Radio Shack is meeting the fate of many other stores that were wildly popular in the twentieth century, including record stores, comic book stores, bookstores and video stores.
Strip malls are history.
Shopping malls across the county are dying fast, and my images of them are very nostalgic for most people that grew up attending these malls. These malls were communal spaces. These were gigantic chat rooms before the Internet existed. You went to the mall to meet and communicate with others, not just to shop.
By the mid 1970s, the great downtown bookstores had begun to disappear as their customers migrated from city to suburb where population density was too thin to support major backlist retailers.
Ann Taylor - great name, great real estate, shitty business. Gap -great name, great real estate, declining business. J.Crew - Hellooo? Great name, better fashion image than the Gap.
There was no social media. There's not as many TV shows and magazines and things. Before you would release a single and you would go to HMV and do a signing and a performance, they don't even have HMV anymore.
I believe that Amazon is going to destroy the box stores... and when box stores go under, restaurants go under, the movie theaters go under, the gas stations go under. You become ghost towns.
Walk around any shopping mall, and you will see stores and restaurants opened six months ago and are - that are now closing. In the life of a company, eight years is an eternity.
