You can't find a shop like that now, but, now we have the big credit card people to help us out when we don't have the cash.   Charley at Charley's Hobby Shop would let me make payments on an engine I really wanted.  Stipulation was that family came first, in other words as he would always state, "Don't rob Peter to pay Paul".  It is still with me and I guess why I worked so much over time when I could get it.  Having fun,  DOC Holliday

 

My first was Stantons in Chicago.  The entire ceiling was covered with hanging models both FF and C/L

We moved to Chicago when I was 5 years old. Dad bought a bunch of PDQ and Veco kits from a mail order wholesaler under his company name of BAC, Best Air Craft. BAC owned all of our family airplanes too. Dad would go to the hobby shops with guys his age, I was in school or something.
I do remember going to Stanton's and Lee's. I don't remember which was which from that time, just the Comet airliner with Dyna Jets hanging from the ceiling.
I think when I was older and we were visiting the Nats in Chicago, Bob Whitely, Al Rabe, Tom Lay, Dad and I went to Lee's and Dad bought me a used Super Tigre 35 or 40 R/C from the used engine bin. It was for a Scale Class I Carrier model I never built, a "Dave Gierke and Jerry Worth finish" inspired Charlie Reeves Airabonita.
I was around 13 when he bought me a Guillows Trainer III and a JRoberts outfit for Christmas so the engine was probably a 35.
I remember riding my bike to Colonel Bob's when they moved to Costa Mesa from Los Angleles. We had settled in Huntington Beach, CA and the store was pretty big, lot's of kits and good hardware for a while. It was gone by second year of High School (1975) as I remember driving there when they were going out of business and bought a Guillows Triplane I converted to C/L with, of all things, a Tee Dee 049.
I still go to Evett's in Santa Monica for stuff now that I live in Pacific Palisades. Christmas presents and stuff too. Colby is still there and building models in the back for Hollywood and modelers. They cemebrated 60 years in business this summer!
Chris...

Nice story, Chris.....
Hey CHRIS AND GRUNTS...this favorite and great photo of Chris and is Dad....pretty much says it all!!!

Quote from: Shultzie on October 24, 2008, 04:56:33 PM
Nice story, Chris.....
Hey CHRIS AND GRUNTS...this favorite and great photo of Chris and is Dad....pretty much says it all!!!

Chris's dad has a Grish 3 bladded prop on that smoothy I remember using one of the 9/6's on one of my planes back in the sixties. I had to because most of the flying fields in those days were grass. The prop felt like mush when you did a corner but they didn't have many 3 bladed props in those days.
Nice Picture of Chris and his dad, Boy you used to take a lot of Pictures in those days. I am suprised that you don't have Camera elbow to go along with your Carpul Tunnew or windyyyyy TTTTTunnnnel!
Keep thos Pictures comming Donnie!

My uncle owned a slot car track in the sixties in National City, Ca. I used to like going to the distributor with him to check out the models and stuff on the shelves, not one or two but cases worth, the smell of the balsa storage was worth the trip. Engines were in another spot stacked by the hundreds or it seemed that way to a young kid at the time and occasionally I would be able to leave with something to build or fly but it was never the ones that I really lusted after. There was another hobby shop in town that catered to model planes and that was where I bought my stuff after the slot car business was closed, still remember the owner telling me not to handle the balsa  , but he did sell 1/2a kits in a deal where you bought the kit and got a babe bee for half or free depending on the sale and/or his mood or you could opt for dope and glue. All gone now but there are still a few stores in San Diego but you have to hit the freeway to get there. I now live in PA and Penn Valley is only a couple miles away so I have a good shop locally.

I went with my best friends family up to Boston as a kid. We both bought 1/2a balsa kits. Took them back to Va. Beach and flew them in his back yard with Golden Bees back in the early 70's. When my step dad got transfered to Millington Navy base, my mom would go out to the base once a month to shop. I would asked to get dropped off at the base hobby shop. I would spend hours in the hobby shop. They bought me a Cox RTF Mustang and I flew the paint off of it.
As I got older, I discoverd Action Hobby's owned by Lester Goldsmith in Memphis where I bought my first big plane. Ackromaster with a McCoy .19.

Thanks Bob...
Speaking of memories...I just have to run this all time favorite shot of a model makin' family that shows sooooooooooooooo much LOVE, PRIDE, RESPECT AND DOIN GREAT THINGS TOGETHER.
The quality of my zzzrocks' & scan suckuth that I coped from AAM?...If  you still have that great photo in your collection. It would be great to see if you could grab that ditzitzeee' camera and show the real thing on this Grunt of the Day thangie?'

Thanks for taking the time to share your Hobby shop story with us.

