Requiem for a Sears
Not With A Whimper, But A Decades-Long Postcapitalist Scream
When I read that the last Sears store in New York City would close forever in November 2021, I could not believe it. I could not believe that someone cared enough about Sears to write an entire article about it.
The author described the Brooklyn Sears building as “historic,” which to me implies some kind of artistic merit. Beautiful. Bold. At least iconic. I forgot that sometimes history is boring as hell. Sometimes, historic architecture looks exactly like every rat-trap shopping mall in Middle America. As I walked up to the hulking, windowless slab of a store, I felt myself transported back in time to small-town Colorado, a place I would have gnawed my own legs off to escape.
They all look the same. Every podunk shopping mall in America. I’d never stopped to wonder why that is. Or why shopping malls exist in the first place. Or why every suburb has one. It felt as natural as the passing seasons, as the rising of the sun in the east.
It’s Sears. Sears is why. And now Sears is dead.
Before I was born, Sears was big. Amazon big. Between 1 and 2 percent of America’s entire GDP from World War II all the way through the 80s big. And now they aren’t. And the story of why they aren’t mirrors the story of America itself.
