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jonrev.com
the jonrev projects
@jonrev.com
780 followers 120 following 2.1K posts
Observer of obsolescence.
Photographer & printmaker on Lake Wazzapamani. 🖕🇦👁️
Musings about retail/design/esoteric history/things on wheels/whatever...

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jonrev.com
the jonrev projects @jonrev.com · Sep 12
📍 the jonrev projects encompass 20+ years of exploring, digitally preserving and infodumping about dead malls, commercial architecture, abandoned buildings and other such places of memories.

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blog ➡️ jonrev.com
prints ➡️ ko-fi.com/jonrev/shop
photog ➡️ flickr.com/jonrev
more ➡️ jonrev.com/dir/
Photograph. A gray brick building looms through the windshield of a 1980s Pontiac Fiero at blue hour. Signage on the building reads "Carson Pirie Scott" - a defunct department store. North Riverside Park Mall North Riverside, Illinois Photograph. An empty bilevel shopping mall. A large, vacant food court is seen on the lower level. Stratford Square Bloomingdale, Illinois Photograph. An abandoned bilevel shopping mall reflecting 1970s contemporary tastes, featuring brutalist ceilings, wood and smoked glass accents, conversation pit seating flanked by (overgrown) gardens, and a large public art sculpture. Lakeside Mall Sterling Heights, Michigan Photograph. An abandoned Sears department store at twilight, the labelscar of the SEARS letters is visible on five concrete columns separated from a brick building, behind. Sears, Salem Mall Trotwood, Ohio
Reposted by the jonrev projects
dmercer.bsky.social
Google links with artist Sanford Biggers to create a major outdoor sculpture for Loop headquarters www.wbez.org/architecture...
Google links with artist Sanford Biggers to create a major outdoor sculpture for Loop headquarters
The 30-foot tall sculpture called Vector was inspired by 19th century quilt patterns and replaces the famous, or infamous, Dubuffet piece that adorned the building's plaza when it was the James R. Tho...
www.wbez.org
September 16, 2026 at 3:34 PM
jonrev.com
Fiero caravan through Joliet, this morning. Part of Fierorama weekend; there's a show in St. Charles, tomorrow
September 12, 2026 at 5:25 PM
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junkyardcrawler.bsky.social
I TIRE OF THE CODES. ENOUGH CODES. 75% OF MY TEXTS ARE ONE TIME CODES FROM EIGHTEEN DIFFERENT COMPANIES. JUST LET ME USE MY PASSWORD. FOR MY ACCOUNT. THAT I SET.
September 11, 2026 at 12:46 AM
jonrev.com
Hi I revived @sfgamzone.com to separate tism's/shitpost about roller coasters again
Photograph. jonrev's Pontiac Fiero at Michigan's Adventure amusement park. Shivering Timbers roller coaster and other contemporary vehicles in the background.
September 9, 2026 at 3:15 AM
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jonrev.com
Tears for Sears

Golf Mill Shopping Center - Niles, Illinois (2023)
#deadmalls #sears #abandoned #polaroid #polaroid600 #photography
Polaroid photograph of an abandoned Sears department store at night, the sign has been removed but old unpainted brick still leaves a strong "SEARS" labelscar on the facade Polaroid photograph shows the silhouette of a stray shopping cart under the lights of an abandoned Sears store entrance at night
March 28, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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ladytophamcatt.bsky.social
AI strikes again, preventing humans from accessing these important resources
tracyseneca.bsky.social Tracy Seneca @tracyseneca.bsky.social · 21d
Until last year, the UIC Digital Collections had an average of around 250,000 requests per month. In November 2025, that went up to 62,168,279 requests. We've been trying various strategies to protect the site from AI bots but it takes constant adjustment.

www.glamelab.org/products/are...
tracyseneca.bsky.social Tracy Seneca @tracyseneca.bsky.social · 21d
Unfortunately, the UIC Library Digital Collections platform is still having issues. We're still working with our vendor to resolve the problem. This issue is usually owing to the site being aggressively scraped for content by AI bots.
August 27, 2026 at 5:39 PM
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derfcurrie.bsky.social
Ok with all these deaths of people I loved watching growing up in the 80s I need this week to be over so I can go watch Batman in 70mm at @musicboxtheatre.bsky.social and feel like a 10 year old again with my matchbox Batmobile which I'll have with me.
August 27, 2026 at 6:57 PM
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blockclubchi.bsky.social
The Ford City Mall redevelopment is moving forward after city commission approval. blockclubchi.co/4xdDqr9
August 22, 2026 at 3:00 AM
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niedermeyer.online
I love it when a city adopts an otherwise-unloved car
August 20, 2026 at 1:59 PM
jonrev.com
Motocompacto vs. Prairie Trail/McHenry residential streets... least I found where my phone jumped out of my pocket
August 20, 2026 at 6:30 PM
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komaniecki.bsky.social
How do I explain to small business owners that the menu on the left is one billion times more appealing than the one on the right
August 19, 2026 at 3:12 PM
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ladytophamcatt.bsky.social
The cute sea creatures on the lower levels of the Fisher Building I'm familiar with. The monstrous terra cotta hordes swarming down from on high were a new & terrifying sight.

