Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Available





















All of these locations are on a 3.3-mile stretch of Broadview Road, which is the only major business district near my home. Click any image to enlarge.

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34 comments:

J.D. Finch said...

With a tip of the tricorn to Mr. Swift, it looks like it's almost time to start eating our young.

Amy L. Hanna said...

That very last one wouldn't um, be a psychic/palm reader biz, would it?!

Unknown said...

Wow. I know how you feel. My hometown is facing a similar situation.

Kirk said...

Signs of the times.

Leslie Morgan said...

Sobering. I hope Terry didn't go to the poor house, as well.

: ~{ My word verification is "reepo".

And the nation has been in the clutches of the downswing for 14 months straight now.

Danielle said...

Sad.

G. B. Miller said...

Very sad.

Reminds me of where I live in Connecticut.

Clandestiny said...

Times are tough all over.

Al The Retired Army Guy said...

Looks like that Obama stimulus package is working, huh?

Al
TRAG

DogsDontPurr said...

The building I live in in Los Angeles is now about a third vacant. There used to be major waiting lists in this neighborhood.

I feel bad for the pocket books of the owners, but for the remaining few of us who live here...we Love It!! For the most part, we are no longer wall to wall. So, no more noisy neighbors! We can have the TV on late at night without anyone banging on the wall! It's fabulous! We were even able to negotiate a cheaper rent and move into a better unit in our same building.

Sure, everything else (in the economy) is crumbling down around us, but right now I'm trying to be a "the cup is half full" person. Sorta.

Cosmic Navel Lint said...

Al The Retired Army Guy - with respect, the US wouldn't need a stimulus package, or be in its current fiscal mess, had Bush not screwed the economy pooch in the first place.

All Obama's trying/being forced to do is make a silk purse from an inherited sow's ear.

What would you rather see him do - nothing, and let the country go to hell in handcart in a worse way than Bush allowed it to do?

Erin O'Brien said...

I am exhausted and don't have the energy to find all the links, but the financial debacle that culminated into the 2008 stock tumble is a mirror image of the 1929 Wall Street crash.

The Great Depression lasted almost a decade, and even then we didn't truly recover until WWII.

We are lucky our current situation isn't worse and luckier still that there are some signs of life in the economy. Nonetheless, our situation is terrible and tenuous.

I study the hell out of this stuff. Maybe I'll do an econ post--if my new readers can stand it!

Venus and Mars said...

Looks like a real boomtown Erin. Now that's a "shovel ready project" if I ever saw one. Holy Cow.

Anonymous said...

It's really useless to lay blame for any of this. When I lived in Seattle, in the mid '70's, Boeing wasn't doing well and about 80% of the downtown area was boarded up. The economy is like the weather. It is sorta sad but there's always a silver lining. Look at how many people are able buy their first house because they have come down so much.

Deodand said...

A hearty portion of my city's downtown district was boarded up for a decade or so. It's now bustling with life again once the developers figured out what to do. These things will come back.

I really enjoyed this little photo essay.

Charlene and Co said...

lUCKILY HERE IN sOUTH aFRICA THINGS ARENT THAT BAD YET!!

TERRIBLE TIMES...

The Expatresse said...

Crikey. I thought things were supposedly improving (maybe they are).

But, yeah, every one of those photos is someone's tough times.

jford said...

Erin,

I would love to read your econ posts. I note that the current Democratic majorities are using the same playbook from 1932 and that didn't end the depression, but made it worse and prolonged it longer than necessary. As for job creation, it killed jobs. If I remember the quote correctly, the average median unemployment rate until the war was 17%.

dean said...

Most smart people I listen to seem to think that without the stimulus package, things would be a damn sight worse.

I don't think most people know how close we came to a really serious financial disaster, of the government-services-shut-down and supply-chains-disrupted level of serious.

Fortunately for us here in the Northern Northern States (also known as Canada) we decoupled some of our economy from y'all after 10 years of southern protectionism, and we never subscribed to the insane Randroid notions of regulation being evil. We are dramatically less affected than you are, although we did dip into recession.

Erin O'Brien said...

Okay, jford, let me loosen up my tie and roll up my sleeves. Now then, show me the money.

Anonymous said...

Al,

Your souffle'is falling.

Erin I don't know if you've read this in your study but it's the famous "Rugged Individualism" speech Hoover gave in 1929. According to our local conservative talk show host if the policies of Hoover had been adhered to the depression would have been less severe. (He conveniently forgot the effect of Smmot-Hawley, but that's another post.) Conservatives say FDR prolonged the depression. As I understand it had the objectivists (A. Rands crew) Had their way in re: "The Bailout" we'd currently be operating with a barter economy and I can't sing or dance for shit.

