Amazon: save pennies, ruin your community.

My neighborhood is filled with delivery trucks taking up public space delivering tons of stuff daily, followed by sanitation trucks hauling tons of garbage. Meanwhile, there are no produce stores almost anywhere in the city.

People shopping online wreck communities. First, they mostly buy less-than-useless things that will end up poisoning landfills. Click any result from a search on “most popular purchase on amazon” and you’ll see. Second, they may save some on the purchase, but they’re not buying from local businesses.

It’s tempting to think shopping online cuts out the middleman, but it’s not so simple. Shopping online takes advantage of infrastructure that they don’t have to pay for, like handling the shipping garbage.

Among the results of people shopping online is this set of pictures I’d been meaning to take a long time. I was going to walk around my neighborhood and take pictures of the boarded up stores within a block of me. I kept putting off planning the route so I just took pictures on two recent volunteering runs.

I didn’t photograph every closed store I passed, but got most of them. Most are within a couple blocks of me. Again, there are no stores or stands that sell fresh fruits and vegetables, which used to be everywhere.

Come to think of it, I’ll take another series of pictures of what stores remain. They’re mostly restaurants, cafes, nail salons, candy stores, pizza shops, drug stores, and things that mostly are more indulgent than useful or healthy. There are few to no produce stands, hardware stores, or bookstores.

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EDIT: If I took pictures of every junkie in every doorway, I wouldn’t be able to travel far from home, but this store was occupied just a few days ago so I’m combining it with the series of pictures above. The ground in front of the person was covered with paraphernalia, cigarettes and other garbage. The person him or herself was incommunicado.

I included this picture in my related post, I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs.

• ← A broad outline of my vision and mission for the workshop and alumni community I love
• I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs →