RIP The Stores of My Youth

I'm 51 years old so shopping during the early part of my life meant going to the dress store, the butcher shop, the corner store...basically if you needed to buy something, you had to go to a specific store to buy each item.  That style of shopping soon gave way to department stores which had food, clothing, auto parts and everything else you needed under one roof.  And then in my high school years, malls become the big thing (overall I probably spent years of my life in malls!).

Retail news these days has made me long for the stores of my youth which are being obliterated by the current economy which is kind of sad.  Sears is now a penny stock (I fondly remember the excitement of getting the Sears catalog each year which made for some great daydreaming), Brookstone is closing all of their stores (this was always one of the classiest high-tech stores in the mall), mall vacancies are at an all-time high (my generation practically lived at the mall!), finally there is this huge list of retail bankruptcies (it's a stunningly long list!).

I guess I will have no choice but to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future of cashierless stores and stores that know who I am the minute I walk onto their property.  eeekkkk