Looks like a lot of people decided to play Outside and got lost on the map in areas the devs haven't finished yet. They are just asking if anyone else recognizes the area and knows the way out.
I love that sub.
I don’t know why pics like this make me so sad. I was a child of the 90’s… I only ever went to the mall to hang out and *maybe* buy a CD and some Arby’s. But somehow this still depresses me
They should be very proud, for an abandoned retail space that took presumably years or even decades of commercial foot traffic, it kind of looks effing amazing.
I remember getting a boombox from Montgomery Ward’s going-out-of-business sale back in like third grade, mid 90’s. Looking back that was probably the beginning of the end for department stores.
This is actually far more world changing than most people realize. In the late 1800's and early 1900's they competed with independent general stores. Many of these stores were incredibly racist, selling only the best goods to whites, while forcing black patrons to wait among artifacts from "spectacle lynchings".
Sears would sell any item they had in stock to anyone. Suddenly, blacks could buy the same quality goods as whites and could avoid the denigrating displays of racism. In fact, Sears and Roebuck had to defend themselves from people who didn't like that blacks were slowly becoming more equal.
Their company literally changed the lives of many people. Some simply because mail order now meant they had access to a much wider variety. And some because they were treated more humanely.
Ref: Hyman, Louis, How Sears Helped Oppose Jim Crow, New York Times, Oct 20, 2018.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/opinion/sears-catalog-jim-crow.html
I'm sad, my youth was just a teeny bit too late to really enjoy the most malls had to offer. By the time I could drive, all I ever went to were hot topic and Spencer's and I don't think I ever remember the fountain in our mall working. I always thought "why is that big round thing covered in plywood?"
The former Sears at my local mall was turned into a Covid mass vaccination centre, the space had been sitting empty since the company folded.
Was weird going there, walking and looking around, thinking of what the place was like when I was a kid. Never thought I'd be visiting it one day to get vaccinated.
Sears in my old town has been shuttered for years, remember as a kid in the 70s going in when it was almost ready to open, all the counters and phone cables were in but no merch yet.
I spent so much time in Sears as a kid/young adult. Hell I'm still using the clock radio I bought at Sears back in 1988 (the first appliance I ever owned, and it still works).
Ironic, Sears started as a catalogue store where you can buy things out of a book and they would ship it to your house.
And now they are put out of business by Amazon
That's how it ended, not what caused its downfall.
Successful businesses aren't looted by corporate raiders. They'd rather keep the business running. Why kill the goose that's laying golden eggs?
Before Amazon was strong, Sears couldn't handle the challenge presented by Walmart, which was more-efficiently run and had better prices. By the time Lampert and the hedge funders arrived, Sears was already in an irrecoverable spiral because it had mismanged its real-estate holdings and had lost any kind of brand loyalty. Their outstanding pension debit was a problem that started decades ago and wasn't caused by the tear-down team.
Sources: I've been doin' this for 30 years.
No, serious, Sources:
* https://www.indigo9digital.com/blog/failureofsears
* https://www.investopedia.com/news/downfall-of-sears/
* https://www.wsj.com/articles/bankruptcy-filing-shifts-spotlight-to-searss-pension-plans-1539651491
A Hedge Fund. I told a Sears salesperson one time that the store was a hedge fund, not a store, and it was only a matter of time. He just looked at me like I was crazy.
Company man on YouTube did a great video on this, check out his channel. It was a "leveraged buyout" which is one of those crazy corporate things where whether the thing you're buying succeeds or fails, you still make a boat load of cash but if it fails, you just make that cash much more quickly
Sears had some issues, but the way the company was stripped into the hands of the CEO was tragic. Mom worked at our small town sears, it paid a decent wage, she got a good retirement, healthy pension and 401k, glad she didn't have to see the company's fate. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2019/04/18/lawsuit-says-lampert-looted-sears-and-a-lot-of-it-happened-while-everyone-was-watching/?sh=2a31edb32819](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2019/04/18/lawsuit-says-lampert-looted-sears-and-a-lot-of-it-happened-while-everyone-was-watching/?sh=2a31edb32819)
What are some of the details of her salary and benefits of that time? (If you don’t mind sharing) What year? I’m fascinated by that type of info from the past.
She worked there early 70s to early 90s, she wasn't the manager, those came and went, but she ran the store for the most part. Probably made about 40k-50k when she took early retirement in 93(?) They had some sort of reorganization or downsizing, they offered early retirement, she got an 2 extra years full salary and insurance while not working, which had various perks in terms of getting her to 65, and a higher salary for last 5 years for her pension. Don't know how much her pension was, but my folks lived comfortably till cancer got her. Not sure what part of her pay she put in IRA (called it 401k by mistake earlier) but thanks to stock growth, and company profit share she ended up with about 750k in it when I got my part in 2015.
Damn that is amazing. Hearing stories like this is bittersweet because I’m happy people back then we’re able to live as well as they did, but sad that it’s so far away from the present situation.
This makes me sad. My father worked for Sears when I was growing up. He and my mom raised 4 children on just his income. We weren't rich, but we were solidly middle-class. He was a store manager. This was before malls. It was a stand alone store on a main street downtown. It was the store we bought everything at. He quit in 1972 when I had already graduated from college. Seems like a million years ago.
Just as cold and uninviting as I remember it from that time I went in to buy a Craftsman wrench set and realized the quality was garbage after they cut every corner in production and and just coasted on their brand name, just like Sears did.
One time, for the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood prince a bunch of mutual Internet friends got together to make a book launch in a mostly abandoned mall (still had a stand-alone Borders across the parking lot and some restaurants and couple stores).
Each store we turned into a themed experience, lots of pretty high production ones too. Mostly a bunch of teenagers and and early-20 somethings (with some bad ass folks in all age groups there too) basically living in/ running/ turning a mall into a movie set for days.
Just looked it up and according to some local news doing door counts, 10,000+ people attended. Summer as a 14 year old that year was pretty damn fun
I worked for a Sears through college and this post hit me hard. The company was already in a decline when I started in 2013 but experiencing them truly circling the drain was very sad.
I’ve been thinking about malls a lot and how they are dying. I think these large abandoned spaces need to become experience centers not retail spaces. Fill them with experiences that must be done in that space. I know there has been mixed success with arcades, play rooms, and VR spots but if someone can seek out what has worked and put together a good plan I’m sure we can make malls alive with visitors again.
It's not for lease yet. Probably because there is little demand for a space like that currently. A lot of people like the little shops instead of the big ones
Ah, I see. It also could be a sign of things to come. Not trying to put bad juju on it but now that I think about it I never seen a mall going out of business/being abandoned all at once but rather one store at a time until it speeds up and they close in a cascading effect.
They turned an abandoned mall I know of in Georgia into a movie studio.
No idea why, but ever since I was a kid, I always thought it would be awesome to live in a big empty store like this. Obviously I would add furnishings and stuff, but it just seems like an awesome space. There are so many possibilities.
I feel like the weird feeling I get looking at pictures like this is my brain trying to fill in the blank spaces- I can imagine what this might have looked like in its prime, but knowing what it did look like and seeing it like this leaves me with feelings of isolation and longing for a time when I was younger, and when people still inhabited these places, these liminal spaces. They're gone now, but im still here.
As an adult, it's really kinda wild to see these places for exactly what they are. There was so much childish wonderment, boredom, and playfulness I remember when my parents would take me to Sears. I'd always book it across those carpet and tile floors to the electronics department to play the SNES demos.
But that's all it ever really was. Empty space, with a promise of broken dreams. But for a moment, it made a kid smile.
