Where were you raised over there Nightsky? We moved to Tarpon from Ohio when I was turning 6 in '59. It is a totally different place now and all the woods we played in are housing developments, glad I they weren't back then. We ended up grabbing a small soft dip cone at the Dairy Rich in Crystal Beach before our planned lunch at the docks and it so filled both of us up that we drove around for 45 minutes to get our appetites back but still only split a gyro at Hellas. I always have to drive through Baywood Village where I grew up and I think I am going to drive my wife crazy!
I visited my first hobby shop yesterday
Wednesday myself and my wife drove over to Tampa to visit our DIL and son and pick up their dachshunds for dog sitting for a week. On Thursday while they were at work we drove over to Tarpon Springs, where I was raised, to get some Greek food at the sponge docks and drive through my old neighborhoods. Also when I am over there I visit the House of Hobbies which was in Clearwater when I was growing up. A few years back he consolidated his Clearwater and New Port Richey stores into one store only a couple of miles from where I was raised. I've spoken to him before but yesterday he seemed much more talkative and we chatted for a few minutes as I was leaving. His name is Bob also and he has been in the business for a long while. I visited him back in the early '60s and told him I used to save my lawn mowing money for a trip to his shop when I was growing up. I told him about the one time I had saved enough so that I walked from the Maas Brothers, where my family was shopping, the 10+ blocks to his shop to buy a large scale WW1 triplane. He was rather impressed by that. He then told me this year would be his 50th anniversary of being in business. His store looks like a store that has been around that long and I noted that he has increased his stock of plastic and added a third aisle for plastic models. He keeps a reasonably well stocked store and I always enjoy going there. He does know the business and eBay and such though so you won't find any "deals" there. Still, I usually pick up a couple of supply items and always visit for the memories.
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Another thing I've known over the years was his love for early BMWs, before they were so cool to own. He had a 2002 when they first were over here, the very boxy version of early BMWs. 2 or 3 years back I popped through with my older son and Bob heard my son owned a GTI and started telling him about how he could replace the computer to get more performance from it. Yesterday we talked about Moebius and also the upcoming IPMS Nats in Orlando. Now he told me Moebius has a factory in central Florida but they wouldn't let him in the place. I told him I knew Frank but didn't know about a factory, which I am pretty sure there isn't in Florida. Of course Frank is located in Deland and does have some warehouse storage there but factory, I don't think so. I didn't argue but did tell him that much of Frank's models are manufactured overseas. Anyway, it was the first time I did have a good talk with him and I enjoyed it. As Nick said, he had always seemed a bit stand offish to me previously.
When I first started going to House of Hobbies around 1965 or so he was on south Ft. Harrison in Clearwater on a corner in a relatively small shop. Sometime in the early '70s he moved further south into a store with more than four times the floor space and he absolutely filled the place up with hobby supplies. The plastic was so thick I always feared getting caught in there if it ever caught fire because there were nooks and crannies and dead end aisles you could get caught in if it did. He also had a store in New Port Richey and we had rocket club meetings there. The stores were about 40 miles apart. So a few years back when he moved and consolidated in the current store on US 19 just south of Tarpon I was very surprised. It was less than 2 miles from where I was raised and I would have been in there a lot more if he was there when I was growing up. This latest visit I told him that and how I bought other models and supplies from him. I bought a Centuri Mini-max rocket engine from him when I was in 12th grade and having no rocket to put it in I simply glued balsa fins and a paper cone on the nose and flew it from a rod stuck in the ground next to my house. I heard his daughter will take over the place when he finally gives it up but a shop like that you can keep running until you just can't get out of the house any more. I also heard at one time he had a huge warehouse of models and supplies but maybe that was actually his old store. Whenever I am over in the neighborhood though I always stop in. The geeky model aisle is actually well stocked compared to most other shops these days. But as I said, he knows his stuff and you won't find a musty old deal in there, if it is worth anything he will have it marked accordingly.
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