of an almost abandoned commercial center close to where I lived in a city next to Oakland in California.
There was a Montgomery Ward department building, a parking lot and a movie theatre that had been abandoned when the ubiquitous Malls absorbed all the businesses and entertainment centers. For a while there was a camera store which lasted until digital cameras came along. The only thing that has probably survived is one of those depressingly minimal dull architectural styles of a Wells Fargo bank branch.
The city never did anything about this little commercial center while I lived there. About half a mile away was one of those gigantic, plain and ugly Target stores with huge parking lots and a gas station on the corner where two major streets crossed.
The little commercial center was a very sad reminder that progress leaves crumbling and dying symbols of the past. It was just the bones, the skeletons never buried, left to disintegrate at their own pace. And replaced by a giant block of a windowless and featureless building, even more featureless and uninteresting.
The memory came immediately so in my case you capture that empty feeling as well as the lingering stubborn feeling of the building disintegrating slowly.
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