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Who remembers Roches Stores?

13

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,327 ✭✭✭jetsonx


    I got my first Casio watch there aged around 8.

    I got my first ever pair of Levis jeans there.

    I bought the pens that I wrote my Leaving Cert in there.

    When I started college I got my A4 pads there.

    Before I went inter-railing I got bought my travel gear there.

    Then one day in the papers it was announced they would be closing.

    Fond memories.



  • Posts: 0 Yahya Early Meaty


    Remember it from my childhood in 1960s. More “recently”’in the 1990s I worked in the ILAC, and would wander into Roches. I remember the pick & mix and one man taking a taste of each sweet and putting them back out of his mouth after deciding he didn’t like the flavour 😱🤣



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,809 ✭✭✭✭Andy From Sligo


    in the 90's no trip to Galway was complete without a visit to Roches Stores there - I used to like that place



  • Registered Users Posts: 2,591 ✭✭✭its_steve116


    What if Debenhams never bought it?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,679 ✭✭✭Montage of Feck


    Roches retained the buildings and rented them out to Debenhams afaik.

    🙈🙉🙊



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭Count Dracula


    I knew one of the drapery girls from the Blackrock store, rode her rotten in Deans Grange Cemetery on the way home from Hollywood nights. Never saw her again until I met her in Blinkers a few years later. She smiled squealishly and I gave her a wink and a peck on the cheek. She said she always remembers our graveyard debauchery with a great fondness. It was nice of her to say so. Most of the other birds i dragged down there would give an excuse and run like ****, particularly when they noticed that intrepid gleam of lust wash over my eyes upon the first sight of the pedestrian flyover on the Stillorgan Road.

    for the record I have carnal knowledge of workers from

    Superquinn - checkout girl, quick drunken snog at a Debs

    Dunnes Stores - multiple liaisons with grocery, drapery and a HO accounts clerk

    Quinnsworth - groery - Dundrum, Nutgrove and Rathmines

    Tesco - as above, also the one in Bray - that was a foooking long walk home.

    Lidl - Romanian and a Lithuanian

    Aldi - A foxer from donegal - total prude

    Clearys - The Gresham disco

    Arnotts - blowjob in the ladies of the Temple of Sound - i have minor guilty moments over that one to this day.

    Crazy Prices - Snog

    H-Williams - snog

    Centra - ruined the deli manager several times

    Spar - ditto - albeit she works the checkout and packs the shelves

    Switzers / Brown Thomas - have nailed a fair few cosmetic bimbos over the years, they are ridiculous slaves to anything driving a Beemer.

    i have found Grocery girls to be generally more nasty than the average drapery girl, except for the Basement staff in Arnotts, they are mad for it.



  • Registered Users Posts: 127 ✭✭rowantree18


    How do you follow the above....



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,376 ✭✭✭jack of all


    That would probably be best left to Russell Brand. .



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 343 ✭✭peter4918


    Is that you Russell Brand? what are you doing on boards?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,259 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    Yeah they did some sort of voluntary redundancy programme maybe 2006 or so - the rest of staff who remained then transferred a cross to Debenhams shortly after.

    Switzers was the posh shop. Arnotts was middle class, Boyers was a cheaper version of arnotts but everybody shopped in Roches - great for things like luggage, kitchen utensils bed linen -all well priced but good quality



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,190 ✭✭✭✭AMKC
    Ms


    I could do with a ride 😉

    Want a ride?

    2k and you can fu-ck me 😉

    You sound like such a gent.


    I mean why should a Woman be scared if you brought her to the graveyard so romantic like.

    Live long and Prosper

    Peace and long life.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 16,190 ✭✭✭✭AMKC
    Ms


    Yes I remember Rouches Stores. Loved it.


    Bought my first micro Machines in the one in Wexford.

    My only regret was that I bought Star Wars instead of Star Trek ones. My thinking was awe sure I will get them next. Should have went Star Trek first then Star Wars. Spent €50 pounds altogether on all the Star Wars ones I bought which was nearly all of them I think. Might not seem like much now but in the 90s it was. Probably the equivalent to €500 now is it?

    Anyone know how to work inflation out on prices?

    Live long and Prosper

    Peace and long life.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,379 ✭✭✭easygoing39




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 573 ✭✭✭ottolwinner


    If you remember the Roches in Galway. The lift used to be over on the left. It’s not a lift between 1st/2nd floors the odd time if you’re in it with staff you might end up on the top floor store before ending up on your chosen floor. If you do when the lift opens up there you will see the old tiling on the floor and a flood of other things that will remind you of Roches of old. It used to be a place that if we got the shopping done and dad wasn’t ready to collect my mother we would get a pink snack in the cafe and have a stick of it each.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,297 ✭✭✭Count Dracula


    I managed to Snog a security officer who worked HMV on Grafton Street.

    She was okay-ish? A bit intense at times, I prefer women to settle into their snogs, it is nice to generate a slow affection.

