Because there’s a thing called “Cyber Monday,” and it dovetails with news that Amazon plans to use drones to deliver some packages in the coming years (or at least says it will for some quick publicity), Mother Jones alerted us to the blog of photographer Brian Ulrich, who has been documenting shuttered or moribund shopping centers, stores, movie theaters, and malls. The photos show in haunting detail the decline of brick-and-mortar retail, from recent ones like Circuit City to Chicago supermarket chain Dominick’s (which will close all locations at the end of the month, screwing some members of the A.V. Club staff), to the Dixie Square Mall, best known for that interior car-chase scene in The Blues Brothers. It looks like he’s spent quite a bit of time in the Chicago area—we can recommend a bunch of sad-looking former Borders locations if he needs some more ideas.
Scroll through Ulrich’s Dark Stores blog, then feel some twinges of guilt about buying that Breaking Bad box set from Amazon instead of a good ol’ mom-and-pop operation like Target.