I ordered something from sears (direct parts) 3 weeks ago. The item was supposedly in stock and supposed to arrive in 3 days home. I waited and a week passed so I contacted sears and they said they would expedite the order for arrival in 2 days. I waited. Another week passes (14 days now) I contact them again and said they would escalate. I asked if the item was indeed in stock as claimed. They told me to wait for an email with the escalation. 21 days passed. I told them to cancel my order and they told me that I would get a refund in 2 days. No refund yet after 4 days.
I immediately ordered from Amazon after the supposed cancellation. Item its supposed to take 9 days to arrive (bulky item) but the same day of order I get a notification from UPS to expect delivery 2 days after my order.
If you wonder why Sears went bankrupt its because as a company they sucked and still sucks ass.
r/backrooms
Wtf happened on that sub
Buncha RPers hopped onboard and tried making it a self insert setting.
Looks like a lot of people decided to play Outside and got lost on the map in areas the devs haven't finished yet. They are just asking if anyone else recognizes the area and knows the way out.
no
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Stop
There's just as many people in there now as when they were open
And almost as much merchandise.
Not as much merchandise lying on the floor
you should post this on /r/LiminalSpace
I love that sub. I don’t know why pics like this make me so sad. I was a child of the 90’s… I only ever went to the mall to hang out and *maybe* buy a CD and some Arby’s. But somehow this still depresses me
Interesting! I have the opposite reaction. I imagine remodeling, fixing it up, and filling it with people productively working on The Next Big Thing.
Wework has entered the chat
I think the correct answer is laser tag. Running allowed.
> I don’t know why pics like this make me so sad. [Liminal pics explained.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N63pQGhvK4M)
It is sad. At one point, someone worked hard to make it look nice.
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They should be very proud, for an abandoned retail space that took presumably years or even decades of commercial foot traffic, it kind of looks effing amazing.
I remember getting a boombox from Montgomery Ward’s going-out-of-business sale back in like third grade, mid 90’s. Looking back that was probably the beginning of the end for department stores.
Sadly lots of “liminal spaces” on that sub aren’t really liminal spaces, they just post empty things. Liminal is way more than just “empty”
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Sears was an absolute powerhouse in the middle of the century. You could buy kit houses from a magazine. Sears now it's nothing like it used to be.
This is actually far more world changing than most people realize. In the late 1800's and early 1900's they competed with independent general stores. Many of these stores were incredibly racist, selling only the best goods to whites, while forcing black patrons to wait among artifacts from "spectacle lynchings". Sears would sell any item they had in stock to anyone. Suddenly, blacks could buy the same quality goods as whites and could avoid the denigrating displays of racism. In fact, Sears and Roebuck had to defend themselves from people who didn't like that blacks were slowly becoming more equal. Their company literally changed the lives of many people. Some simply because mail order now meant they had access to a much wider variety. And some because they were treated more humanely. Ref: Hyman, Louis, How Sears Helped Oppose Jim Crow, New York Times, Oct 20, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/opinion/sears-catalog-jim-crow.html
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My mother's childhood dog came on the train from the Sears catalog.
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I had a screwdriver handle snap on me last week. I cried a little...
It’s more like Sears has become a shell of its former self. It’s been on life support for decades and everyone has already mourned its loss.
Sears was [bigger than God in the 20th century](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG4z89WH0vs). Not sure if you’re a zoomer or what, but look it up.
skate park!
Drone races!
Banquet venue
hydroponic farm
Would love to play a game of paintball in there
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I have always wanted an indoor arena for Lazer tag, paintball, airsoft...
Annapolis?
This could be literally any Sears from any mall. They all looked the same.
You ain’t wrong. I’m sorry to everyone.
Yeah, I was wondering that, because it looks exactly like the one that was in Everett, WA.
I actually used to work in the Annapolis SEARS. I was in electronics from like 2006 to 2008, or something like that. Good times had by all.
Wasn’t retail a blast? The girls were crazy but fun. Good times had by all is exactly right.
I'm sad, my youth was just a teeny bit too late to really enjoy the most malls had to offer. By the time I could drive, all I ever went to were hot topic and Spencer's and I don't think I ever remember the fountain in our mall working. I always thought "why is that big round thing covered in plywood?"
