Circuit City has finally filed for bankruptcy. I used to shop in there; in fact, I'm fairly certain that the television in my younger daughter's room (no shaking fingers at me, parents; she earns the privilege) was purchased at a Circuit City. A Circuit City employee was the person who, once upon a time, gave me the choice of waiting a couple of days for an item to be delivered to the local store or I could pick it up the next day at the Santa Ana store. The employee apologized because of the dangerous location of the Santa Ana store ("There's nothing but Mexicans there!"). I replied, "Oh, it's no problem. I teach right down the street. I bet I'll run into some of my students or their parents." It reminded me of people I knew in Illinois who had never been to Chicago and didn't see a reason to want to go there because it was filled with black people.
Linens and Things is closing up. I have a well-used wok-style pan from there. The big plastic spoons I use when I cook were purchased there. In a moment of whimsy, my wife and I bought the back-massage contraption from Linens and Things that sits, rarely used, in a chair in the family room. Now the chair is rarely used because the back-massage thing is uncomfortable to sit on.
Mervyn's is gone. Lots of my money went to Mervyn's for my kids' clothing until they became teenagers.
I'm pretty sure the glide-chair that is in one room is from a Wickes Furniture store. My wife and I used that chair to sit in while feeding our babies. One of those babies is in college and the other will be in two years. Wickes is gone.
Washington Mutual declared bankruptcy. Boy I'm glad we decided to set-up my college daughter's checking account at a credit union connected to my credit union. We came this close to dealing with Washington Mutual because of all the locations and ATMs available at her college and there was a WaMu branch about a hundred yards from where I do my food shopping. Wells Fargo seems to have taken over those spots or they're just boarded up.
About a year ago, I replaced the mustache-grooming, ear-hair trimming (and nose-hair trimming, but nobody wants to think about that- ew) contraption I received as a gift from Sharper Image. Sharper Image was a great guys' store to hang out in while your wife was shopping somewhere else in a mall. All kinds of gadgets to lust for until your wife called on the cell phone to say she needed your help carrying "...all these bags." Knowing you had no money to call your own made hanging out in Sharper Image like hanging out in a cool museum. Sharper Image is, of course, now gone.
I guess I won't be seeing that little flowery corporate icon of Home Interiors and Gifts anymore, either. Some familiar brands at Home Depot have gone under, too.
Opera Pacific, Orange County's opera company, is closing up. They can't find donors to keep it alive. They need four or five million dollars and can't get it. I see that A.I.G. is eventually going to have $150 billion dollars of American tax money. I wonder if Opera Pacific should have approached A.I.G. executives for donations.
I don't know what giant of mall management thought it would be a good idea to let Ruby's open one of its '50s style diners on one side of the movie theaters when there was already a Johnny Rocket's on the other side. I suppose one will just kill off the other. It's right up there in corporate decision-making with how PetSmart and PetCo opened stores almost in sight of each other during the renovation of my city's main drag. Hey, I suppose if Staples and Office Depot can survive right across the street from one another, who am I to criticize?
My colleagues at school pay a lot of attention to me when I describe how, in 1930 or 1931 during the Great Depression, Chicago teachers were paid with drafts that banks wouldn't honor. They had "payless paydays" to the point where people lost their homes and many did not receive all of their back pay for a decade.
The Los Angeles Times front page, yesterday, featured an article about how "an old fix," public works projects, is back on the table after being long-dismissed as too slow. Economists seem almost surprised at the idea of a long-term stimulus plan that has the added benefit of fixing-up stuff that's falling apart in the country. You mean it's not all just financial-sector stuff? People working is a good thing?
So what's disappearing in your neck of the woods? How many store fronts are empty? How many houses have been for sale for more than a year?