I  was around airplane all my life, even before I was born! The full scale J-3 Cub I fly now, my mom was flying in when she was pregnant with me! My dad was a flight instructor, so  airplane models  came naturally. The first hobby shop I remember was the Toy Box in Springfield, Mo. I was about 6 years old and started with 1/2a stuff. My dad worked for the Federal Prison Service, so we moved around the country like the military. Ohio, Florida, and then back to Springfield around 1968, worked part time at the Bike Shop, the best hobby shop in town. In 1970 the owner move the hobby shop to a different location and I managed that for 5 years, then I bought it and carried lots of airplanes, boats,and cars. I flew and raced C/L and cars for 22 years until 1994 when I sold it and had to go to work at a real job.
Gary

The first Hobby Shop that I can really remember is Covina Hobby Center in Covina California.  I started going in there in 1958.  Ed and Marge Bzovy owned it and it is now being run by their son Eddie after Ed's passing last November.  They had one Employee at the time named Roger Wildman (does that name ring a bell).  He was always working on something from bending up fuel tanks to helping novices (me) with their problems.  Covina Hobby has always been a control line mecca.  I would crack Ed up when I would walk in the door after he just got a supply of fresh balsa and take a deep breath and immediately head for the balsa rack.  Nothing like the smell of fresh balsa.  Al Heinrich and I would head down there on Friday evening after we got our allowances and buy a new plane, usually a Flight Streak or Ringmaster.  we would then head to one of the houses to start building and have them flying by Sunday morning.   Ed was instrumental  in starting a Control Line Club called the Flightmasters.  I think the sign is still in the shop somewhere.   Covina Hobby is truly one of the mainstays of the hobby in So Cal.     

Just had a memory of one of the old-time hobby shops awakened last month.  The old Clearview Hobby Shop in Lorain, Ohio.  Family owned from mid 1950's till around 1990.  Started by the father, it was run by his wife after he passed away  in the early 60's,taken over a few years later by one of the sons when her health started going bad, then after he passed away (also a fireman, heart problems) the other son ran it.  He moved the store sometime in the late 70's to a larger area in a local mall.  He finally closed the store when the mall decided to reduce the number of units for tax purposes.  Seems Bob did better with insurance and real estate sales, so he closed out.
I remember the last time I stopped in the store, just a day or two before it finally closed.  I noticed a $2.00 bill in a frame over the counter.  Asked him if he remembered that I was his first customer in the new store, and paid for the first purchase with that bill.  He looked at it for a couple minutes, added up the bill, and when he made change, he hesitated, then reached up, pulled the bill down and out of the frame, and used it for my change.  I think we both had somewhat wet eyes.  He died about 8 months later.  Neither he nor his brother or father had made it past 50.
The thing that brought back these memories.  Early March this year, the local paper had an obit.  The mother just this year passed away at 104 years of age.
I miss the old style hobby shop, the kind where the proprietor and the hired help know their products, where the store not only stocks the traditional supplies and products, but also stays up to date with the newest and can and does give the customers knowledgeable and quality advice.  Not too many left.

I remember The Craft House Hobby shop on Military Trail in WPB Fla from the middle 70's as ell as Mickinley's hobby Shop, also in WPB.  We used to drive over to the coast from Clewiston when I was a little kid to shop or have fun, what ever, but Mom and Dad used to always take me by those hobby shops and they got a lot of my "kid" money whether it was airplanes, plastic models, or ho scale trains.  Later on, in the early 80's i discovered the Depot in Lantana and spent a bunch of money there on Lionel trains...

Mid 1950's. Tillman's records and Hobbies in Natchez Ms. What could be better than talking model airplanes and listening to rock and roll in the 50's.
they carried mostly scientific and sterling kits, cox and McCoy engines. Those were great days in my life.

My earliest memories of a hobby shop were of a hobby and bicycle shop called Em's, in downtown Port Angeles, Wash., early  and mid 1960s.  Can't remember the exact name, something like Em's Cycle Shop.  Anyway, I would ride the nine blocks my bike from our home on Ninth St. to the hobby shop on Front Street, and shop for what i could afford.  Thinking of that shop reminds me of a model-airplane-kids story:
  A buddy and I went to the schoolyard with my reliable Sterling Navion to put up a few flights, but we couldn't get the McCoy .35 to run right.  It would seem to run OK backwards (odd!) but would only sputter forward.  It took us about an hour to figure out that the new 10x6 nylon Top Flite prop the nice lady at Em's had just sold me was a pusher.   
  Well, it only cost a quarter, so I wasn't out much, but it ruined a flying day.
  --jt

That is almost as good as the guy who put his prop on backwards and wondered why he had no speed.

Ed Guth's hobbies in Syracuse NY.  About 8 years old and my parents bought me a Strombecker Piper Cub.  Never looked back.  CL/RC and now OTS when I can.  A real diversion from E3D electric but all are fun.

