The Rustbelt

I apologize if this isn't Wilkes Barre, or if this isn't a factory. :-) I couldn't figure out if it was a factory, power plant, or mine, but it clearly has some conveyor belts on it. Any info on this would be very welcome. In any event, it appears to be abandoned, as a close inspection of this photo will show that the windows are broken.

I shot this while out Christmas shopping with my Dad. This repulsively ugly strip mall is only a few years old, but already it's so scarred the landscape in Central New York that it is one of the many things that make the place useless for most pretty photography. This sunset, however, was an exception. The darkness below helps to hide the ugliness.

This was taken from a train passing through the Harmon, NY railroad yard in 1994. It looks like it would require good equipment, but it just so happened that in spite of shooting through a tinted window with a Kodak Star 735 point-and-shoot ($75 total cost), I still got the shot.

Ontrack, when it was first inaugerated, was part of the revival of rail transport, particularly within cities, which was going on during the 1990s, and continues to this day, in the U.S.A. This long predated the current spike in fuel costs, as pollution, traffic congestion, and simple public demand for more effective transportation all played more of a role in the beginning. Back in the 1990s, gas prices were sometimes as low as a dollar a gallon, so it's hard to make an argument that they played much of a role in the public transport revival. So.......what's going on with Ontrack now, in the days when it's needed more than ever? It's shut down, of course. It suffered a long decline, and as I understand it, this was partly due to simple failure to run at all. I'll always remember the time back in the early 2000s (I don't remember the date) when I was train watching on this platform for several hours, watching the scheduled arrival and departure times advertised on the platform come and go without seeing a single train. The platform was full of passengers, and when me and my railfan friends finally left after standing for several hours without seeing a single train, the passengers followed us. In any case, the station now seems to be in use for storage of the equipment, and in the middle of the Christmas season, when I took this photo, the parking lot of Carousel Mall was so congested that it took 20 minutes for us to find a parking space. Such is the predicament of public transport in Central New York.

When I was at Carousel at the end of 2007, it was undergoing a renovation into a new complex which will be called, in Orwellian fashion (When are we going to come up with a better metaphorical author than Orwell??? I'm sick of him.) Destiny USA. Pyramid Companies, who own Carousel/Destiny, hope that when complete, the complex will be larger than the Mall of America, which could easily make it the largest such facility in the U.S., and probably the world. As one can see from the condition of Ontrack, and from all of these electric transformers to feed the mall's 24-hour lighting (see the next picture), environmental concerns seem to be the dead last priority, in spite of massive propaganda to the contrary. They aggressively present their (meaningless) environmental awards on their website, such as Greening USA: www.destinyusa.com/ and I would provide the specific link, except for that their website seems to be so poorly designed that Firefox interprets its actions as being equivalent to malware, blocking all the popups. Hmm.....wouldn't it just be better to do additional pages, whether in Flash or HTML???? In any case, while there, I found inadequate public transport provision (although Centro does provide bus services), too many cars, ironically inadequate parking (probably due to lack of public transport combined with the transformers seen here, above ground and in the way) and massive waste of electricity. Why can't they bury the transformers??? I'm not an expert, so I don't know. I do wonder about the fact that the whole site is a brownfield, though. If I were a construction worker, I wonder if I would ask my union to say no to digging there. A much longer and better description of Carousel Mall (albeit one that predates construction) and its problems can be found here however: eddyburg.it/article/articleview/6786/0/221/ This link was censored on Facebook, as a source cited on it (but not included on the site in question) was deemed "abusive." I have no idea what that means, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was merely critical of one corporation or another. Incidentally, I have no idea what the Sports Authority think of all of this. No offense is intended. They're probably just locating where they can make money (Carousel has been accused of gutting the downtown, thus making the location of businesses anywhere but Carousel unprofitable), so none of this is really about them. In addition, this photo, is not very interesting. The next one is much funnier......

I had surprisingly good luck with my Contina on my Carousel trip, and it was actually a good thing that I brought it, since I had originally not known about Destiny USA or any of the absurdities associated with it. Again, nothing against American Eagle, as I suspect the situation in Syracuse would coerce them into locating at Carousel regardless of their preference. I was just at Carousel to shop for Christmas, and I found the whole thing thoroughly amusing to boot. All of the greenwashing was so preposterously, transparently dishonest that it was like something out of The State, The Daily Show, The Onion, or Monty Python, except, it was real, which maybe made it far funnier. I think the only things that kept me from laughing insanely were that, first of all, it was all so depressing as well, and that second of all, when you're under constant surveillance and harrassment from security, even taking photos can be risky, so the combination of photography and laughing is sure to subject you to serious trouble. Human emotions aren't allowed in malls, you know. :-) In any case, to explain what I love about this photo.....First of all, I was amazed at how well the Contina was able to deal with the limited indoor light, but on the other hand there are those massive skylights overhead, which illustrate how natural light has a far stronger effect on film than artificial light. The whole mall is quite bright in the daytime, and I'm sure that if the power went out, it would only be a serious problem for the cash registers and the computer/electronics stores. A very hot or cold day might present problems for climate control, too, but not until the indoor temperature change, which could take awhile. Therefore....if Destiny USA were serious, first of all about the environment, and second of all about profit, they would only use the lighting after dark................. Look carefully. Right under one of their greenwash signs, in the upper left, is a light blazing in broad daylight, under the skylights. Look around the photo carefully and you'll see that all of the other lights are lit, too. This is no doubt costing Pyramid (and the other businesses involved) a fortune, in addition to wrecking the environment by raising demand for electricity, something that nearly every environmental group has been begging people to deal with since the 1970s. If you combine this with the cars, the lack of public transport, and so on...you get the picture. The whole thing was a living satire, and it reinforced the impression I get whenever I'm in the U.S., that ever I go back, the problems have gotten worse, with little action done except to make them worse.

I saw these in Sangertown Mall in New Hartford, New York, and just thought they were weird enough to photograph. I don't remember the store, but the store didn't specialize in toys or novelty items, and I should note also that hedgehogs are not generally considered native to New York, although porcupines (unrelated except for the quills) are common in the Adirondacks.

There isn't anything important about this photo, also from the video camera. Notice that an Extra Value Meal is listed at $579. Weak dollar.... :-) :-) :-)

This is an abandoned Ames store, which if I'm not mistaken is in Binghamton, NY. It really is a sign of the times when a semi-big-box store like Ames goes out of business. Ames was successful throughout the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. from the 1950's through the 1990's, but eventually went out of business in 2002, in spite of having absorbed competitors like Zayre... www.flickr.com/photos/jarchie/3468192709/ In my area, most of the Ames stores of the 1990's had been Zayre stores in the 1980's. The fate of the company's old properties remains undetermined for the moment, although when I call this store "abandoned," I mean by the owner. I'm sure that there's someone somewhere who owns it and still wants to rent it out.