Shopping Center

I'm posting some pictures below from an abandoned shopping plaza that I stopped by this past week. I drive by it just about every day, as it's right in the mid-section of St. Bernard Parish, about halfway in between Camp Hope in Violet and the Government Center in Chalmette. I decided to just let the pictures do the talking. But one or two thoughts I will plant: in many of the abandoned commercial buildings and plazas down here, the stores are at least boarded up. In this particular shopping center, nothing is cleaned up or gutted, no stores are boarded up, and in fact, a couple of the store fronts had notices, posted just this month mind you (June of '07, 22 months after the storm), by the Parish stating that the property owners are in violation Section 5-102.6 of St. Bernard of Parish Code of Ordinances due to excessive debris. Um, ok. Something tells me whoever those property owners are, they have other things on their minds at the moment. It really is amazing how some things down here continue to sit as they are, not even cleaned up, serving as constant reminders of that storm and the flooding. It's these kinds of sights that have me thinking maybe they were right, they being those who said, "if this catastrophe happened anywhere else in the country, do you really think you'd be seeing things like this?" I doubt it.

Click on the pictures to open them up for a better view.