Bob!!
DOES SHE STILL HAVE THE ONE THAT YOU WANTED TO HAVE PUBLISHED...or another one showing you and the FLYING HUNT CLAN???

And after all these years I thought you where getting fresh  ............It's a great photo.

George's Hobby Shop in Alexandria, Va, right on King St. I would work there on the weekends for a 20% discount. Sometimes, maybe I'd get a gratis hamburger from the greasy spoon across the street.

There was a place in Washington, DC, right across the river, called Corr's, I think. It was in a very iffy area of DC, 9th St, home of Berly Q joints, whose luminaries did more than one US Senator in (Lilly St Cyr, Patty (no relation) Waggin, etc.  The hobby shop moved across the street sometime in the 50s. The first store had a large, hand painted freeflight mural in the back. The second store had a beautiful dark blue Smoothie hanging in there, and I lusted after it. These were classic big city hobby shops.

We flew at the Alexandria Sailing Marina (still there), which is only a mile or so south of Reagan National Airport. We would see those Capitol Airlines Viscouts whistling in all the time.

Currell

My place of addiction was Bob's Bicycles on Yosemite Ave. Modesto CA circa 1956-1972.
I bought lots of Pepsi's from his flat drink container and bought Balsa Wood, Kits - a Chief
A T-Bird, and an Ares.  A few engines a McCoy .35, a Torpedo .35 a Fox .29 and an OS .35S

Jim Pollock 

My first real Hobby Shop mentor was one Mr. Don Still at Don Still's Happy Hobby Haven in Beaumont, Texas. As a kid growing up in the backwoods of east TX just outside Livingston, TX, somehow airplanes fascinated me from almost day 1. While my first model experiences were with the Joe Ott, Comet and such models during the WW II days, available at the "dime' stores, later I received some help from a 4th grade teacher with a donation of Air Trails magazines. That introduced me to real flying magazines.
During the war years every so often we took the train from Votaw TX to Beaumont, TX. There i saw my first H/S. Later just after the War, we went every so often to visit my grandfather, mom's side. i was able to visit Don Still's place. I well remember that Stuka hanging on the wall. At that time it was a G-I-A-N-T model airplane. I loved it.
Now for some next 7-8 years after the war, when I needed anything, even if it was simply a couple yankee dollars, Don always saw that I got whatever I ordered. In the early '50s, several of us school kids played hooky one day and  visited Don. None of us could fly inverted. Don made a phone call, we had models in the car, and before the day was over each of us was doing inverted flight. Don's friend was a drugstore manager and went out with us to a local school ground and the rest is history.

Mr. Don Still is, and always will be a GIANT of a MAN in my mind. 

Hi-Way Hobby, Haddonfield, NJ - 1950/1956.  Originally at 20 Tanner St., later moved to the corner of Kings Hwy. & Haddon Avenue.

Honorable Mention:  Al's Hobby Shop, Elmhurst, Illinois / Penn Valley Hobby, Lansdowne, PA

Boy, thanks to some situations at work and a health situuation, I haven't been on this site for a while.
While I had been going to a couple corner stores for Comet and Guillow kits for a couple years, sometime around 1949 or 50, I took a box of pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters, even a couple silver dollars, and went with my dad to the Cycle Shop on 28th Street in Lorain, and bought my first CL plane and engine.  An Enterprise Air Racer with an O. K. Cub .099.  Never got that plane finished, but I eventually learned to fly CL with that old engine and an Enterprise profile P-51.  Still have that old engine, and once in a while still put it on something.  Has almost as much power as some of my Babe Bees.
Interestingly, that bike shop was in the same store building my grandfather had his dry goods store in until losing it during the depression.

There were two in the town of Glendora, California. The place I bought my first "large" airplane kit, a Sterling Mustang, and engine, a McCoy .35, was Vincents drug, and 5 and dime, store. It was in the middle of down town at the time. A year or so later, about 1958, Mrs Myers opened her little shop out on Route 66. Locally called Alosta Ave. Her shop was a small free standing buildingon the north side of the highway, just west of the train overpass.

It's no longer there, gone many years now, but I'll always remember Mrs. Myers and her small hobby shop. As far as I know, she didn't build models, but she was enthusiastic and would order anything we wanted, and sold it to us for a discount.

It was a good ride on the bike to get there, but always neat to walk in, until that day when I arrived and found she had been burglarized. It had to be a modelor who did it. A few engines, a couple of kits, fuel and other misc. stuff. I don't think she ever trusted any of us after that. It was too bad, and should not have happened.