Rankins in Celina, Ohio 1966.

Dont remember the name but it was a hobby shop/sporting goods store in Portland Indiana.  They had all kinds of kits and engines and a bunch of planes hanging from the ceiling.  Later on I made a hundred trips to Indy to Jack Sheeks shop.  If memory serves me it was at 5454 E. 21St Street. 

Rick

Not the first hobby shop for me, but the first one while in the USAF.  Technical Bookstore at Chanute AFB, Rantoul Il. in 1965.  Bought a Merco .29 RC engine there, my first RC engine with an actual throttled carb.  Really overheated with Missle Mist, got a couple short  flights with a thingy I built up with a J. Roberts 3 wire system, sold it cheap, then found out a year or two later I should probably have been using something with low nitro, like maybe Superfuel.

I don't remember the name of the hobby shop, but it was in Ft. Worth a couple blocks away from Leonard Brothers Department Store in the mid 1950s. It had a model of a B-36 over the door. I think the only thing I ever bought from that shop was a .25 roll of 1/2 A flying lines, but I recall drooling over the stuff in the glass cabinets that lined the walls and being awestruck by the models hanging from the ceiling. I was about 8 years old at the time (1954).

Bob Redmon

Just saw Floyd Carter's reply (#1) - yes, Al's in Elmhurst (Chicago suburb) was a winner.  Last shopped there c.1966.  My best  memories, however, are of Haddonfield, NJ's "Highway Hobby", 20 Tanner St. - the best CL shop I've ever seen.  That was c.1950-1956...and of course it's long-gone too <sigh>.

And then there was Rich's Hobbytowne in Parsippany, NJ.....not to mention Lakewood Village Hobby, CA (killed-off by "Hobby Warehouse" in the 1980s).

ahhhh my first hobby shop,it was located in a jewelry store in davenport IA.in the back corner they had free flight and c/l kits and supply,s.my first kit was a carl Goldberg swordsman with a cox 020.the shop owners son helped me build it and taught me to fly on it,it was the first of many to come.i had 16 good yrs in c/l before crossing over into rc,dam know looking back i should have run the other way when i seen that first rc model fly,but i am back and look forward to many great years in c/l,Butch

There wasn't any shop -- I think I was born with this.  We lived out in a sub-rural area outside of Portland, Oregon, that somehow acquired a shopping center.  It had a Benjamin Franklin store that stocked a whole bunch of Comet kits, which I built regularly.

Then one Christmas someone gave me a "Whole Kid's Catalog", which included a promotional poster for all sorts of aeromodeling tips from Sig.  I sent off for the poster, and then for years I mail-ordered most of my hobby supplies from Sig.  Eventually I got a driver's license and could buy stuff at the closest hobby shop (Aero-Sports in SE Portland -- Leon even offered me a job one spring), but I still got the bulk of my building supplies from Sig.

I know in this thread is wwhere I posted about the first hobby shop, but the old 10cent Comet kits came from a Drug Store that was on State Avenue in KCK.

    Broome's Hobby shop on Plank Rd., Baton Rouge, La. for me. First visit about 1958. Mr. Broom sold Dad a used K&B Torpedo 19 to put on an old 40's airplane that had an O&R 23 glow. The store itself was a small "A" frame bldg. about 20 x 40 ,if that large, situated in the far corner of OURSO Dept. store parking lot. It was jam packed with C/L stuff. Mr. Broom always helped us out by reducing the price or pulling some parts out of his scrap parts and giving them to us. His wife was always in the store working with him, but you always wanted him to help because he new more and was more inclined to help with the prices.  We usually bought Goldberg Shoestrings, Flight Streaks, Ringmasters, McCoy 35RH, Cox .049, Perfect tanks and wheels,  and Misslemist fuel/Fox. Also had to have the White Tornado nylon props. Not very efficient, but very unbreakable. Broome's was in business over (3) decades. He shut it down and worked part time for several years at Hobby Towne before he passed away. When the slot car craze hit in the early to mid-60's he put up a track for drag racing behind the store. The motors we used in our drag cars were unbelievely powerful. Kids would rush over there after school and race until dark, or whenever Mr. Broom would shut us down, then home to the dreaded home work. 

We lived in Kansas City in my early years, and I remember buying Guillows rubber powered slip together jobs when I was about 5 years old, at the drug store on the corner. Later, we moved to the Roeland Park area, and I use to ride my bike out to Hobby Haven in Mission to buy stick jobs. I remember a Dakota Biplane hanging in that shop that I thought was the coolest thing I had ever seen, but a little above my modeling skills. This was all in the 40's. Swope Park was the modeling mecca back then when all the military guys came home and flew there. My family would take us kids on picknics there on weekends, and I watched as many modelers cranked on ignition jobs.

