Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Tag: memories

  • The Death of Northgate

    Looks like Northgate mall in Seattle is quickly winding down. The JC Penney already closed, and the Macy’s and Nordstrom are in the process of shutting their doors. The plan is to demolish the main stretch of the mall, leave some of the external “village” buildings that were tacked onto the front in the mid-00s,…

  • End of 2018

    I’ve been back from Indiana for a few days now. Been slightly sick, working on unpacking, cleaning, resetting, all the usual crap before I get back to work on Wednesday. The trip was probably my longest visit to Indiana since I left in 1995. I was there from Friday night to the following Saturday morning,…

  • Hello from the former 219

    Exactly thirty years ago, to the day, I was here. It was Christmas Eve. We closed at five. I was telling people we had no Nintendos. I probably worked forty hours that week. I’d listened to the same four-hour loop of taped holiday Muzak at least ten times. Mariah Carey was still waiting tables, so…

  • Toys R Us

    I was not a Toys R Us kid. No, I wasn’t one of those weird religious kids who weren’t allowed to play video games, and I didn’t have hippy parents who thought GI Joe was promoting war. TRU just wasn’t an option for my corner of Indiana. Like I mentioned in my previous post, K-Mart…

  • Death of a Kmart

    The news has been out for a bit about the bankruptcy filing of Sears Holdings, and the massive list of Sears and Kmart stores closing. In my area, it’s a bit odd, but the one in Stoneridge mall, an upscale mall that’s doing well, got the axe; the one in Hilltop mall, which is complete…

  • New/Old Camera

    So, in the “buying old crap I had twenty-five years ago and threw out at some point,” I found another Vivitar camera that is (almost) the same as the one I had from 1993 to about 2000. I talked a bit about my history with analog film a few years ago, when I last fell…

  • Death of the Concord Mall, Redux

    Almost two years ago, I wrote a long eulogy for the mall of my childhood: Death of the Concord Mall. This was after I heard of plans of the de-malling of the forty-something shopping center. Well, plans have changed. Here’s an update. First, since I last wrote about this, more stores obviously closed. The christian book store…

  • The Amazon Store

    We’ve had unreasonably nice weather all weekend, sunny and in the seventies, perfect for walking. I went to Walnut Creek yesterday to get in the daily miles, and eat at Veggie Grill, this overly bright and cheery vegan place, which I thought was only in LA, and I used to eat all the time at…

  • The Awl

    So it looks like The Awl is no more. Another blog bites the dust. The Awl started in 2009, originally some folks who left The Gawker and decided to do their own thing from their apartment in Brooklyn or whatever. It was a general culture blog, with emphasis on New York City, and a bit…

  • Sears

    Yeah, so that Sears in Marin I posted about? It’s on the new closing list. I think it has until April. I should probably go take more pictures, but the last trip was so depressing, it’s probably not worth it. One of the other Sears store on the new closing list is the one in…