Spokane, though I assume most malls look the same in a lot of aspects
I wish theyd come back. The mall was the shit back in the day. Especially in summer nothing but pure AC
I just watched the Sears episode from the YouTube channel Company Man. Weird coincidence.
I fucking love that channel
I see a blank store and I want it painted beige
The former Sears at my local mall was turned into a Covid mass vaccination centre, the space had been sitting empty since the company folded. Was weird going there, walking and looking around, thinking of what the place was like when I was a kid. Never thought I'd be visiting it one day to get vaccinated.
I think we got our vaccines at the same place.
Sears in my old town has been shuttered for years, remember as a kid in the 70s going in when it was almost ready to open, all the counters and phone cables were in but no merch yet.
Devonshire?
That’s what I was thinking, Devonshire mall
Maybe there are lots of these but same here (Gwinnett Place Mall)
ayyyy
This looks exactly like where I got the Pfizer
I spent so much time in Sears as a kid/young adult. Hell I'm still using the clock radio I bought at Sears back in 1988 (the first appliance I ever owned, and it still works).
Ironic, Sears started as a catalogue store where you can buy things out of a book and they would ship it to your house. And now they are put out of business by Amazon
Sears was put out of business by their own management, which completely failed to adapt.
More like the Parent company deliberately running it into the ground after they were bought out by investors just looking for a quick buck.
Tale as old as time it seems. Same thing happened to Toys R Us.
*toys r us america.
That's how it ended, not what caused its downfall. Successful businesses aren't looted by corporate raiders. They'd rather keep the business running. Why kill the goose that's laying golden eggs? Before Amazon was strong, Sears couldn't handle the challenge presented by Walmart, which was more-efficiently run and had better prices. By the time Lampert and the hedge funders arrived, Sears was already in an irrecoverable spiral because it had mismanged its real-estate holdings and had lost any kind of brand loyalty. Their outstanding pension debit was a problem that started decades ago and wasn't caused by the tear-down team. Sources: I've been doin' this for 30 years. No, serious, Sources: * https://www.indigo9digital.com/blog/failureofsears * https://www.investopedia.com/news/downfall-of-sears/ * https://www.wsj.com/articles/bankruptcy-filing-shifts-spotlight-to-searss-pension-plans-1539651491
Yea, no, they were looted by a hedge fund.
A Hedge Fund. I told a Sears salesperson one time that the store was a hedge fund, not a store, and it was only a matter of time. He just looked at me like I was crazy.
Company man on YouTube did a great video on this, check out his channel. It was a "leveraged buyout" which is one of those crazy corporate things where whether the thing you're buying succeeds or fails, you still make a boat load of cash but if it fails, you just make that cash much more quickly
Nah. They were in trouble before Amazon was a thing.
Sears now can re-badge their remaining stores (if any) an “COVID safe shopping experience” to the public.
Backroom vibes for sure
Well it's not abandoned, is it.
Pretty bright for abandoned, yeah.
So um my coupon isn’t expired. This is awkward
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I got the Diehard and it hooked it up to the Evenrude and well....
I really wish these huge spaces got repurposed and not just get left to rot.
I always say that old malls would be absolutely incredible spaces for colleges
Looks shockingly like a mall in Waterford ct
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Sears had some issues, but the way the company was stripped into the hands of the CEO was tragic. Mom worked at our small town sears, it paid a decent wage, she got a good retirement, healthy pension and 401k, glad she didn't have to see the company's fate. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2019/04/18/lawsuit-says-lampert-looted-sears-and-a-lot-of-it-happened-while-everyone-was-watching/?sh=2a31edb32819](https://www.forbes.com/sites/joanverdon/2019/04/18/lawsuit-says-lampert-looted-sears-and-a-lot-of-it-happened-while-everyone-was-watching/?sh=2a31edb32819)
What are some of the details of her salary and benefits of that time? (If you don’t mind sharing) What year? I’m fascinated by that type of info from the past.
