Rich wrote: >A strip mall is a blight on the landscape of the >United States. They are a cheap way for developers >to construct stores for the endless consumerism and >convenience of materialistic people Jeff replied: >And where else can I find an adult bookstore, Japanese >market, and car parts store in one place? I'm of at least two minds on this. I agree with Rich. Morally and aesthetically, strip malls are disastrous. On the other hand, I agree with Jeff. Older strip malls are often the places you can most easily find a kind of funky, multiculti vibe that flies in the face of the Wal-Martization of the US (at one end of the spectrum) and Starbucksization (at the other). My favorite down-at-the-heels strip mall here in Charlottesville has in it good Chinese, Japanese, and seafood restaurants, a rock/blues/techno club underneath the Japanese restaurant, a music store, a tattoo parlor, a laundromat, and a car wash. What more could anyone need? I'm also drawn to urban decay. Old strip malls and dead strip malls affect me in much the same way that ancient and medieval ruins affect other people. Signs of loss. I'll try to post some of my photos of these things in the PF Gallery. Meanwhile, see: <http://www.modern-ruins.com/index.html> <http://cds.aas.duke.edu/exhibits/past/vergara/index/map.html> <http://www.forgotten-ny.com/> <http://www.deadmalls.com/> --John ===== J. Mason Charlottesville, Virginia Cool snaps: http://wtju.radio.virginia.edu/mason/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam http://mail.yahoo.com
