Friday, May 17, 2013

Round Robin: Before and After: A Change for the Worse

This is my second entry for this week's Round Robin Challenge: Before And After. The "Before" image in the other one is a bit disturbing, but this entry is safe to look at, I promise!

Once upon a time, there was a venerable old shopping center at Broadway and Wilmot in Tucson called The Mercado. It featured pink adobe buildings with tile roofs. Once years ago I wrote about one of the shops there, called Choc-alot, which had an astounding variety of gourmet chocolates in different shapes and recipes. Years before that, the United Whovians of Tucson honored Doctor Who actor John Levene at a restaurant there called The Good Earth. That restaurant is long gone, but just a month ago I had lunch at a different restaurant there called El Charro.

But one weekend recently there were suddenly dozens of flags and banners flying outside the old pink buildings. Some of them were Tea Party-inspired, some were about cars and even tattoos. Odd. A few days after that, this happened:


First a bunch of tiles were knocked off the roof of El Charro. Was it malicious, or were they renovating the building? Either way, the restaurant had been closed. But that was just the beginning.


Soon the building was just a shell.


Then it was a pile of rubble. And the building behind it was starting to go the same way.





For a while the building that once housed Choc-alot survived.


But no more.

So what's the point of all this destruction, of these neat old buildings holding decades of memories?




It's going to be the site of a CVS Pharmacy, in a town that always had several CVS pharmacies, some Osco locations and a Walgreen's at practically every major intersection. What else? Phooey.

That's it for this one. Check out my other entry if you can handle blood and guts type stuff. And definitely please also go see the other Robins' entries:

Linking List
as of Saturday, May 18th, 12 AM MST

Jama - Posted!
Sweet Memories
http://mummyjam.blogspot.com

Karen - Posted! (two entries)
 Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/mavarin
@mavarin

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com


Thanks!

Karen

2 comments:

Carly said...

Hi Karen

Ummm... YIKES! Glad to know you are on the mend, but my goodness, I won't sleep very well tonight! Hey, you warned me, I went ahead, why? Who knows? LOL. My sister had a similar fall some years ago, she lost four front teeth and I still have the wiggins over that! LOL. Ugggggggggg! (Insert Nervous laughter Here)

Moving on...

It's good to know that at least the lot won't be empty or filled with Tea Party nonsense. It will mean new job opportunities and businesses that are useful to the community. That's I good thing I think. Personally, I fight change kicking and screaming, but in this case change is good. There is nothing like a "Grand Opening" sale! LOL.

Feel better sweetie!

:) Carly

Jama said...

Tearing of old building and rebuilding something higher and bigger is quiet the norm here, we lack land so everything has to grow upwards or under the ground.