Oddly enough, my first control line planes were bought at Charlies Hobby shop in down town KC after we had moved away to a small town in north central Ks. We use to go back to KC to visit my grandparents, and I always went to Charlies and bought a Scientific Hollow Log to take home to build. Modeling was magic back then. I was 10 years old when we moved from KC, but there were a couple of older guys that flew control line on the school yard a 1/2 block away. Several of us younger kids were flying 1/2 stuff.

I have been a modeler all my life except for a few years in my late teens when cars, motorcycles, and a special girl took most of my time. Started flying control line again in 1960 when I was 19 and married to that special girl.

Anybody here remember the old Comet and other solids?  They came with a block or three, a couple pieces of 3/32" or 1/8" sheet, and some 1/16" sheet.  The idea was to trace the outlines on the blocks and sheets, and carve the pieces to shape before glueing things together and painting.  My trouble with them, I couldn't control a single edged razor blade enough to do a good job, didn't have a pocket knife sharp enough, and by the time I got my first Xacto, they were no longer available.

I did a few Stromberg solids in the late 40's. I also did some of my own out of balsa blocks that I got from a friend. This thread is sure bringing back a lot of great memories. Great to read how others got started also. We were very fortunate to have grown up when we did. Those years we picked up many virtues from modeling that carried us all through our lives. Now days there are very few that know what it is like to create something with your hands that actually works.
I remember building a brass fuel tank out of a sheet of brass for a 1/2 Pint racecar. I did not have a soldering gun, so I used a woodburning tool to melt plastic to "weld" up the tank. It worked very well and never leaked. We just made due with what we had in those days. I use to flatten nails and sharpen them with a file to use in one of those hand crank drills.
  When the rod broke in the OK Cub .074 in my race car, I made one out of steel in highschool shop class. It ran just fine and never broke again. I think I still have that engine somewhere in my stuff.

Boy, the memories.  Not just my first LHS, but so many others that I went to and got advise, help, and encouragement.  Like ACE RC in Higgensville, Mo, where I visited the first time in 1967, found Paul Runge Sr, alone in the office.  Introducung myself as TDY down the road at Whiteman, he told me everybody else was out to lunch, took me back to the, I can only say warehouse area, and turned me loose.
I've already mentioned the original bicycle shop, Yurcheck's, Karnack's, Clearview Hobby, Mr. Bart's, Lorain Hobby Shop, and maybe a few others.  Another that I can't forget, that was a fantastic aid when I got started in RC was run by the fire chief at the time, Al Nickley.  Gentleman not only was conversant in all aspects of model airplanes and boats, but had a 2nd degree commercial FCC ticket, and was able to do legal repairs and tuning on transmitters. His van was not only carrying his planes abd support equipment when he got to the local flying field, but it was also equipped to do light field repairs on radios.
The exposure to the early models, before ARFs, die cut balsa, radios fully functional, plug n' play right out of the box, gave me so much challenge, inspiration and encouragement, that has helped me in every job I ever held, right from picking pop bottles off the street for the deposit, right up to instilling the patience that led me to be a problem solver, whether I was working on the auto assembly line, troubleshooting ground support equipment in the AF, getting stuck with the troublesome intermittent problems as an auto mechanic, or solving some really exotic problems in product development engineering for the last 28 years of my working career.

Mrs Cooper, Coopers hobby shop, Independence Missouri. My uncle Glen went with me to her shop to get a one$ size stick and tissue model.We came out with the stick and tissue model and a ready to fly plastick controle model called the Aero Mite,with a spitzy .045 and the rest is history. I was about 10 years old. Glen is the only uncle still alive. I visit him every time I go to Kansas City Mo. Great memories. Forerunner

There were quite a few hobby shops in the early days. For me it was the Hobby Center, a medium sized shop that had most of what was needed. AND THEN there was the grand daddy of them all, Orange Blossom Hobbies. It was the largest hobby shop in this section of the country with a wholesale operation in the back. It had airplane, car, boat, and railroad departments. The owner died, then his son ran the business into the ground. It is now a drug store.

My addiction came from watching an old man fly a Kenhi Chief with a rockin' Fox 35 for power. He used to come to my hometown to fly on a vacant lot and after several million questions by the kids that would come at the sound of the old Fox he told us about his model shop, but it was in Fremont, Michigan which was about 15 miles away. AS I remember it none of us kids could get a parent to take us to Fremont to look at the models in Fremont. Eventually another guy that lived in our town, joined him, and then set up a tiny shop in his house, using a front window to display "Gasp", an S1 Ringmaster with a Fox 35 on it, for sale for $10.50! I flew the wings off that Ringmaster, but the Fox ended up pulling a Kenhi Panther around and around in circles for me. It went on from there.
Clare

if your from NJ who doesn't remember Rich's Hobby Town. Fond memories getting my parents to drive us there, and flying on their 2 or 3 flying circles. Also had a boat pond. The nhobby shop was 99% control line. Being there was better than a kid in a candy shop back in the 50's.