Photos: Dark Stores, Empty Malls (warning depressing)

Brian Ulrich: Not If But When

The above is a link to a photo gallery of images taken by Brian Ulrich of the many empty stores and shopping malls car dealers and such that have closed down.

Many of them had been open for a very long time but could not hold out in this modern era depression. This is the shape of the downsized dreams of Americans. Thinking of how many lost jobs this little sampling represents is kind of depressing.

People have to understand...

The overhead and rental prices for conventional businesses are long over due for a correction.

The Real way to start a business today is the Internet, far bigger audience, almost no overhead unless your doing exceptionally well, better lifestyle.

This isn't depressing it's just things changing

Take for example a friend I did a site for... he once operated, 7 years ago... (that's how long this is in progress) a women's apparel store... in NY

Employees, rent and insurance and utilities amounted to about 12,000 a month

He didn't come home with a whole lot

He moved to the web...

okay, he does less business...

BUT

His over head is now... under 100.00 on average

so where he came home with 3 before

he comes home with 5-6 now (or stays home) lol

Depressing?

NO

Not at all... it is a sign of the times

and people need to get with the times not live in the past.

Things are changing and frankly, this is better

You don't need to clog the roads to buy a toy or a shirt etc, etc... that ability will always exist, but... it's tacky anyway, cities filled less with entertainment, art and culture and more with tons of material goods... it's cheesy, a city of strip malls is ugly

and having to spend 2 less hrs a day driving to work and one day of your weekend shopping... really WHY? why do we want that?

It pollutes, it's stressful and time insensitive and actually it's not even safe when so many people drive at once and rush and the air quality goes to poop

no

this doesn't make me depressed

it's good, things are just changing

These businesses go out because they aren't needed, people need to adapt and that's not easy... but they will, they always do.

If you want to open a street side business now

Think Social... Think Service

if you want to sell pots and pans think Internet

Why be miserable?

That is one way to look at it I suppose. The correction as you call it also means that people are out of jobs that are not coming back. Not everyone is a business person. A lot of people need jobs to earn enough income to go to school or what have you. Now those low end jobs are gone and most are not coming back.

First we send all of our factory work over seas. We became a service economy and now those service jobs are gone. Factory farming has taken a lot of those low end jobs so if for are a tradesman or not very skilled you have very limited options.

I for one do much of my shopping online. I get that and in fact I have been in the business of building online store fronts for people and maintaining them so I get that as well.

A lot of people do not get it and are having a real hard time adapting. Suicide is on the rise, alcohol is selling really well, anti-depressant use has doubled in the last 2 years. Things still look pretty out of whack and it seems like there is no one steering the ship any longer.

Just an observation.

This a little of topic but I like how in the last photo of the series it shows nature reclaiming the asphalt as well as the buildings,
But I dirgress, I have to agree with earlier posts that this is all part of the cycle ,sad that people are out of work but if you are going to survive you better be flexable.

This has been coming since they started exporting manufacturing and heavy industry years ago, when we moved over to service and they too are now 'outsourced' I believe it is now called, what the greedy people at the top forgot was, there would be no cosumers left, because there were no jobs left in this country, except for the govt, and as they depend on taxes for income they would be bankrupt too.
Still nearly there, and one day soon they will realise it.

Mopus - i take onboard the benfits of the www but if big biz goes down so does the www

reply to post by wayouttheredude


The reality is...

Everyone is a business person...

What was backwards was... The Industrial Era

Did you know people were killed in Russia to usher in the use of the pocket watch and get people to live like this? That even in America children were forced into factories...

No... this is a return to natural...

people have been brain washed...

There would be no leap to this time without the Industrial Era...

But trust me on this, it will be remembered in 100 years as the WORST most enslaved era in human history.,.. it messes with us on every level from family life, to health to sleep patterns...

It took utter brainwashing from childhood to make us live like this...

what is wage labor but slavery?
enough money to divide as you see fit between housing and food and transportation

Pffftttt

it's inhuman really

prior for the whole of human history... THE WHOLE OF HUMAN HISTORY

the majority of people, farmed from home, worked at making pottery or clothes or black smithing or what have you and lived around family and taught and raised their children...

what insanity makes a man leave his kids in the hands of strangers, then send his wife out to serve another Man... then go slave all day with NO prospect of making more money ever? beyond a raise in time with or under the rate of inflation?

it's sick, sick, sick, sick....

completely programed people...

no

for the last 7000 years (mostly) we got up and did what we did...

this didn't make you a business man... like you say not everyone is... I agree, not everyone is trump

But it Is natural to lead a pack or be part of one...

i.e. a small system, with a leader... a few workers....

Like a Farm, a small farm or small black smithing outfit or a local carpentry service...

Dad his sons and maybe a local or two that helps...

