Everything Must Go

Dark times and dead malls.


Since January 2008, 221,000 retail stores nationwide have gone out of business. Here’s a partial list of store deaths within a one-block radius of MoJo’s San Francisco office: The New Balance store in our building quietly pulled up the stakes. So did a Gap, a Shoe Pavilion, a men’s clothing store, and a retailer of fancy writing accessories. Our favorite bento place closed overnight. And luggage retailer Malm one day posted this note on its door: “Thank you for your patronage. After 141 years we are now closed for business.” Photographer Brian Ulrich has been documenting the retail carnage across the nation as part of his larger project, Copia.

Chicago Place Mall, 2009
 

Circuit City, 2008, Chicago, IL
 

Days Hotel, 2009. Next to Randall Park Mall in Cleveland, OH, once owned by Ed DeBartolo (considered the ‘Father of the Shopping Mall’), formally a Holiday Inn.
 

Dominicks, 2008, Niles, IL
 

Richland Mall, 2009. In Mansfield, OH, former Lazarus store, photographed by Stephen Shore when the Mall opened in 1974, it appears in his book Uncommon Places.
 

Rolling Acres Mall, 2008, Akron, OH
 

Target, 2008, Riverside, IL
 

Powerhouse Gym, 2008, Saginaw, MI

 

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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