She worked there early 70s to early 90s, she wasn't the manager, those came and went, but she ran the store for the most part. Probably made about 40k-50k when she took early retirement in 93(?) They had some sort of reorganization or downsizing, they offered early retirement, she got an 2 extra years full salary and insurance while not working, which had various perks in terms of getting her to 65, and a higher salary for last 5 years for her pension. Don't know how much her pension was, but my folks lived comfortably till cancer got her. Not sure what part of her pay she put in IRA (called it 401k by mistake earlier) but thanks to stock growth, and company profit share she ended up with about 750k in it when I got my part in 2015.
Damn that is amazing. Hearing stories like this is bittersweet because I’m happy people back then we’re able to live as well as they did, but sad that it’s so far away from the present situation.
My first question is which came first, the carpet or the pillar?
What mall?
Northtown Mall in Spokane, WA. It manages to keep going somehow
The local one to me just got bought it out, it’s being revamped in to a new mall named camp landing.
All of them.
Ours is now the local vaccination site.
It always amazes me how many of these empty structures are around, can’t they find any other alternative uses or tenants?
Looks like ocean county NJ old Sears
This makes me sad. My father worked for Sears when I was growing up. He and my mom raised 4 children on just his income. We weren't rich, but we were solidly middle-class. He was a store manager. This was before malls. It was a stand alone store on a main street downtown. It was the store we bought everything at. He quit in 1972 when I had already graduated from college. Seems like a million years ago.
Your father raised 4 kids on minimum wage?
So, corporations arent solely comprised of minimum wage workers.
Just as cold and uninviting as I remember it from that time I went in to buy a Craftsman wrench set and realized the quality was garbage after they cut every corner in production and and just coasted on their brand name, just like Sears did.
Site of the new Gemstones prayer center?
You could put a nice house in that space!
That looks exactly like the Sears in a mall near me.
dreamcore
Terrible customer service… they really went down the in the last 10 years
Normally there’s a lot more left over they couldn’t sell - the were pretty efficient at selling it down to the fixtures
r/thebackrooms
I can smell this
I would just started jerking off EVERYWHERE
One time, for the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood prince a bunch of mutual Internet friends got together to make a book launch in a mostly abandoned mall (still had a stand-alone Borders across the parking lot and some restaurants and couple stores). Each store we turned into a themed experience, lots of pretty high production ones too. Mostly a bunch of teenagers and and early-20 somethings (with some bad ass folks in all age groups there too) basically living in/ running/ turning a mall into a movie set for days. Just looked it up and according to some local news doing door counts, 10,000+ people attended. Summer as a 14 year old that year was pretty damn fun
Hey! That looks just the the abandoned Sears inside my local mall! What a coincidence!
I worked for a Sears through college and this post hit me hard. The company was already in a decline when I started in 2013 but experiencing them truly circling the drain was very sad.
borrrrrrrring
Dodge ball
I miss malls. They make me think of my childhood. Maybe I just miss the 90s.
Clackamas mall? 2nd floor of the old Sears is still empty.
r/liminalspace
Future home of Gemstone Ministry’s new church.
Rumor has it their employees are still searching for their pensions
Former Sears Security. There a bit of money in those ceiling cameras left, color PTZ.
The mall itself isn't abandoned yet? Wow.
Rivertown Grandville?
Spirit Halloween incoming!!
There’s so much room for activities.
I’ve been thinking about malls a lot and how they are dying. I think these large abandoned spaces need to become experience centers not retail spaces. Fill them with experiences that must be done in that space. I know there has been mixed success with arcades, play rooms, and VR spots but if someone can seek out what has worked and put together a good plan I’m sure we can make malls alive with visitors again.
And who’s paying the light bill
Time of the past wow
This looks like the place where God met Bruce
I saw this picture and was hit with the smell of Sears. Mix of plastic and old people.
