In today's blog post I want to talk about saying goodbye to an old friend. (well sort of) When I first got into photography many years ago I went to Peace Camera on Peace St. in downtown Raleigh and I purchased my first DSLR a used Nikon D60 with an 18-70mm lens. This purchase ignited the fire in me and I found my passion and love for photography.
I shopped there for many years. I have traded in my gear to upgrade to better gear and also have made good friendships with most of the people that worked there. I have also taken classes there and I have learned a lot from the staff members.
A few months ago as my career path was changing I was given an opportunity to work there part time. I loved this idea as I would get to talk photography all day and pass along my knowledge of photography that I have learned over the years to customers who came into the store. Right after I started working there we were told that we would have to move. our location along with all of the other stores in the two to three block radius was going to have to do the same. A new project was going to rebuild the offramp from Capitol Blvd and then bulldoze all the buildings and build a high rise condo complex with a Publix supermarket on the ground floor.
We had a few months to find a new place and move the shop. As the search for a new place began we knew that we had way too much stuff to move. When you are in a location for over 20 years you accumulate quite a bit of stuff. Every Saturday we would move our clearance items outside and have a moving sale. We sold quite a bit over those weekends and really thinned out what we had.
We had also found a new location in north Raleigh in the Quail Corners shopping center. The store was much smaller then what we currently had by appx. 1800 square feet but we felt that it would be a good location for us. Plenty of parking and lots of food choices would help draw in a lot of new customers.
Moving day had come and we had our last moving sale on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and when we closed up that evening we all stayed and started packing the store. Sunday morning we all gathered and loaded the store into the back of a U-Haul and what we could fit into our cars and started the moving process. It was quite a long day as we had to load and unload two full trips with the U-Haul and many other trips with our cars but we got it done.
We spent the first few days getting it all set up and we had our grand reopening on black Friday. There were quite a few more trips made to the old store over the next few weeks to bring over as much as we could to the new location and I have to say I am really happy with how the new store turned out.
Friday the 20th of January was the last day that we had the opportunity to get anything at the old location and have the keys so I decided that I wanted to go down there and take some pictures and video.
I had mentioned to the others that in my previous stops over the last couple of weeks to the old store that it really looked like one of the old abandoned buildings that I love to explore and that I was going to photograph the store in that style.
Looking towards the new equipment counter and the book section.
Behind the used equipment counter
Lot's of old manuals for old camera's
obsolete camera parts
I also shot some video as well and I will leave that below for your enjoyment. While I say goodbye to the old store I say hello to the new one and hope to enjoy it for many years to come. If you would like to come see the new store we are located at 5039 Falls of Neuse Rd in Raleigh. until next week.