photo: Alvin Jornada/Press Democrat 2013

This is a picture from 2013 of workmen moving the Coddingtown Shopping Center sign, off of Hwy 101 in Santa Rosa, for repair work. Today the sign is up and spinning again, however, other than the Whole Foods anchor store at the far west end of the property, the mall is a ghost town. Even during the holiday season there are very few shoppers, and a number of store fronts are boarded up. I remember when I first moved to Santa Rosa in 1981, Coddingtown was always swarming with people. Things change. Recently, my brother was telling me how much he disliked Amazon for several reasons, one of which was that Amazon was destroying brick and mortar businesses. But I reminded him of when we used to get milk delivered to our home. Things really are always changing, and probably a hundred years from now, people will be reminiscing about "the good old days" when we used to get Amazon packages delivered right to our porch!

Take a look below at the real OLD good old days: Canaletto's Venice circa 1730. It's an oversized picture postcard of the original shopping mall!