Retail Apocalypse

or why do abandoned K-Marts make me think the HK-Tanks are already here?

As empty storefronts proliferate (former K-Marts seem to be the most numerous current offender) what is it about mid - 80s strip mall architecture gone to ruin that makes me think immediately of post apocalyptic rubble?  Is it because I've seen so many 80s movies that would run down such a location so they could convey a sense of familiar destruction to rattle the Reagan generation or is it something inherent in the aging of building styles of ones youth?

I think this one was taken over by elves of the Mirkwood...

As a just barely born at the end of the seventies and grew up in the eighties kid that I was, I certainly felt the double whammy of the Reagan era "doomsday is nigh" general public mood paired with the explosion of dystopian and apocalyptic pop culture in the eighties (which were probably chicken and the egg like opposing forces, but I'm not an academic).  Terminator, Red Dawn, A Boy and His Dog, Bladerunner, V, Watchmen, Dawn of the Dead, Road Warrior... the list is virtually endless, and that's just a small sampling of the best stuff, let alone all the knock-offs that followed in their wake.  Certainly a trope present in quite a few of these narratives was the abandoned retail space.  As I mentioned earlier, my amateur critical analysis always thought this was done to cause the audience a feeling of discombobulation as familiar locales were shown in various states of disrepair or altered use to accentuate the feeling of terror at how things have changed for the worse (or possibly because a with it early 80's director could give the night watchmen at the Redondo Beach S-Mart some blow so he could film at the location after hours).

I frequently eat a popular restaurant that shares a parking lot with this, and for some reason I always expect a horde of zombies to be waiting outside...

So now, as our overstored retail capacity meets the buzzsaw of the shift to online buying, the empty or anchorless strip malls seem to fill me with a feeling of existential dread unequal to my actual care for any of the business's that have gone missing.  It seems to only take a few months for these places to run to seed and if they've sat empty for more than a year they start to look like you should find a place to hide because the T-800s will be here any minute.  Even in the middle of an otherwise busy mixed zoning area it puzzles me how quickly these spaces look like you could set your next student film project there.  This leaves me with many questions.  Do they invoke the sense of dread because I've been programmed by the pop culture of my youth to see them as a sign of shit hitting the fan?  Or is it because the particular stores of my youth are vanishing feeding into the normal middle aged feelings of mortality? Does this offer positive proof of all the pessimists who spend time whispering about the "thin veneer of civilization"?  Why am I boring and confusing the poor people who showed up here looking for pictures of Games Workshop miniatures?  Why have I been thinking about this for several months when I have plenty of grey plastic to paint?  Shop smart, shop S-mart!