There are still K-Marts. Two of them to be exact. Soon, there will only be one and it’ll just be a shadow of the great stores that used to cover the land from sea to shining sea. There’s a small K-Mart in Miami and a full sized one in Bridgehampton, New York. The big one is closing its doors October 20th.
In its hay day, there were around 2,300 K-Marts in the US. One was just half a mile down 48th street from where I’m sitting.
K-Mart started in 1962. They merged with Sears in 2002. Then, bankruptcy in 2018.
Growing up, my best friend’s mom worked at a K-Mart. Even way back then, the store had a reputation of poor quality. The rest of the kids on the block used to poke fun with this joke, “What did the bird say when it flew by K-Mart? Cheap, cheap.” He hated that.
I do miss the Blue Light Special. No one does anything like that anymore. K-Mart used to have metal poles with a blue light on top. They’d move it to a special spot in the store, turn it on, and announce over the PA that there was a blue light special with something on sale for a short time. I remember being a little kid inside of a cart my mom was pushing at high speeds, nimbly dodging other mothers to get there before they shut off the blue light or whatever sold out.
Good times. I think it was only 3 or 4 times that I fell out and hit my head.