Downtown on a Thursday Night

Summary:
Oneonta's downtown saw major changes in the early 1900s, including new stores and buildings reshaping Main St and surrounding streets. Of these, arguably the most iconic of Oneonta's old stores was Bresee's, started by Frank Bresee in 1899, but moving into the spot most may remember it at (155-161 Main St) in 1905.

Bresee's was beloved by Oneontans who visited the store for all kinds of necessities and luxuries: food, clothing, furniture, gifts, and more! There was a photo studio on an upper floor, a restaurant (known as the Health Bar) in the basement, and there was an escalator, the likes of which have not been seen in Oneonta since!
Other department stores also opened downtown, such as Woolworth's, Sears, JCPenney, joined by smaller stores and restaurants. Some of these include Stevens Hardware near Bresee's, operated by John Stevens after he returned from WWII until the early 2010s, and a few drug stores and restaurants. Down Broad Street were a plethora of bars frequented by college students (keeping in mind up until Broad Street's demolition that the legal drinking age was only 18 years old!)

Oneonta's downtown saw an influx of people from Oneonta and neighboring towns on Thursday nights, when many of these stores and establishments were open later in the evening. It gave Oneontans a chance to shop later, eat a little later, and of course, getting to hang out and mingle downtown.
The downtown scene changed with Urban Renewal, with the closure and removal of Broad Street and the revamping of storefronts. This was around the same time the new Pyramid Mall opened in Oneonta's East End, though it was not too overbearing on the downtown scene. What was, however, was when Southside Mall appeared almost a decade later in 1983. Southside Mall was a much larger rival for other stores all across Oneonta, and by the 1990s, many of the stores in the West and East Ends (even the Pyramid Mall) and downtown Oneonta began to close, including Bresee's and Woolworth's starting around 1994.

Since the development of Southside, including the introduction of Walmart and other department stores, Oneonta's downtown has become more well known for the variety of 'small'/local businesses, most notably the variety of restaurants offering food from across the world! Other local businesses are scattered around Oneonta with their own clientele. More and more businesses are slowly moving back into the storefronts of downtown Oneonta, and new plans from local city government aspire to make downtown Oneonta a destination for shopping, cuisine, and entertainment!

As evidence, answer the following questions:
If you were given the chance to shop (in-person) later in the evening at least one day a week according to the older habits of downtown shopping would you think that was enough? Do you perhaps know someone that might've participated in shopping downtown 'in its heyday'? If you do, try to get them to tell you a story about what happened to them, or maybe about something they bought, and write a few sentences about it!

As evidence of practice:
Put yourself in their shoes! Write a 'diary entry' of traveling into the downtown on a Thursday evening and what the experience might've looked like!