This is one of a few places I've been
meaning to get to for awhile now.
There's at least one other place that
I'm hoping to get to, but that'll have to wait, in part because this
was the easier one, and the traffic here was nowhere near what it
would have been at the other place I've got in mind at the same
relative time I got these pictures.
Anyway, today's subject is the closed
stand-alone Payless Shoe Source that's a block or two from my day
job. Since I drive by there on the way home from work most days,
I've been meaning to get this done for months. Part of the reason it
never happened until July 22 or 23 is because I usually get off work
around 5 PM, and there's usually a bit much traffic around to be
doing much photography like this. I'd really rather not get arrested
for this, since it's kind of a grey area, really.
I suppose I'd better get on with this
thing, though. Here's a shot of the east side of the building, with
the front kind of in view there. Kind of like that sloped roof.
I think that may have been the style of
stand-alone Payless locations like this. Not entirely sure, though.
This is the only one I remember seeing. All the others were inside
malls or other stores. The one I most remember, aside from the one
at my local ShopKo, was in the shopping mall this outparcel is
associated with. You can kind of see that behind the monument sign:
The sign's all blacked out. It's kind
of hard to tell because of the glare or whatever I wound up getting
with the sun shining through the tree. Wasn't intentional, but I
kind of like it, and it would be kind of nice otherwise.
I couldn't really get a decent shot of
the front of the store mostly because it was a high-traffic time and
I didn't want to get run over for this. Here's the best I thought I
could do in that regard.
As you can see, there's some racks
still in there, and there's still power to the building. Lights on
in there and everything, if we look through the window:
There was still some interesting sinage
on the main entrance. Here's the store hours, with me checking them
out on my phone:
As you can see by that reflection, the
bottom sign is right:
One thing I learned from watching
WallieB26's
videos is to check out the dumpster areas of these places. This one
had been cleaned out nicely:
And even though I mentioned that the
power was still on, I hadn't thought to check the power meter until I
looked over and saw the company name on it:
I'm not as sure of the history of this
as I should be, but far as I can tell, about the only things with the
Northern States Power on them any more are these power meters. I
remember Northern States Power being the big electric company in my
area when I was a kid, but they got bought out by a company called
Xcel Energy a good while ago now.
And that pretty much wraps things up
here for now. The one other place I'd like to try doing this at is
the old Lone Star Steak House on my way home from work.
Unfortunately, it's on a fairly busy street, so most days, it's a
little busier than I'm comfortable with for taking pictures. The
good news is that there's one day a week when I get off at 8 PM
instead of 5, so if I can arrange my time right, I can get there
while the light's still decent and there's less traffic to worry
about.
I'm sure I'll have other things coming
up in the meantime, too, so see you soon with whatever's next.
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