Architects: DH Burnham & Co (with Charles B Atwood as lead), 1896
Addition: Peter J Weber, 1907
Color photo of a small portion of the truly bonkers upper facade of the Fisher Building. Photo focuses on a section of lovely arched windows clad in an orangey-brown terra cotta. Spandrels of the arches are overflowing with shields and foliate designs, and the curves of the arches themselves are replete with gargoyles/grotesques. Some appear to be in the process of stealthily crawling down the facade as if stalking prey, and some are placed if about to pounce on the unwary below. The comparatively less ornate spandrels are encrusted with mesmerizing S-curve tracery. Color photo of part of the ridiculously ornate terra cotta facade of the Fisher Building. We've got extremely detailed foliated cresting, quatrefoils, trefoils, fleurs-de-lis, arches galore and gigantic, threatening birds posted up in odd places. Color detail showing the very corner of the upper reaches of the Fisher Building. Here we have a geometrically complex frieze of arches, each stuffed with trefoils that are in turn crammed full of some sort of foliate design. Arch spandrels are decorated with another floral design. A floral band above this has huge and terrifying duck-like faces that gape at you at regular intervals from their perches above tripartite clusters of colonnettes. One last look at some of the exquisitely rendered terra cotta nightmare fuel making its way down the facade of the building.
August 19, 2026 at 2:49 PM
jonrev.com
Finally got a break in the rain for its last work commute ever...
Photograph. jonrev's white Pontiac Fiero Formula reflected in a puddle, a bright orange Mustang out of frame, left
August 19, 2026 at 4:15 PM
jonrev.com
Self-snitching urban explorers aren't clowned on nearly enough for complicating things for the rest of us
YouTuber arrested, accused of posting 'urban exploration' of abandoned Esplanade Mall in Kenner
The arrest came just two days before a Belle Chasse teen fell to his death while exploring Plaza Tower. "It's unfortunate that this happened," Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley said Sunday. "Our bigg...
www.nola.com
August 19, 2026 at 2:51 PM
jonrev.com
Hey, we have decades worth of satellite imagery that I'm pretty sure is paid for by our taxes -- why is this data watermarked to death, hidden behind adblocker-blockers and more rage-inducing to browse than navigating a car dealership's website?
August 19, 2026 at 3:03 AM
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cmgiulini.bsky.social
101 years. It's been 101 years since the opening of the Uptown Theatre. Closed for four decades, why does it still fascinate us today? What are its allures and mysteries? Why hasn't it been restored? We try to answer all those questions, at the link.
arcchicago.blogspot.com/2026/08/aura...
August 18, 2026 at 8:46 PM
jonrev.com
The film photography content-creator-industrial-complex has discovered Polaroid Big Shots and Fuji FP-100C and I feel a sudden need to move the contents of my film fridge to a bank vault.
August 18, 2026 at 6:29 AM
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posts-cards.bsky.social
impressive tag on the casino but pretty embarrassing that it’s come to that
concrete and glass tower with the elevator core exposed and a three story graffiti tag running down from the roof
August 17, 2026 at 4:20 PM
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kavehtaherian.bsky.social
Hell yeah I’m into AI

Arresting
Individuals who steal from artists
July 31, 2026 at 6:25 AM
jonrev.com
Anatomically incorrect Pontiac Fiero
Photograph. A remote control Pontiac Fiero toy car made by New Bright and sold at Wal-Mart sometime in the 1980s, new in original packaging, at a local antique mall. A large supercharger blower extends from the hood of the car; on the real Fiero the spare tire is under the hood, the engine is over the rear wheels.
August 17, 2026 at 3:38 AM
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sorenspicknall.bsky.social
Somebody who has the keys to the social media pages of a couple neighborhood history organizations keeps taking perfectly usable or legible images and "cleaning them up" with GenAI, thereby making the details misleading or incorrect or even downright incomprehensible.

