An eye-opening walk (#782)

Yesterday late morning I had an opportunity to walk about 2 1/2 miles back to my apartment and I took the opportunity. I thought a good refreshing walk would help me get some exercise and let me see the world around my domicile. I walked down a major business corridor for most of the trip. This is what I saw, very little car traffic, some foot traffic but otherwise no real hustle and bustle of activity that I was expecting to see on a business/retail main road. What I saw instead was about a third of the office spaces and retail outlets closed or for lease. What I also saw were very few cars in the parking lots all along the 2 plus miles I walked. It was about 11:00 am and I would have thought that there would be customers moving in and about the shops along the way. What I saw was not that but an eerie silence of activity. No business was immune. Fast food restaurants, repair shops, tattoo parlors, gas stations/stores, drinking establishments, grocery stores, the small strip malls with a wide variety of offerings, antique shops, pawn shops, auto dealers, no business had any kind of activity I would expect from a midday Tuesday. If anyone doubts that our economy is at a standstill I recommend taking a stroll down any business corridor and see the inactivity for yourself. I know this is only my little part of the world but the consistency of inactivity was and is troubling. If most of us have little to no money to spend to keep commerce healthy, we are all heading into uncharted territory for most of us. There is a sense within me that life is about to change for all of us and it is not going to be necessarily for the better. For sure things will be different and the look of what we become is about to take shape. An eye-opening walk indeed!