Companies That Might Go Out Of Business

Berthold & Hilda Reich, Sigmund & Mathilda Rohrbach and Justin & Alma Zimmerman opened Cleveland Fabric Shop in 1943. Twenty years later there were 18 Cleveland Fabric Shops in Ohio and the stores were renamed Jo-Ann's Fabrics after Joan Zimmerman and Jacqueline Ann Rosskamm, daughters of the co-founders. The chain became Joann in March 2018. There are now 850 Joann stores nationwide. After Joann's first bankruptcy filing in March 2024, its share price plummeted to 0.0765, trading was halted and its stock was delisted from Nasdaq.

Joann files for bankruptcy – again

 
Stephen Geppi, who owned four comic book stores in Baltimore, founded Diamond Comic Distributors in 1982. They transport comics, graphic novels, action figures, apparel and other products from publishers and suppliers to comic shops and retailers. At its peak, Diamond distributed comics from DC, Marvel, Boom!, Image, IDW, Dynamite, Dark Horse, Gemstone and other publishers.

 
Wow. At some of the old malls, it's sad. You walk through an upscale place like Bloomingdales or Nordstrom and all the floors are gleaming marble, the clothes are impeccably laid-out, it's just a big, beautiful space. But no one is shopping there. It's not sustainable.
 
When I was at my dad's cottage in rural SK last summer we went to look at the old mall. It was never a big mall but it used to have a grocery store and several small stores in it. The grocery store closed and so did everything else except for a pizza place which is there. To get at it you need to go to the mall entrance. Once inside they have the mall blocked off with benches that used to be for customers who would stop in the mall. Nothing is there. It was quite eerie.
 
The Top Fives website is not accurately named. Many of their videos are a Top 15, such as the 15 tallest statues, 15 tallest trees, 15 isolated villages, 15 abandoned mansions and 15 secret underground vaults. On New Year's Eve 2024 they posted a video of the top 15 abandoned malls:



Wayne Hills Mall in New Jersey is #8 on the list. Here are photos of the mall and its demolition:

 
Since we're talking about malls...

How do you guys buy jewelry for your ladies? It's the only time I go to a mall and it always feels like I don't know what I'm doing.

Pam would never ask me to buy her something specific and fancy because...you know....she's a good person....but sometimes she mentions oh I like that anklet or whatever and she's talking about a cheap Amazon one so I get that one and then I take a note of it And think oh if she likes anklets I'll get her a fancy one. Then I just walk into Zales and say to the counter lady hey I know she likes gold and all girls like diamonds... Can you get me something around this amount of money that is not too showy because she she doesn't like super flashy shit. We look at two or three things, I pick one I think is like pretty and then that's that.

She always says she really likes it but who the fuck knows because even if she didn't she would never tell me. So some of these might have been pricey mistakes.

Also do you all know there's a new type of fake diamond? It used to be just cubic zirconias and real diamonds. Now it's those two and lab grown diamonds which is just a fancier, more expensive fake diamond. Fuck those. If I'm going to schlep my ass to a mall jewelry store and spend real money on jewelry I'm not getting some fucking fake diamond a nerd made in a lab. My money's buying a rock, that came out of the ground, that took a whole lot of effort and probably some human rights violations to wind up in that Zales showroom.
 
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This is sad, not just because a brewery is going bankrupt, but because it reminds me of long-gone @memebag. He was a premier member of the Alamo Draft House, which ran the movie theater he was so enamored with.

 
.....not to be confused with the Alamo Beer that Hank Hill, Dale Gribble and Bill Dauterive drink.

 
I've never seen a Blu-ray.

I'm kind of bummed about that now that they're going away.

I might have to buy the dark Knight on Blu-ray. I'm pretty sure the PS5 plays them so it'd be cool to see it on 4K Blu-ray.

I don't really care about physical media going away. I just really hate that you don't actually own digital media.

That sucks. Really fucking hard.

You just a license it and whoever you license it from can take it back whenever they want.

That's fucking shitty and not cool.

 
Google's Gemini A.I. says: "While Blu-ray is not completely being phased out, it is largely being replaced by streaming services as the primary way to consume video content, with the current 'next generation' physical media format being considered to be 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (also known as UHD Blu-ray), which is likely to be the last widely available physical disc format before a complete shift to streaming."

Okay, fine. Now what do I do with my Sony Betamax player, my Atari 2600, my Mattel IntelliVision, my 78-RPM gramophone and my Tandy TRS-80 computer?
 
You just a license it and whoever you license it from can take it back whenever they want.
I warned many people about this when the iPod was hot. And they later came back to me one by one complaining. Meanwhile, I still have mp3s I ripped/downloaded over 25 years ago.
Sony Betamax player, my Atari 2600, my Mattel IntelliVision, my 78-RPM gramophone and my Tandy TRS-80 computer
Guy I'm making music with has a Betamax
I have a 2600
I used to own an IntelliVision when I was kid, then one of my son's friends had one a few years ago
Guy I'm making music with has 78s and cylindrical records (and players for both).
TRS-80 was my first home computer (my step-father brought it home from work... meeeeeemmmmoriiiiiiiies......)
 
I've never seen a Blu-ray.

I'm kind of bummed about that now that they're going away.
Damn!

I'm still mad that they quit making 3D TVs.
I wish I had bought another one before they did.

I will have to get a backup Blu-ray before too long.
You just a license it and whoever you license it from can take it back whenever they want.
Exactly.
I warned many people about this when the iPod was hot. And they later came back to me one by one complaining. Meanwhile, I still have mp3s I ripped/downloaded over 25 years ago.
Also exactly. I still try to buy as much of my music on CD as I can.
It's getting tougher though.
 
I've reached out to artists and said "Where's the CD?" and they've responded "Not printing them this time"

Okay, I guess I'll give you 1/7th of a cent over the next few years instead of $15. Have it your way.
 
You just a license it and whoever you license it from can take it back whenever they want.

I warned many people about this when the iPod was hot. And they later came back to me one by one complaining. Meanwhile, I still have mp3s I ripped/downloaded over 25 years ago.

Something similar to this is happening with a change in policy to Amazon's Kindle books.


Apparently you used to be able to download them to your computer and then save that so you technically owned a hard copy.

They're getting rid of the downloadability.

I honestly don't really give a shit. Besides Phish concert tapes on Maxell cassettes I never really kept a physical collection.

I understand how it sucks but really if you turn off Wi-Fi on your Kindle they can't take the book away from you. Even if 20 years from now, some book I'm reading today is deemed inappropriate and needs to be censored that sucks but there will always be some sort of work around.

Also, we live in a in a time when you can get literally almost anything for 15 bucks a month from Spotify. That's so much more convenient than buying CDs or ripping shit from Napster. And if it's not on Spotify, you can like we find it from the individual artists.

I know there have been some examples of companies taking shit away and it's more prevalent in the video game industry but there's never been a major fucking thing where like Nintendo taking away Zelda from everyone who paid 60 bucks for the digital version of breath of the wild.

Until something like that happens. I'm not going to be super worried about it. Yes it sucks, we all agree, but it doesn't suck that much. It's how the world works now. We've been doing it forever years with various apps and streaming video and most people don't even know it's happening.
 
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Until Neil Young says fuck Spotify again. And George Lucas re-re-re-edits the Star Wars movies so not only does Han not shoot first but it's rewritten so Greedo converts to Christianity at the creature cantina. And we're probably only days away from being unable to find this movie, or any films critical of this unnamed person, on any streaming services. Control your content!
 
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