Alco's, Gibson's, all the downtown shops, etc. are gone....
They are vacant lots with weeds and bushes growing in the parking lot.
Gang kids spray paint the buildings, and the old Alcos on the north side is only used by the occasional skaterboarders and meth dealers now.
The downtown is half empty, with the remaining stores being hispanic shops that sell cassette tapes and tacos from the same stall.
And no, I'm really not kidding, sad as it sounds...
So if you want something in Dodge, anything, it's the Mega-Walmart, (bigger than the old Village Square shopping mall, which is now basically empty except for the Army recruiter, a movie place, and a jewlery shop) or the hundreds of Family Dollar, Dollar General, Supa Saver, Dollartime stores.
Even groceries, as most of the locals couldn't compete, and the remaining Dillon's food store is desperately trying to stay in business. When it goes, Wal Mart and convience stores will be the only food suppliers in town too...hehe.
SpedKing, Crust Buster, all the blue collar jobs are basically gone. Why pay an American to weld farm implements?
Ship those jobs out!
So It's Walmart, fast food, or the meat plants for middle class folks.
Garden is doing slightly better, but they are still enforcing laws and zoning regs, whereas Dodge City just gave up around the mid-90's. Today in Dodge you can move a trailer in your back yard, rent it out to illegals, and no one seems to care anymore.
Liberal is more like Dodge circa the mid-80's. They have a meat plant, and a new pork plant, but they still have some other industry.
That is a depressing scene. Sounds like if they round up the illegals there will be only a few people left in Dodge.
I had no idea that Dodge City had so deteriorated. Tell us more.
I recall driving through Grand Junction, CO, in August 1992 on a Saturday night, and a bullet whizzed across the top of the car. I think that town was already losing what law and order it may have once had. Anyone know the latest on Grand Junction, home of a national monument?