Inevitability

January 18th, 2008

At the busy intersection of Illinois Routes 159 and 162, the shack — in fact, that’s its nickname — sits rustic and ramshackle by design, a familiar barn-red landmark with a neon sign. But as new banks, carwashes, businesses and subdivisions spring up in a town with one of the Metro East area’s highest per capita incomes, Red’z is about to become an unwilling symbol of a burgeoning town.In the next month or two, Red’z will be leveled to make way for a Walgreens drugstore. It likely will be similar to the one a few minutes north. And the one just to the south.

At some point, someone is just going to start blowing up Walgreen’s stores. And I am not going to cry about it. How many more discount drugstores selling Chinese-made $1 “personal fans” and other useless crap along side a shitload of junk food and acetaminophen do we really need? How many local landmarks do they get to tear down in order to build a store just like the store on the next corner?

Filed under: personal ramblings, St. Louis Stuff | Comment (1)

One Response to “Inevitability”

Heidi on January 20, 2008 3:15 am
In my city they just tear down old condemned buildings to put up the new CVS or Rite-Aid. I think we have one CVS and 3 Rite-Aids. We don’t actually have a Walgreen’s closer than 20 minutes down the highway. But we’ve got plenty of condemned things for them to tear down as soon as they want to put one up here. We’ve got an old factory across the street from the new library. It’s in such bad shape that they closed off the street so people wouldn’t get hit with falling debris. This makes it take me at least twice as long to get downtown, since the closed off portion is situated smack in between me and downtown. But of course closing off the street is a much better idea than restoring or knocking down the building. My city is not full of rocket scientists.