Posted on 03/16/2009 12:59:30 PM PDT by anniegetyourgun
At least one of those was closed over forty years ago according to the caption.
That was the Dixie Square Mall in a south suburb of Chicago. They filmed the mall scene in The Blue Brothers there not long after it closed.
Actually, I don’t think the quality of the captures were all that good. I am new to serious photography and I could do much better.
However, I love the concept. I live in a county of about 70K people with a large amount of shut down businesses. I am going to go put one of these albums together, sell it to the paper and give it to the museum.
Of course I might be able to get the local business and tourist associations to pay me not to make them public. LOL
Thanks for posting the article.
The new (Well, a decade old, now) Solomon Pond mall, plus local crime, probably killed it.
Oh, perhaps I should title the project, Failures of Obama or Obama’s Hope & Change.
I don’t remember the last time I went to the mall for any reason at all. I probably do the overwhelming majority of my shopping on line.
ditto...only go when young people/visitors want to go there
Actually, I think WCG was already into decline. The punks that hung out there were terrible. they turned it into an outlet mall in the late 90s but it still couldn’t keep the lights on.
Could it be that we had too many stores to begin with? It seems like for years and years, any vacant piece of land sprouted a strip mall or big box store. The increase in the amount of retail space in some areas surely must have outpaced the population growth. We’re seeing the correction playing out now.
The Dixie Square Mall was where they filmed the Blues Brothers. It was empty then and they stocked it for the movie. We used to go there as kids back in the day. I'm so glad to be out of that cesspit.
Lums & The Red Barn restaurant.
In my area, the massive closures of auto factories and suppliers has a tsunami effect on everything. City’s with populations of 100K or so can’t take repeated hits of 10,000 jobs being lost every other week. Fire/Police, city services, county services, are cut due to no tax revenue coming in because of the number of abandoned homes. Heck, in my little city of 85,000 people - we currently have over 1,500 foreclosed homes, and that doesn’t include the ones that are a ‘normal’ up for sale. And the businesses? The vacant stores are used by the homeless.
I forgot one item. We also have Jennifer Grandtheft as Governor.
Even though some of these stores were national chains, every one of these store pictured are in states that voted for 0bama.
Heck, even the greasy spoon places are boarded up here let alone even thinking of a Hooters.
Oh, the humanity! [/sarc]
I don't know about country wide, but Hooters opened a new location on 183 in far north Austin in an existing restaurant style building. No other business (Mexican food, Chinese food, etc.) ever stayed open more than a few months, but the parking lot is full every day when we go by there in rush hour traffic. I think I'll open one locally here when I retire.
Good for you. I’m sure you won’t have a problem finding someone to do the interviews.
Yeah? What kind of area is it? Here in NJ I don’t see too many signs of trouble yet. My biz is holding up pretty well.
Drive down the main street and there are more boarded up storefronts than open storefronts.
Well, let me put it this way. I saw three potential Hooters waitresses at the local CVS and two at the ACE Hardware store today. If they would want a job at my Hooters, I’d hire them in a minute.
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