Briefly mentioned in the Harvey Washbanger's post (written a few months before a fire destroyed the restaurant)1, was the original 1800 Texas Avenue South tenant, Pepper's, an "old fashioned" hamburger restaurant (in vogue at the time as Fuddruckers and similar establishments like Flakey Jake's)2. Owned by the Ken Martin group, Pepper's opened in 1978 (there was another reference to the address a few years earlier, the "B-CS Flea Market" in 1975).
In the late 1980s it was redeveloped as a new strip center (as part of also redeveloping the former Kashim) with most of it occupied by 2-Day Video, a video rental chain based out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Around late 1996, Blockbuster Entertainment (buoyed by corporate parent Viacom at the time, a fact that is rarely factored into the company's decline) purchased 2-Day Video and converted it to their name in early 1997.3
Blockbuster eventually moved to the top of the hill at Holleman at the old site of https://csroadsandretail.blogspot.com/2011/01/toms-bbq-and-steakhouse.html">at Holleman on the site of Tom's Barbecue & Steakhouse, where it would remain until the chain went bankrupt.
As of 2025 these include, from left to right, Game X Change, CleanEatz, Top Nails, Cricket, CPR Cell Phone Repair, and Rocks Discount Vitamins-n-More. I've lost track of what exactly was what, but going back in Google Maps, CleanEatz was Chill Milkshake and Waffle Bar (opened 2021 but maybe for like a year or two at most), Yogurtland (2010-2019)4, and in 2007 was another location of Western Beverages. Top Nails has been there since 2005 (it was Planet Beach Tanning Salon in the early 2000s), Cricket was here since 2007, though originally with a different logo), and the phone repair place was Pro-Cuts (which was an early tenant, operating from 1988 to 2013) but not before becoming Pinot's Palette for a few years. Rock's used to be "Nutrition Central", but not before becoming Just for Hair. There were others too, I remember Texas Avenue Cigars, which had a green sign that resembled the Texas Avenue signs on the stoplights (it later moved to a new location as Cavalier Cigar Company. There was also Hurricane Office Supply & Printing (an early tenant from 1986 but did not last more than a few years) and more than likely a few others I missed.
1. The College Station Fire Department unfortunately was not able to save Harvey Washbanger's, but they DID save the strip center from the fire, there wasn't even smoke damage on the walls.
2. Our area did not have a Flakey Jake's, though there were two in Houston in the mid-1980s for a brief time.
3. Unlike 2-Day Video, Blockbuster had a policy against NC-17 movies, meaning that titles like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Showgirls would've been removed and/or replaced with edited R-rated versions.
4. Also, very briefly, "Swirls" afterward; more of the same. Probably lost the franchise.
