Groceteria.com

On the Castro Valley comment in the previous post- yes it a bit of a time warp but it wasn't too long ago that Pleasanton (and Livermore, for that matter) towns just over the next hill away from the bay were equally "time-warped".

On the Rite-Aid store - I have lived in the Bay Area for 30 years and vaguely remember "Payless" which was later "Thrifty" - They seem to have had a model of large "discount" stores within the drug store business. Of course, this brings up the "Longs" at 51st/Pleasant Valley and Broadway (Rockridge Shopping Center) in Oakland, which community members still call "Payless" today. Although it is not as big as the CV Rite-Aid, its enormous by today's drug chain standards. It even had a full "Garden Center". and a "Top Dog" hot dog stand.

That "Longs" will likely be lost in the next two years as Safeway has the master lease for the Rockridge Shopping Center and plans on demolishing the Longs for a new 70,000 square foot or so Lifestyle store to replace current Safeway on the other side of the shopping center. Once the shopping center is "redeveloped" I assume that a pharmacy chain will open a more standard size store in the center (or not, as the Safeway will have a full service pharmacy and they might not want the competition).

Mitch Bart

Split by moderator from this thread.

That Rockridge Payless was considered to be the highest volume chain drug store in the mainland throughout the 90s. I wonder how it does now. Sure is too bad that it may go. I doubt Longs will just surrender the space. Rite Aid probably would have...

Longs apparantly has higher volume stores in Hawaii.

That Payless store sure is a landmark and if we loose it a piece of retail history will go along with it... (It truly does have the layout of a "discount department store of the 1960's".

I believe it was discussed in another thread, but prior to being a PayLess, it began its life as "International Super Store," an early discount department store. I remember shopping there in the mid '60s.

I found a reference in the Oakland Tribune of October 2, 1966 to an "International Super Store" that was soon to open at the Rockridge Center at 5100 Broadway in Oakland.

I visited the former Rockridge Payless store at the Broadway/51st St./Pleasant Valley intersection on Oakland, Calif. on August 23, 2013. It is now a CVS store. Much of the cavernous interior is no longer used as retail space. It just sits empty with shelving restricting customers from accessing that part of the store. Nevertheless, signs of its funkiness remain. There is a watch repair counter along the front wall that is unlike anything one would find at any other CVS store. There are also two "stores within the store" at the entrance - a Top Dog hot dog restaurant to the left of the main entrance and a "keys made" store to the right. The garden area of the store seems to be either under renovation or in the process of being shut down. All of the plants were literally outdoors in front of the store.

The "San Francisco Chronicle" has an article about the imminent closure of the International Super Store/Payless/Long's/CVS at Broadway & 51st St. in Oakland's Rockridge district:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/C ... 552134.php

I have posted ten photographs to Flickr of the "former Rockridge Payless in Oakland." See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/50610655@N02/52106232293/ I took these photos on August 23, 2013.