A schlemihl writes an ode.

I just wrote a long com­ment at All Things Girls Can Tell, which I auto­mat­i­cal­ly real­ized may be the only time I’ve ever actu­al­ly brought my aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing to bear on South St., where I worked slav­ish­ly for over two years at TLA Video on 4th St.

To me South St.‘s decline rep­re­sents the acqui­es­cence to the Rea­gan Rev­o­lu­tion in that its trans­for­ma­tion from sleazy dive out­let in the 70’s to cor­po­rate-rid­dled out­door mall in the late ’90’s/early ’00’s to its present day strip mall ghost town sta­tus says so much about how con­sumer habits have changed and how they prac­ti­cal­ly affect an urban land­scape. With­out get­ting too Clus­ter­fuck Nation about it, it also demon­strates how busi­ness improve­ment dis­tricts can micro­man­age eclec­ti­cism into obliv­ion.