Thursday, February 20, 2020
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Retail Apocalypse 2020: Sears Succumbs in Glendale
Before there was Amazon, there was Sears. The retail giant first began as a mail-order catalog service in 1893, later branching out to brick-and-mortar stores as well. How big was Sears at its height? Its headquarters were literally the tallest in the world: The Sears Tower in Chicago. But the Sears Tower isn't the Sears Tower anymore (it's been the Willis Tower since 2009), and Sears isn't close to what Sears once was.
For a variety of reasons, Sears couldn't keep up with the times — and got rid of that mailorder business a few years before Amazon reinvented the concept. After years of declines, Sears was not immune to the retail apocalypse, and continues to shed stores. Next up: Glendale's Sears location, which opened in 1938 and is shutting down next month.
Sears wasn't a regular stop for us, but we did buy some appliances there when we bought our house, including our refrigerator and our oven. And when Blogger Teen was born, we took him several times to the Sears Portrait Studio (long since closed) to take his picture.
On Monday, Maria and I stopped by to see the inside of Sears one more time and also check out the clearance sales. I bought a suit jacket, a shirt and some ties, and got a pretty decent deal. But I also took a few shots of the store as it began to fade away. Here are some images:
Monday, January 27, 2020
RIP Kobe Bryant: Los Angeles Radio Plays Tribute With a Moment of Silence
LA radio stations owned by Entercom, iHeart, Meruelo Media and others all went silent for one minute, eight seconds at noon today in tribute to late Lakers icon Kobe Bryant. If you moved across the dial at that time today, you heard mostly silence -- except on the iHeart stations, which cheated a bit by playing ambient sounds of birds instead of silence (above). (As others noted, iHeart went with the white noise in order to still register on Nielsen personal people meters).
Entercom stations, including KROQ, KRTH "K-Earth" and KAMP "Amp Radio" played a pre-taped tribute to Bryant, before the silence. After the minute of silence (or, "silence"), here's what the stations played:
KROQ: Green Day, "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"
K-EARTH: Eric Clapton, "Tears in Heaven"
ALT 98.7fm, Real 92.3, KIIS-FM: Puff Daddy [feat. Faith Evans & 112], "I'll Be Missing You"
104.3 MYfm: The Police, "Every Breath You Take"
Friday, January 3, 2020
Sunset to Start the Year
Maybe this is a good sign 2020 won't be so bad? Oh, who are we kidding. It's going to be a garbage fire. But at least the sky is pretty.
Thursday, January 2, 2020
New Year's Day Along the Los Angeles River
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