Just todays version is more the internet

If people are diving off buildings or poping OD amounts of pills...

it's because it's traumatic

They were never taught to live like a normal human

from age 4 to age 75 and the grave part of a system... The Machine, the Industrial machine

NOW...

it's going to go back to normal partly because of the Internet

partly because once the infrastructure of an industrialized nation is built you just don't need that many workers any more... lets not even factor in that basic robots are on the scene

People don't know how to live...

they have been completely warped...

so i don't disagree...

BUT

I would say.... when you "get" what's going on and realize...wake up to the fact that the Industrial ERA has been a toxic polluted unnatural nightmare...

facing the change from there becomes a pleasure not a nightmare...

because poverty means nothing next to freedom... it might suck at first sure... if your clueless...

like being reduced to being in JR High again... you have to realize ...wow I have NO skills at controlling myself...


but it comes naturally once you start... and it's so much better

I find it liberating....people should be growing thier own food and working at home with their own families.....on the internet, growing organics, making jewlwey to sell on ebay...whatever! Anything to keep people home with their families more is GREAT I say!

reply to post by wayouttheredude


The future...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1a0b12c0f850.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by wayouttheredude

How many of those stores quit, coz the owner of the property hiked up the lease totally oblivious to the conditions the economy is in? I see this all the time. As long as the government lets the little predators write off the empty stores from capital gain taxes, it will keep happening.

My local century 3 mall. Its closed off since the top level is ready to collapse. Its but one of the dozens upon dozens of closed places and soon to close shops I live very near.

...one of the best posts on ATS ever. but unfortunately, i must disagree on a small point.

Originally posted by mopusvindictus
...it's going to go back to normal

we will not be "going back" to anything. we will not be moving backwards at all. only forwards from here.

you are arguing the "beach is under the pavement" tack, which is logical fallacy. there is nothing under the pavement but unimproved dirt.

but you are correct that technology changes everything. in the not-distant future, the control structures that have brought humanity to our current point will be tossed aside as petty and useless. but let us not forget! that we never would have arrived at our current position without these control structures. there is no reason to be bitter against them.
________

btw, OP, i found this photoset to be awe inspiring. cheers!


danny

To those who have read this thread and the ones who at least looked at the picture gallery I have another suggested bit of exploration of the decay of our civilization to suggest to everyone.

Go on Google Earth and look up Detroit. Then pick out what looks like a middle class neighborhood and then go to street view and look around. Every other house is boarded up and or burned out in some areas.

The shopping malls and stores shown in the gallery linked in this thread are pretty telling of our situation but to really see what is happening to the lives of millions just look around that Detroit street view for a little while. It is unreal to say the least.

Originally posted by wayouttheredude
To those who have read this thread and the ones who at least looked at the picture gallery I have another suggested bit of exploration of the decay of our civilization to suggest to everyone.

Go on Google Earth and look up Detroit. Then pick out what looks like a middle class neighborhood and then go to street view and look around. Every other house is boarded up and or burned out in some areas.

The shopping malls and stores shown in the gallery linked in this thread are pretty telling of our situation but to really see what is happening to the lives of millions just look around that Detroit street view for a little while. It is unreal to say the least.

Haha glad you showed up cause I was going to bring that up.

You want to see real depression, check out the video below. They show mansions that would have easily fetched well over a million a few years ago, now, they lay there abandoned and for sale for a couple hundred thousands... yet noone will buy them.

Detroit is ground zero for the depression.

Interesting side note, I live in Vancouver BC, and yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who is a real estate agent and he was telling me that July set the all time record in history for homes sold. Most home prices have only dropped a few percent, it's not like the floor fell out and millionaires bought everything up. The depression hasn't even touched where I live yet.





EDIT: Im not sure if this was the exact video I seen awhile back, so I dunno if they are going to show the mansions in this one. But regardless its depressing.

EDit2: think I found the right video, it's been changed above.

[edit on 7-8-2009 by king9072]

Ok, yes thats the right video.

The mansions i am talking about are in the second half of the following video (part 2 of series above)

This makes me think that fema won't need to build any camps.

They will just be able to round everybody up and stick them in empty shopping malls.

Seriously, I am a person who has always hated shopping malls, and I'm a woman! I can't stand large crowds, and get in and of stores as soon as possible.

Strip malls, and shopping malls are nasty to see on every corner.

I hope the abandoned ones get razed, and turned into parks.

The suburbs are unsustainable in a post cheap gasoline economy so they are doomed and all of the shopping malls and near by strip malls are doomed as well.

I think we will see a resurrection of the pre-industrial town square in much smaller communities in the near future. The mega-mall is not coming back for certain. The small community will return. Even the Walmarts will in the end I think not be sustained simply because the supply chain from China will cost too much diesel fuel to maintain and China itself will have more disposable income than we do in the US.

Just my opinion of course but based on observing the reality of the situation in my view.

[edit on 7-8-2009 by wayouttheredude]

It is an awesome thread..it kinda shows that a lot of what we 'think" is happening, has past happened...here too we have many empty stores...the real estate market going down is great though if your a buyer.....just hopefully not a forced seller.