>>713437447I grew up in a small industrial town and now that a huge factory and a polytechnic school have been closed, that home town dies a little more every year. Population has dropped over 25% over the years, it's mostly 18-40-year-old people who have left. There's not even much crime or vandalism, things just...stop in time.
There's a bar that has been closed for over 20 years now, I used to go there with my friends and it was often so full you could barely fit in. This is a weird one because there's no message saying it's closed, they left the sign and still have the opening hours on the door which also looks pristine because of some cover material. There's faded stickers on the outer walls...band logos from 20 years ago, put there by people who haven't lived there for decades. It's like this with a lot of things. Many shops are well maintained but vacant, have been for years. You see time stop in these as well, sometimes it's ads from before 2015, sometimes it's contact info for a person who has retired 5-10 years ago, sometimes it's a sign for a obsolete service.
Back in early 2000 I was in lower secondary school and we had a work practice program - I went to the local library to sort out their storage rooms and in their dusty storage, they had body building magazines from the early 80s, it was funny as hell with all the vibrant colors, clothing and hair styles and (at that point new) products and advertisement. Relatively the same amount of time has passed but it's not funny at all now. When I'm back in my home town, I sometimes feel like I'm watching a ghost or a corpse of the time I lived there over 20 years ago. There's just too many places intact, not demolished, vandalised or anything but just silent, empty and stopped in early 2000s or 2010s. I'm now looking at my memories like I looked at those magazines in that dusty storage room in the library, seeing a piece of a more lively era now forgotten.