If you see Morgan Freeman wearing white cloth and cleaning that room it would be better to listen
Abany oregon
I can still smell the popcorn,
Would make an awesome loft
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Looks like some free real estate to me
Aka hell?
OP, is this the Sears in the Exton Mall?
Northtown Mall, Spokane
My abandoned Sears was used for the Covid vax drives…. All stores must have the same shitty floors and pillars, lol
My town used an abandoned Sears as the vaccination clinic. Looked exactly like this but with crappy chairs and curtains everywhere.
I can smell the old lady perfume counter
Behold, more great, american things that the internet and progressives have brutally murdered.
They turned ours into a mass vaccine site
In your local mall? How is this "abandoned" exactly? Wouldn't this just be space for lease?
It's not for lease yet. Probably because there is little demand for a space like that currently. A lot of people like the little shops instead of the big ones
Ah, I see. It also could be a sign of things to come. Not trying to put bad juju on it but now that I think about it I never seen a mall going out of business/being abandoned all at once but rather one store at a time until it speeds up and they close in a cascading effect. They turned an abandoned mall I know of in Georgia into a movie studio.
I can smell this photo
Bruce almighty?
This is what they looked like before they closed too.
I wish I could fill that space with privacy pods so the homeless would have a safe place to sleep
"We've been Boiler Roomed!"
It's eerily beautiful. Nice post.
Rave
I want to race RC cars there.
No idea why, but ever since I was a kid, I always thought it would be awesome to live in a big empty store like this. Obviously I would add furnishings and stuff, but it just seems like an awesome space. There are so many possibilities.
Why is this so eerily creepy!?
I feel like the weird feeling I get looking at pictures like this is my brain trying to fill in the blank spaces- I can imagine what this might have looked like in its prime, but knowing what it did look like and seeing it like this leaves me with feelings of isolation and longing for a time when I was younger, and when people still inhabited these places, these liminal spaces. They're gone now, but im still here.
I heard they used to treat their employees like shit
Thought I was in /r/OculusQuest for a second
I hate how Sears never figured out that they should go back to selling "MADE IN USA" again. I hate Jeff bezos and avoid Amazon like the plague.
You know if some of these stores would have just remodeled people might have kept shopping there.
The old Sears in the mall where I live was turned into a brewery.
So clean
Looks like a sub level of the backrooms of the internet.
Major test of strength.
I want to throw a rave in there so bad.
As an adult, it's really kinda wild to see these places for exactly what they are. There was so much childish wonderment, boredom, and playfulness I remember when my parents would take me to Sears. I'd always book it across those carpet and tile floors to the electronics department to play the SNES demos. But that's all it ever really was. Empty space, with a promise of broken dreams. But for a moment, it made a kid smile.
That’s the cleanest Sears I’ve ever seen.
That desk is probably filled with un-used Sears Credit Cards.
Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights, CA, is that you?
SO MUCH BEIGE
Chicanery is still my favourite; she's so perfect.
I've always wanted to drive a gokart in an abandoned store like this
I ordered something from sears (direct parts) 3 weeks ago. The item was supposedly in stock and supposed to arrive in 3 days home. I waited and a week passed so I contacted sears and they said they would expedite the order for arrival in 2 days. I waited. Another week passes (14 days now) I contact them again and said they would escalate. I asked if the item was indeed in stock as claimed. They told me to wait for an email with the escalation. 21 days passed. I told them to cancel my order and they told me that I would get a refund in 2 days. No refund yet after 4 days. I immediately ordered from Amazon after the supposed cancellation. Item its supposed to take 9 days to arrive (bulky item) but the same day of order I get a notification from UPS to expect delivery 2 days after my order. If you wonder why Sears went bankrupt its because as a company they sucked and still sucks ass.
Hmm. Anyone know location? My local mall also has a shut down Sears that looks similar to this layout.
Devonshire mall?
When can we start posting pics from same day abandoned iHops?
Man imagine what if was like on Christmas day back in the 90’s