When I was young, one of the ultimate forms of waiting-for-adult-to-finish-errands amusement was sticking my arm in the blood pressure cuff outside of the pharmacy at PayLess, hitting the big plastic button, and waiting for the device to inflate and deflate. It was fascinating in that way that cause and effect are when you’re young and still getting the world figured out.

In 1996, Rite Aid Corporation, seeking to expand to the West Coast market, bought Thrifty PayLess Holdings. The PayLess on Larchmont changed its name and sign to RiteAid, but in my rebellious, ‘if you know you know’ way, I refused to call it by its new name for years.

When my parents started letting me ride my scooter ‘into town’ with my friends from the neighborhood and, crucially, no adult supervision, it was a big deal. After stopping at Jamba Juice, we would head back up the block for the Rite Aid. The interior was designed with a ‘decompression zone’ followed by a grid of aisles facing the door. We would make a beeline for the third row from the end in the first column, the candy aisle.

On the way out, there was a concrete porch supported by a double column with a gap in it. There was a handrail blocking it, but you could climb through and hang out there like it was an urban treehouse. The porch also had the smoothest concrete around, and you could ride your scooter across it at speeds high enough to jump the little two-step down to the street. Eventually, someone from the store would come in and ask you to leave.

As a teenager, I stepped out of the candy aisle and started to explore things that better fit my new needs. I could walk into Larchmont and score a four-pack of Red Bulls and an Axe body spray and tuck them away into my school bag. I could stop by the magazine stand outside and pick up copies of Shonen Jump to fuel my growing love for anime and drawing. That later turned into Juxtapoz as I got into graffiti and street art. In Juxtapoz, I learned about design studio Morning Breath whose work I fell in love with. When they did a cover for the magazine Mass Appeal, I became a regular reader. It was in Mass Appeal that I read an article about the long-time residents of a historic apartment building. That article would get me interested in the El Royale and the Ravenswood, which I would build on in a piece for my application to Parsons (the Ravenswood is where I sit as I write this).

I still remember the rush of energy as I tucked a freshly bought pack of Parliaments (I had heard they were the cool brand) into the pocket of my red and brown checked long-sleeved button-down as I bounded down that same two-step into the crisp fall air to meet up with my friend and a group of Marlborough girls he knew. We poured stolen alcohol into secret menu White Gummy Bear Jamba Juice smoothies and climbed up onto the roof behind Peet’s to hang out in private. Rite Aid discontinued the sale of tobacco products in 2019, citing a rise in young customers.

I wonder if Rite Aid felt the pressure to change as Larchmont got more bougie. Maybe they felt some sense of embarrassment, still sporting As Seen on TV products haphazardly stuffed into bins and icicle-encrusted freezers of Thrifty Ice Cream tubs when the Baskin-Robbins next door had long ago changed to a Go Get Em Tiger. In 2015, the store underwent renovations and I don’t think it ever recovered.

The clear space at the entrance to the store was greatly expanded, leaving a weird hollow feeling. Aisles were put into two grids of different sizes and at odd angles to one another, breaking the store into an odd, unnavigable shape. If I had to guess, I’d assume this was done to make the experience feel less commercial, more boutique. The oppressive whites of bad overhead lighting and too-shiny tiles were replaced by something that approximated a warmer feel. The store was clearly in the midst of an identity crisis (none of us are immune). That they never really seemed to restock the store, perhaps a tacit admission of defeat, as if they’d gotten done with the remodel and promptly given up.

So now, amidst the Rite Aid bankruptcy, the undead Larchmont location is finally closing (and taking the beloved magazine stand with it). It’s hard to feel bad for the death of a corporate store, but I can feel nostalgic about pretty much anything.