Depressing Dillard's Captures Kansas City's Economic Downturn Perfectly!!!

I needed a new baseball cap because my last one was starting to smell like black mold and cheese. For some reason I found myself at Target in Ward Parkway buying motor oil, a gallon jug of anti-bacterial soap and condoms . . . I had some spare time so I decided to check out the stagnant Kansas City Mall that has been barely clinging to life for the past 10 years. Yes, yes there are folks who point to a resurgence of the place but I contend that Kansas City is the only town in the world where a Staples office supply store and a Chick-fil-A are trumpeted as a renaissance.

Anyhoo . . . I walked to the end of the mall passing a few elderly people and security guards doing nothing only to re-discover that Dillard's was having a huge closeout sale during its conversion to an outlet store.

Looking around in the men's section I noticed only a lot of polo shirts and other fancy clothing that would have never matched the rest of my dingy wardrobe but luckily I did stumble upon some hats marked down more than 70%. I found one that I could live with and was pleased when the tired, old white woman rang up the price at less than five dollars.

Leaving the place was kind of depressing (NO EMO!!!) because this is the same shopping mall that was formerly a beacon of capitalism and privilege to me as a child. I pestered my parents for expensive sweaters from this place, I worked crappy jobs to buy nice jeans that I was never able to get at the discount stores that I was more accustomed to frequenting . . . And now all that's left over are racks full of unwanted merchandise picked over by bargain shoppers looking to add to their wardrobe on the cheap. It made me feel silly that, when I was younger, I attached a value (other than price) to the merchandise available at the place. Now that serious economic decline has fallen upon Kansas City, the U.S. and the rest of the world . . . It's clear to me now that it's all just a bunch of stuff.

And that's how, as an adult, I've grown to look at Kansas City. So many people have illusions about this town and the City they imagine but in the end it's all just a collection of people, roads, houses, buildings and dirt . . . Most of which is somehow in disrepair or slightly broken. And walking out of the store into the surprisingly warm air I realized that it wasn't necessarily a depressing thought but a liberating realization regarding the various ways each individual mistakenly views Kansas City.