All-too temporary ruins in Midtown

Entropy, it's a matter of course. (Yikes, did I really just quote Bad Religion? Yes.)

I really dig ruins, especially modern-day ruins. So I've been watching with great interest the most modern sort of ruins of all right near my workplace, which very unfortunately for me is in Midtown Manhattan, land of the soul crush, home of the Blue Shirt.

What we have here is a Hallmark store on third Avenue, actually right near another rare Midtown curiosity, a shut-down deli that was temporarily turned into a Haitian political art installment affiliated with Chashama (the nearby art space where on any given day you can walk by and see chickens in the window or some kinda wacked-out bodysuited modern dancers—the latter totally not my thing but still slightly preferable to the usual local fare) and still bears the crudely painted words KRIK? KRAK! under the front display windows.



When you work in Midtown and you long not to, you take small joy from oddities like the KRIK KRAK display, especially ones on the controversial side that jar your attention from the area's main order of business, which is business. But back to the Hallmark store. I first noticed it in early summer, because it still had its Easter displays in the windows when it should've been well into hawking Father's Day doodads and graduation gewgaws. Then I spied a notice posted on the door; the store had been ordered to close for nonpayment of taxes, or some such. Ever since, I've been tracking the slow decay of the window display and wishing for a real digital camera to document, but figuring I'd have one before it was all gone. (NOPE! I didn't magically get a raise! Prob will really soon, though. So it's me & the cameraphone again.)

Over the months the display has gotten faded by the sun, and just generally more and more messy looking, even though no one has touched it at all. How does that happen? Entropy (or my layperson's understanding of one of its definitions, anyway): Things will naturally drift towards disorder, not order. I'm going to use this to explain the state of my apartment. Not my fault.

There's something so post-apocalyptic about an abandoned store with all its goods intact, and for a horror fan like myself who loves a good apocalypse tale, this Hallmark store's eternal Easter was a nerdy thrill to observe.



The other day I noticed folks busily puttering around inside, documenting the store's contents for auction. They're probably going to put about two more banks in that space, adding to the blandscape more corporate imagery in Inoffensive Corporate Blue® and Dynamic Red®, with plenty of Corporate Stock Photos of Buissnesspeople Conducting Business® and People of Diverse Ethnicities Interacting Happily Thanks to This Bank®


...all of which make you (me) want to kill yourself (myself) just looking at them, so that's the end of that bit of Midtown amusement.