The greatest shop ever when I was a kid was National Hobby at the corner of Brookpark and Ridge Road in Cleveland. It was a great shop and the ownor was Will Pachasa who was the brother of the ownor of Cleveland Models. National was a great shop. Lots of kits, balsa engines and whatever you needed. Will's daughter owns "Hobbies are Us" in North Olmsted. Nice shop to but not what National was to me in the fifties and early sixties. I wasnt around when the business was sold and then eventually went out of business. They had an auction and had I been there I would have bought the balsa rack. Hand made by Will with a whole bunch of slots. I had a real thing for that balsa rack. I rode my bike nearly ten miles from my home. All down hill going and all up hill coming home.
Wayne

one shop brings back many memory's Rays hobby shop in Galesburg IL.Ray was an avid c/l guy and would go out of his way to make sure we were building and finishing our models the right way and always had time on sat morning to help us trim our new dreams.he always had everything in stock,and was always ready to deal us a discount to help us out,i remember my first u/c was a goldberg lil jumpin bean with a cox golden bee .049.

I grew up in the town of River Edge N.J. It about 10 mi outside NYC. It was a good time and place to grow up if you liked model airplanes.
My first CL plane was a Flite Streak which I bought at the local Sweet Shop. I don't remember the name of the place but it was a soda fountain that sold among other things kits and engines. I remember how excited I was going there knowing I had the money to get the plane.  I built the kit in my basement by myself, my parents were desensitized to the smell of Ambroid and dope by my older brother. I put in a Torpedo 35, which my brother gave me, (he is still giving me engines). We took it to Rich's Hobbytown in Parsippany NJ for its first flight. There were flying circles outside of the back of the store. My brother did the honors, It was a fast plane and on the first wingover the nose and engine departed from the wing. That was my first lesson about making sure your fuse is well glued to the wing. My brother, being the good guy he is, consoled me by taking me into the shop and buying me a Sterling P-51 (my choice over the Ringmaster, it had flaps!). We then had lunch which started a tradition of stopping for lunch to discuss future projects after flying!
There were other shops in the area and several department stores had hobby shops in the basements that I would frequent, but the best one was Hi-way Hobby in Ramsey NJ, it was always worth the trip . Upstairs were airplanes boats etc and downstairs was an extensive model railroad shop. When I went on the Jr High school we moved to Ramsey, and I had the hobby shop all to my own. Before I could drive, I biked there so no one would have to wait for me. I had it memorized, and knew what they had on the racks and shelves better than the guys working there. By that time I was transitioning into R/C. I was building boats and planes so the buying was only limited by how many odd jobs I could work.

Good Grief!  Al's Hobby Shop in Elmhurst, IL.  Went there at least  weekly for the 2 years we lived in Wood Dale, about 10 miles from Elmhurst--1961-63.

I also played in the Elmhurst symphony Orchestra, and rehearsals every Tues night and concerts 5 or 6 times a year.

Floyd

The fist shop I remember going into was "The Hobby Hole" in Cape Girardeau, MO. It was in the basement of a clothing store on Broadway. You had to go through a hole in the floor where a spiral staircase went into the hobby shop. I guess that was about 1973  or so. My brother Johnny would take me there to buy models and that lead to my balsa addiction. Anyone else remember that place?
The next one would be a hobby shop in downtown Temple Texas. We moved there in 76. I remember the fellow behind the counter whose was Randy Zavodney I think.  His name was unusual and it kind of stuck in my young head.
Then we moved back to Missouri. I would go to the big shops in St. Louis when we visited the relatives in "the City".
Hobby shops still fascinate me. Nothing beats a mom 'n' pop hobby shop!!

Rankin's in Celina Ohio....1965. I was a wee tot but I loved that place. Nickle Gliders, the latest Cox offering, engines in a jewelers case, the ole man sifting thru the latest shipment of balsa, a wall full of kits. Georges Streak Trainer was my first balsa model. Its now a different store in this small mid western town, but it still smells the same. I stop in everey now and then. Nostalgia trip for sure.

Believe it or not, the Penneys department store at the local mall had a good selection of kits and the best prices on kits and motors I could find in the early 1960s.  I remember the Babe Bee motor's cost being $2.99.  Then a few years later, I started going to a hobby shop farther away, called Penn Valley Hobby Center, in Lansdale, PA.  They had a tremendous number of kits and supplies crammed into a shop that wasn't really very large.  They always had a discount off from the list price.  The business was founded in 1961, and has had the same owners (a married couple) since 1968.  They are still in business now:   http://www.pennvalleyhobbycenter.com/

 Decatur ,ga. if you liked building models or racing slot-cars
The Decatur Hobby House/Speedway was the placed to be. electric train layouts set up.
slot car tracks were huge.
Before it was a hobby shop it was a J C Pennys and before that it was The Dekalb Theatre
PLACE WAS HUGE  at least it seemed that way in the 60's. it had it all.