photos to speed up the process so a finger print smudge wouldn't ruin the whole thing. The requirements for passport photos kept changing throughout the time I worked there (post-9/11), so going digital and being able to ensure the photo met the requirements before printing it was a huge relief. Things like no shadows, no glare in lenses, no glasses at all, no smiling, etc - they kept coming up with a new reason to reject the photos we took, so we had to do it again for those customers for free.

 

There were a lot of fun times playing with the white screen background for passport pics. I probably have some fun ones saved somewhere on my computer...

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Back to Avalon
5 hours ago, chairdesklamp said:

And why the heck are all the numbers in phone books these days wrong numbers and disconnected!?

If your area is like mine, it's because the white pages hasn't been issued in about a decade or so. I think my grandparents are still listed in mine, and they died in 1999 and 2000. (Their phone wasn't disconnected until several years later, but still.)

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chairdesklamp
14 minutes ago, Back to Avalon said:

If your area is like mine, it's because the white pages hasn't been issued in about a decade or so. I think my grandparents are still listed in mine, and they died in 1999 and 2000. (Their phone wasn't disconnected until several years later, but still.)

These are only Yellow Pages. There doesn't seem to be a white pages in my area. But if they're still taking from an older number bank (really don't wanna think about how long ago '99 actually was), that'd make sense. Because the phone book arrives fresh with all disconnected numbers, including for businesses I know still exist because I have recently gone to them.

 

@Jon A. The B&W one has loose V-Hold, but is mostly fine. The one I need repair help with is also B&W...but is supposed to be colour (RCA ColorTrak...now in black and white!) with visible retrace lines. Sometimes loses picture, and only a hammer (Thick wood console) to the right spot will clear it. And I've never fixed a TV before. But it's gorgeous, and I don't wanna risk destroying it. Also, parts sourcing is a problem. Buying online doesn't let you see things in person. I've gotten so many bum parts that way.

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1 hour ago, Snao Cone said:

When I started we were still doing passport photos with a dual lens Polaroid camera.

I get this blank look from my nieces and nephews talking to them about Beta tapes, VHS, and shaking a Polaroid picture (disappointed at them not pointing out you're not supposed to). Or, photo albums. Physical ones. Like the ones with the sticky side, you pretty much are stuck leaving the photos in permanently.

 

The utter shock mentioning 3D viewers, or Pogo sticks (they think we're talking food), or devil sticks. I tried explaining a 56K modem to them, when they were complaining that their Netflix movie was loading at about 1MB per second (they complained about a 10 second lag). I explained to them, I had to download a song overnight, and make sure nobody was trying to call us.

 

"Wow, you're old!"

 

Or the devastating.. "are you older than grandma!?"

 

But randomness aside--definitely miss Black's. One of the few giants of the retails sphere I was disappointed to see go. *sort of* was disappointed to see Zeller's go. I missed their restaurant for a while as it brought memories.

 

Didn't care about too many of the others, and was happy to see Target fold (just sucks for those who lost their jobs). They never had stock (or at least in my city--and if we're talking staples, this means your supply chain is just horrible), plus thought Canadians had never experienced the stores in the US thus felt like the mass victims of a major bait and switch.

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5 hours ago, chairdesklamp said:

The B&W one has loose V-Hold, but is mostly fine. The one I need repair help with is also B&W...but is supposed to be colour (RCA ColorTrak...now in black and white!) with visible retrace lines. Sometimes loses picture, and only a hammer (Thick wood console) to the right spot will clear it. And I've never fixed a TV before. But it's gorgeous, and I don't wanna risk destroying it. Also, parts sourcing is a problem. Buying online doesn't let you see things in person. I've gotten so many bum parts that way.

Interesting, sounds like a broken solder joint somewhere. I would start by lightly tapping around the CRT neck board with a non-conductive object to see if you can smoke out the problem. If all is okay there I would just flip the chassis over and check it over with a magnifying glass and a strong light. Since it was made in '84, I'm thinking the chassis is a CTC120 or something close.

 

My daily watcher came with a cold joint on an adjustment pot on the convergence board, making for an intermittent connection. With a crosshatch pattern on the screen the colours on the right would just randomly split and re-join. I'm sure a hot-running resistor nearby caused this because the plastic knob was brittle and broke off when I tried to adjust it. Now I just adjust that one with a small screwdriver.

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