RJ

Anonymous said...

Oops. Here's the link.

http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/ruggedsupp.html

RJ

Erin O'Brien said...

There are plenty of open businesses on that strip of road as well, but that wasn't the point of the essay.

There are plenty more closed ones too, but I thought 20 pics was enough.

The "open" sign is in the window of a an independent florist.

I don't believe the lefties worsened the Depression. I do believe the only way out of an economic abyss is by way of the will of the people.

The people believed in WWII. The power was in the belief and in the unity.

In that light, this country didn't stand a chance with McPalin. Not one damn chance. Obama was the only choice last November.

The country will heal when the people believe in it again and when they unite behind the belief. If we can't do that, well then ...

Annray said...

Ahh, it's such a sad thing to see. For each of those signs there is someone, or multiple people, who are in the shitter.

You are right though- as soon as people unite and worry about the country as a whole instead of just their own predicament we'll get somewhere. Until then, nothing is going to change.

Anonymous said...

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams

jo

rjs said...

erin, thats been typical of the cleveland area for 40 years, but now its that way all over the country; i now cover the economic blogs on my blog and usually post links to a several such stories each week...and with the banks mark-to-fantasy accounting rules, the losses on those properties have yet to hit their balance sheets..

Erin O'Brien said...

Everyone go and dig rjs's econ aggregate blog (linked in the comment above this) it's amazing.

But one note: rjs, this is not typical CLE for the past 40 years. I know, I've been here. We've stumbled along a biorhythm to be sure, but things are particularly bad right now.

rjs said...

thanx for the plug, erin...but ive been in the area longer than you have, and remember similar scenes in the once thriving buckeye-woodland area in the 60s... cleveland has declined faster than any other major city in the country, from nearly a million population in the 50s to less than 440,000 today...

Erin O'Brien said...

Buckeye Road? I'm a big chunk Hungarian/German--that's where my maternal grandparents met. And I agree that it's been a very tough decline there.

I know the numbers you cite are correct, but what about Northeast Ohio (Cuyahoga County) in general? This recent decline is the worst I've seen in the outlying suburban areas.

Then there's the Warren/Youngstown area ....

rjs said...

what youre seeing on broadview is just the spread from the center...all counties in the northeast quadrant of the state had declined in the last population figures ive seen; i agree, youngstown is worse because their economy is less diversified, but the whole area from here to pittsburg north to buffalo started downhill with the collapse of the steel industry...now its spread south to canton and west to detroit; a recent auction of most of 9000 homes in that city failed to get the minimum $500 bid

Sausage said...

Erin,
A sad commentary on American life, take a look at the blog I wrote about Wall St thugs.
Thanks, Sausage

Al The Retired Army Guy said...

To all:

My point in posting as I did is that a lot of folks here and elsewhere believed that the stimulus package would create jobs, businesses, etc. If Erin's photo essay is any gauge, it hasn't.

BTW, here in Vermont - you know how I feel, there are places that aren't being used/leased as well. Same as down in NC where I normally live. The bottom line is for all the "hope" that Obama and crew purported to portray hasn't come to fruition as many expected. It may in the future, I don't know. Only time will tell. I hope it works, I really do, but I'm not optimistic given what I've seen from this administration thus far.

Now, back to the Brown Stock I'm making.

And no, RJ, my souffle hasn't fallen. I have a foolproof recipe provided from one of my instructors! ;-)

Al
TRAG

rjs said...

id say our current problems started with with the commodity futures modernization act and the gramm-leach-bliley act, which made way for this
which resulted in this...
of course, thats an oversimplication, & greenspan made for easy money, which helped inflate the housing bubble; but otherwise, the correct fiscal policy should be to run deficits to stimulate during a downturn; but this normal option has turned suicidal because of the massive debt that was accumulated before the bubble burst because of the voodoo economics of supply side tax cuts...

rjs said...

erin & all, just to revisit here and get back to your topic...ive now got my weekly post done, and theres links to well over a dozen articles on the coming crisis in commercial real estate (those are loans bundled, just like home mortagages) ...if you want to check the news out, grease your mouse wheel & scroll down about a hundred paragraphs, past the stuff on the banks, banksters, and what the congress critters are up to, and you'll get into the section that covers the economy on main street (or in this case, broadview rd)...read em and weep...