Let's Loiter at Oak Park Plaza!!!
When I was still planning on writing the big "Crapids" issue of Wasted Quarter, (working title: "A Steaming Pile of Crapids!" ) one of the feature stories planned was... Which isn't even in Coon Rapids... But it's close! My initial pool of Oak Park Plaza related images consisted of just a few photos taken in 2006. Nowhere near enough to tell the story of this falling apart shopping center... So I returned in 2011 (and again in 2015) to photograph it more extensively. The main draw for me was the LOOOOONG abandoned Jubilee Foods grocery store. My only visit to Jubilee as a functioning business, came in January, 1996. Crazy Carl and I decided that we should go grocery shopping. It was the only time we made such a plan, and proved to be pointless because we didn't eat most of the stuff we bought. It went bad and we never went grocery shopping again as long as we lived together... Jubilee had been a grocery store of multiple name