Two recent before-afters:
In a news magazine clipping, we see an illustrated layout of a two-story rowhouse. It has a living room in the front on the first floor, and a kitchen in the back. The upper floor has a large bedroom in the front and two smaller bedrooms in the back, with a small bathroom between them. An AI "cleaned" version of the image shows several changes to the original illustration. A curved wall just inside the entryway is shown as an interior window instead, a label for a window bay that previously said "bay" now says "bath" with the implication that a bathtub would be directly inside the home's main floor front windows, the stairs between the two levels have direction arrows that don't make sense, and the upstairs bathroom, previously labeled "WC" for water closet, is now labeled the nonsensical acronym "RC". A bunch of different windows have been added to the sides of the layout, where the rowhouse's walls meet the neighboring dwellings in the original illustration. A political cartoon titled "What the gold bugs are doing for Uncle Sam", drawn by Watson Heston. In it, bankers drawn as antisemitic caricatures approach an auction block tended to by politicians labeled Grover, Carlisle, and Sherman. The bankers carry sacks that are labeled "British gold" with British pound signs on them. Grover is a fat auctioneer, and Sherman is shown as the devil with a forked tail reading a Bill of Sale for U.S. Gold Bonds alongside Carlisle. On the auction block stands Uncle Sam, tied to a post labeled "gold standard" and wrapped in ropes labeled "US gold bonds". A sign around his neck reads "to be sold into perpetual slavery for gold!" In an AI-retouched version of the political cartoon, the leftmost banker's antisemitic caricature nose has transformed into a second face, the bankers' bags now read "Bryan's gold bugs" instead of "British gold bonds", and the second banker is wearing a label on his leg that says "Bryan". The auctioneer previously labeled as Grover is now labeled Sherman, and the other two politicians have lost their labels entirely. The document they're holding now reads "Bill of Sale of gold bugs", their hands are twisted into strange forms, and the unlabeled politician previously labeled as Sherman is no longer depicted as the Devil, his tail having turned into the edge of a poorly defined platform upon which the auction block stands. A paddle-like object hangs from his hand with text on it that reads "13 to 1". The post that Uncle Sam is bound to still sort of says "Gold Standard", though the text in the second word is a little garbled. But the rope he's tied with now has many more words, including "monopoly, Republican platform, and Uncle Sam". The auction sign around his neck now reads "to be ssld to to perpetual slavery for gold!"
August 17, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by the jonrev projects
blockclubchi.bsky.social
A plan to replace Ford City Mall with an industrial warehouse and public plaza is moving forward. blockclubchi.co/45Zb0VJ
August 14, 2026 at 7:01 PM
jonrev.com
Permits filed to demolish the 90s-vintage Concord Mall in Wilmington, Delaware -- home to the infamous "hidden Burger King" -- as Namdar Realty crashes and burns another to the ground.

Views from barely a year ago. #deadmalls

www.wdel.com/news/partial...
Photograph. A dry water feature in an enclosed shopping mall, surrounded by lush greenery and a clock tower structure. Retail storefronts in the background. Skylight overhead allows sunlight to pour in. Photograph. A blue steel and brass raised planter reaches toward a bright glass skylight. Reflection of the photographer standing on a mall concourse in the brass. Photograph. A series of lush planters at the end of an enclosed shopping mall -- stores line either side, many of them vacant. Skylight overhead. Terrazzo and tile flooring on the ground. Photograph. Concourse of an enclosed shopping mall with retail stores lining either side. Lush planters with thick tropical vegetation grows in raised planters along the concourse. A closed Sears department store anchors the far end.
August 14, 2026 at 2:04 PM
jonrev.com
This is going to be like the Matteson/former Lincoln Mall Carson Pirie Scott that abruptly closed because the roof collapsed.
retailpocalypse.bsky.social Retailpocalypse @retailpocalypse.bsky.social · Aug 12
JCPenney at The Mall at Tuttle Crossing has been plagued with roof leaks since a hail storm back in the Spring.

The storms yesterday have made an existing problem worse. Even areas that aren't tarped are leaking like a sieve. These employees don't get paid enough to deal with these conditions.
Caution tape blocks off tarped sections of the ceiling as buckets collect water dripping from a leaking roof of a department store. Caution tape blocks off tarped sections of the ceiling as buckets collect water dripping from a leaking roof of a department store. Water drips down for tarped sections of the ceiling as buckets collect water dripping from a leaking roof of a department store. Caution tape blocks off tarped sections of the ceiling as buckets collect water dripping from a leaking roof of a department store.
August 12, 2026 at 10:13 PM