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by Byron Kerman
Fans of mall-walking, minimalist sculpture, and slowly necrotizing urban edifices would do well to step into the remains of Crestwood Court.
The long arc of the one-story shopping mall sits empty but for the two extant businesses within, a LensCrafters stationed comically as the extreme west end of the building, and a post office at the extreme east end.
The emptying of commerce from the mall is emblematic of many things: the rise of eBay, the decentralization of urban populations, the rent being “too damn high,” and that ol’ bugaboo, Sic transit Gloria mundi.
For the time being, you can still venture inside the mall, as a few mall-walkers do. If it stays open through the winter, its climate-controlled interior will be surely be appreciated then as much as it has been during this broiling summer.
Art hags can skip the exercise: just go and appreciate the brightly painted walls of yesterday’s consumer fiestas; the relentless rectilinear design elements, rendered into a vast gallery of useless minimalist sculpture; and the same sepulchral, contemplative, post-apocalyptic fugue state conferred by looking at ghost cities on the addictive TV show, Life After People.
