Retail Turnovers Everyone Hates
400 W Coldspring Avenue
Formerly, Video Americain (1989-2013) the best little video store in Baltimore. Where you could find blockbusters, cult trash, Hungarian films, surrealist art house, all curated by people who really, really liked film. Video Americain was the place to take a chance on 90 minutes of your life and come away with something that surprised you. Where movie people found each other, romance happened, filmmaking careers began.
Now it is a Smoothie King.
But if that causes despair, be heartened that video store culture lives on at Beyond Video on Howard Street.
1 W Eager Street
Once the Chanticleer which hosted Billie Holliday and Dean Martin, then more recognizably ClubHippo, the famous center of nightlife in the gayborhood for decades. People lined up to get inside 6 days a week. Like video stores, the Internet slowly consumed these bars. Club Hippo closed in 2015.
Now, it is a CVS pharmacy.
1400 E North Avenue
Baltimore’s most Kafkaesque adaptive reuse was once a Sears department store on the Greenmount trolley line. A family place of shopping and dining. The three story display window was once the largest in the world.
Then Sears abandoned the city, abandoned all the cities, for the suburb malls. Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke said it was “disinvestment in the city, pure and simple.” Then the internet killed them anyway.
Now it is the Eastern District Courthouse, aka the Sears Courthouse. The display window was bricked up and skinned in aluminum siding. It looks like a discount star destroyer. You can stand for trial where women once shopped for unmentionables.
Very Josef K.