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Downtown

My grandson was here for a weekend visit.  We took a trip into town.  Gee, you go away for a few months and the whole place falls apart!

We went into the Macy's parking garage and I was amazed that there were so many available parking spaces. Of course, we discovered why that was.

No more Macy's.


The entire downtown center is being knocked down.


And yet, we are still being urged to shop.


We stopped outside of town at the mall.  One of its corner stores is also gone.


Inside, half the food court is blocked off along with a length of what was smaller shops.  Who knows what other stores will fold up, although some new stores are being announced.


Our final stop for the day was the going out of business sale at Toys-R-Us.  Now that was an experience.  Children crazed by greed running around like crack addicts desperate for the next fix, grasping at whatever they could still find on the shelves.

We did find a scooter for my grandson.  That kept him happily accompanying me on my walks for the rest of the weekend.  i like to keep him moving.

Comments

  1. Tough competing with Amazon.

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  2. Online shopping makes it tough for brick and mortar stores and those stores provide local jobs.

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  3. Retail storefront business is suffering due to online shopping. It's sad, but I am as much responsible as anyone.
    That scooter was a good find.

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  4. It makes me sad to see retail crumbling around us. I love online shopping but there are some things where I just want the experience of browsing and touching and feeling and all those senses.It all makes me sad.

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  5. I admit that I rarely go into stores these days except for the grocery store. I order everything possible online. My daughter even orders her groceries through an online program that delivers your order to the car at a prearranged time. Funny, I can remember so many days spent at the mall as a teenager. Even as a young mother we sometimes went to the mall just to have something to do. I will also confess that I still buy from Macy's but I order online and make returns through the mail. I've even ordered from Walmart online and picked up in the back of the store so I didn't have to deal with shoppers or checking out. I do worry about all the displaced retail employees. We keep automating and then have entire areas of employment suddenly disappear. If everybody is outsourced, no one will be left to buy. Oh, wait, we have the 1% who grow richer under Trump.

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  6. All these store closings? Because of Amazon? Lack of immigrants to run the counters? People not shopping anticipating a recession. I thought we were going to be expecting a business boom!

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  7. This is a scene playing out all over right now.

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  8. Well since you (and I am sure a bunch of snow birds)abandoned them for the winter they just figured to pull up the sidewalks and close. Rather sad. So far my little town hasn't been affected.

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  9. Man, that must have been a shock seeing so many empty stores. Stores have been shutting down here, too, not to mention restaurants.

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