And other thoughts on its closing...
If you lived in New York before the pandemic, you would have noticed walking past Astor Place the huge K-mart store on the corner of the street, right outside the Astor Place stop train station.
The mega department store abruptly closed its store in July. Anyone who's taken the 6 to Astor Place might recall the big red "K" that can be seen from the subway platform as you walk out. I've never personally thought about stepping into this store, even though I have got off the train at Astor place many times or driven past it. It had never occurred to me to go in for any reason at all.
On Twitter, the author Jason Diamond described going to the Astor Place Kmart as “one of the weirdest shopping experiences for reasons I could never quite put my finger on.”
Sad that the Astor Place Kmart is closing today. Truly one one of the weirdest shopping experiences for reasons I could never quite put my finger on.
— Jason Diamond (@imjasondiamond) July 12, 2021
I never went to the Astor Place Kmart, mostly because I was certain it was haunted
— malika ✨ (@onlymalika) July 13, 2021
“I never went to the Astor Place Kmart, mostly because I was certain it was haunted,” tweeted Malika Hunasikatti, a 32-year-old policy specialist.
Chris Crowley, a writer for New York Magazine’s Vulture, wrote that it “always felt like a perfect location for a shopping scene gone wrong in a zombie apocalypse movie.”
The store's announcement of its closure was a quiet one. Some had also commented that "Everything just felt weird and vaguely creepy".
Big Box stores like these were designed to increase the likelihood of people spending money amidst the big mall culture America had. However, times have changed the ways we shop now, with many prefer buying online these days.
Way-back machine magic!
A video still from the news conference held by U2 in the lingerie department of the Astor Place Kmart.