    Snogging and early foreplay is not unlike a standard game of Monopoly. Whoever manages to grab the most desirable properties in the first three circuits is pretty much going to win the game if they have any sort of a clue. Like you know after 3 circuits that if you are stuck with the Gas Company and a few single streets you are in for a long frustrating night of underachievement?

    Well that is exactly the same thing that happens in the first 10 to 20 minutes of a snog. You know that if you haven't passed go and collected 200 pounds or , god forbid , gotten attested and sent to jail..... etc etc.

    Roches had all the prime properties, but they hadn't a clue how to play the game. A bit like bad kissers really?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,254 ✭✭✭sprucemoose


    it reads more like something from a Ross O Carroll Kelly book/article

    this shite sounds more like Swiss Toni - "you see Paul, buying a car is very much like making love to a beautiful woman....'



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 156 ✭✭ThePentagon


    I loved being brought to Roches in Galway by my mother or my grandfather. Fond memories of the pick n' mix boxes near the checkouts in the grocery section. Also the excitement of visiting the toy department on the upper floor, directly to the right after you reached the top of the escalator. Still remember the dark green '70s-style carpet.

    While it's good to see the shopping centre still open and occupied, there's something mildly depressing about it now, especially that top floor. I was there a couple of times recently to check out the wares and I think I might've been the only person on the entire floor, staff included. Like a morgue.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 127 ✭✭dublingirl83


    My standout memories of roches stores- going up the escalator to the cafe, big long buffet of hot food, then getting ice cream scoops served in a small metal bowel. The adults having cream cakes and tea out of leaky tea pots. -Think the chairs were red cushioned

    on the ground floor to the right was all the stationary - spending ages picking the best fancy paper or stickers to swap with friends.

    was there a supermarket too?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 573 ✭✭✭ottolwinner


    Those scented papers used to have me sneezing like crazy but I couldn’t help myself. Loved the smell of stationary in roches.

    those leaky tea pots are a very vivid image for me too.



  • Registered Users Posts: 10,507 ✭✭✭✭AbusesToilets


    They always had a great selection of toys, all the good Gi-Joes and Transformers



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 30,677 ✭✭✭✭freshpopcorn


    I know in Cork city they had supermarkets that became Supervalu.

    I haven't many memories of Roches Stores to be honest apart from thinking it was massive when I was younger.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,549 ✭✭✭✭mariaalice


    Have you invented a new fetish based on female retail workers?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,396 ✭✭✭corner of hells




  • Registered Users Posts: 2,152 ✭✭✭mrsdewinter


    A supermarket in the Galway store: there sure was. I seem to remember that it was considered pricey, or too pricey for my parents' liking.

    Roches was a great spot for the random one-off purchase, say, a bit of felt, or a hot water bottle.

    Is it fair to say that Roches had the first escalator in Galway? (Maybe Moon's also had one - I honestly never darkened the door of that place until after Brown Thomas took it over.)



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 40,291 ✭✭✭✭Gatling


    Started my coffee addiction way back when in Dublin, we always kept a jar of some cheapo coffee nobody ever seen open unless a visitor asked for a coffee,that all changed walking into a Roches store for the first and seeing and smelling real coffee beans, haven't gone a day without real coffee since



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 127 ✭✭dublingirl83


    the bag



  • Registered Users Posts: 547 ✭✭✭supereurope


    Roches Stores introduced the escalator to Ireland - the very first one in Ireland was in Roches in Henry Street back in 1963. I think the Patrick Street store might had have the first escalator in Cork , so it might have been the first in Galway too.

    Regarding prices... yep, they were. I don't think they ever really got involved in price wars or anything like that either.

    Yes, Roches had nine supermarkets at its peak - Henry Street, Blanchardstown Centre, Blackrock, Tallaght in Dublin; Patrick Street and Wilton SC in Cork; Waterford, Galway and Limerick. They always seemed a bit nicer than Dunnes or Quinnsworth, Roches seemed to see it itself as a Superquinn-style supermarket, so it was never the cheap option. There were two smaller "Home & Gifts" stores that didn't have a supermarket, in the Nutgrove SC and the Stephen's Green SC. in the late 90s, new stores were opened in Tralee and Newry, neither had a supermarket.

    The SuperValu in Merchant's Quay in Cork shut down in January this year, the last of the former Roches supermarkets to shut.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,934 ✭✭✭Andrea B.


    In the late 80's, it was the only place in Galway that sold Buckfast.

    It wasn't even in the booze section.

    Beside other stuff called Sanatogen (methinks).



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,679 ✭✭✭Feisar


    First they came for the socialists...



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,211 ✭✭✭✭rob316


    What a shop, it had everything. The one in Wilton in Cork was actually quite small, its amazing the variety of quality products they fit into such a small store. Great sports section, shoes, electrical, homeware and stationery.

    I was moving house recently and I was clearing out the attic, found a couple of Roches Stores carrier bags with bits in them.



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