It didn’t really occur to me that this would go on this long, but there was never any reason to assume otherwise. The imagery and impact are greater on the first morning of a holiday weekend but that’s in the head. The situation is very real. Let’s soundtrack it, and let’s just stick with The Specials’ Ghost Town. Rico’s spacey trombone and the slow beat speak the truth.
There’s a lot of conjecture about the long term future but the immediate is pretty clear. We’re an old patient on a respirator right now. Any prognosis has 50-50 odds of being the right one. Fuck it, let’s throw in more eerie vibes for the soundtrack with a dub plate of the Clash covering Willie Williams’ Armagideon Time.
It’s probably never a good idea to reference The Daily Fail in any commentary but the dire tone does capture the moment this time. Hell, even a broken clock is right twice a day. This piece is about the future of commercial real estate, retail and office. Big adjustments there were overdue anyway, and particularly with retail, but nobody expected it to go down at all, let alone this way. According The Fail everybody is defaulting on their leases over the last two months. They’re going by reporting of the big commercial giants so you never truly know whether or not they’re throwing this out for tax purposes but everyone can see boarded up windows and shuttered store fronts. It’s the small shops and restaurants that really hurt to see. Behind every rolled-down gate there’s a small entrepreneurs dreams.
It’s the small guys that concern me the most. It’s not only a question of seeing regular folks hurting, and it does fucking hurt. It’s what comes on the other side of all this. The only people with the capital to fill these spaces and rebuild post-COVID-19 will be the generic chains and shops. Wait and see what they offer up next. New York City already headed down that path a long time ago and the Old Guard was hanging around on life support, but this could pull the plug on everything left of what made this city special. They’re the ones that I’ve been staying around for, frankly, and I’m not sure I want to live the last quarter of my life in a mall.
Because of course, it’s about me, right? But my concerns aren’t unique. There are a lot of us here for the same reason. It was never enough to be basic bitches.
Color me thoughtful.
That’s where it stands this morning.
Thoughtful.
What rough beast 