In 1886, Richard Sears began selling watches in Minneapolis. And things went pretty well for the next 109 years, when a dude named Jeff Bezos sold a book from his garage. From the NYT: Sears, the Original Everything Store, Files for Bankruptcy. To paraphrase an Arcade Fire lyric, being everything isn’t enough anymore. We want everything now.

+ “Behind the darkened windows, there’s a deeper story about money and land, with implications for the future of cities and the rest of the United States.” Derek Thompson: How Manhattan Became a Rich Ghost Town.