A Trip South of the Border

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. Between school and just being busy with life I didn't really have time to write anything. Now that I'm stuck in quarantine, I think we've got time to post! Today I'm gonna bring you on a quick trip through Mexico. I could post a lot of touristy stuff, but I think you guys are probably more interested in the retail. Don't worry, there's plenty of that. :)

Part of the reason this post took so long to make was that I could not figure out where these first couple photos were from. I snapped these from the airplane as we were making a layover in Atlanta, but I couldn't find any intersection that looked like this on Maps.

Same goes for this shopping center. Even though I don't have any information I thought the photos were still cool enough to be worth sharing.

Pemex/Gulf and 7-Eleven, Cancun, MX
Pemex is Mexico's state-run gas company, which until recently was the only gas station in the country. The company is falling apart fast, and currently has more debt than any other oil company. Likely as a result of this, Mexico started allowing private gas companies to move in. During my visit, I only saw one non-Pemex station, but the number is growing. Even though Pemex is run by the government, the stations themselves are independently franchised. This one, for example, converted to Gulf in 2019. Despite the fuel company being state-owned, the attached convenience stores are all different. This one has a 7-Eleven, which actually looks nicer than any one I've gone to in the US.

La Gas, Cancun, MX
La Gas was one of the first private gas stations to open in Mexico, and I believe was the very first private Mexican company. This location opened in late 2017 on previously undeveloped land.

Oxxo, Chacalal, MX
Oxxo is one of the more prominent convenience store chains here. This location's strange, it is on the bottom floor of an Isuzu dealership.

Super Aki, Puerto Morelos, MX
Super Aki is one of Mexico's larger supermarket chains. This location opened in September 2016, but was remodeled less than a year later, getting rid of the pinstripes and replacing it with something that reminds me of a modern Wendy's. Puerto Morelos is an interesting town, literally half of it was built just within the past 15 years and construction isn't slowing down yet.

Super Chedraui, Puerto Morelos, MX
Just going by the number of stores I saw, I think Super Chedraui is the second largest supermarket chain in the region after Mega (which we'll be seeing in-depth shortly). This store was built in 2015.

Home Depot, Playa Del Carmen, MX
This was one of many US chains I was surprised to see operating here. Home Depot opened this location in late 2014. It's practically the exact same store design they use here too.

Mega, Playa Del Carmen, MX
Mega is one of Mexico's more prominent Hypermarkets. Up until recently, they were owned by supermarket chain Comercial Mexicana, which was bought by competitor Soriana in 2016. The Comercial Mexicana stores were rebranded over the course of the next couple years, though the Mega name was retained. Despite that, the have since replaced CM's pelican logo with their own. About 50 smaller format stores under the names La Comer, Freska, and City Market were retained by the original owner and still use the pelican logo, which is probably why Mega had to change theirs.

I believe this location was built in the early 2000's or possibly late 90's. The store has a parking lot as well as a few smaller stores under it.

In what I guess you'd call the vestibule, four little stores are tucked away. This hallway is what you enter into from the under-store parking lot and leads you to the escalators. I was surprised to see GNC was one of them, Spanish tagline and all.

Special cart-friendly escalators here. Fancy!

Quite a few of these photos came out badly. Sorry about that. The pharmacy signage here was the only bilingual signage in the store, either due to the need for tourists to be able to find it or because the decals behind it don't exactly show what they sell here.

Most of the stuff in the front of the store was targeted toward tourists. There was certainly no shortage of sunblock.

While Mega is primarily a grocery store, they have a little bit of everything. Some of it's more surprising than others, as you'll see a couple photos from now.

Produce department. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on their decor, but this store seems to have been recently remodeled and I got the impression the ceiling treatments were left over from the original, or at least previous, decor.

Frutas y Verduras, with some handy graphics behind the signage to serve any tourists that didn't pass Spanish 1. Or just because they look nice. More likely the latter.

I remember being impressed by this store's bakery selection. Not only did they have all the normal stuff pictured on the walls, but also an interesting selection of local things.

I thought there had been a crime committed in the wine department, but apparently it's just taped off because stores here can't sell alcohol on Sundays. Oh yeah, now's probably a good time to mention I came here on a Sunday.

Carnes (No, not Kim Carnes, best known for the song Bette Davis Eyes but who I'm linking a different song to because I'm still mourning Kenny Rogers). Unlike the bakery, I don't remember being totally blown away by the quality of the meats here. Actually, sort of the opposite. I think out of caution we only got some processed hard meats. It was a vacation, so we ate out often enough the limited meat supply wouldn't be a problem.

Fish have an impressively large section here.

Dairy, which apparently includes Dos Equis

They had a relatively small appliance and furniture selection here. That circle on the ceiling is giving me some serious Hhgregg vibes.

Furniture spilled out into the food part of the store a little bit. If I'm remembering correctly, food took up the entire back and right walls of the store, plus the right half of the sales floor. Furniture, appliances, and electronics were on the left wall; household goods, clothing, and hardware were all in the left half of the store. The front wall had checkouts, escalators, and a couple service departments.

Furniture in the foreground, appliances in the middle, and electronics in back.

AutoZone, Playa Del Carmen
Another US chain I was surprised to see here, also using the same design as their stateside counterparts. This location was built around 2010.

Boxito, Playa Del Carmen
Boxito is a Mexican hardware store chain which follows more of an IKEA-style layout. Products (mainly fixtures and finished) are displayed in a showroom and can be picked up in the warehouse part of the store. The warehouse part also has the heavier construction materials like lumber and pipes.

Tulum, MX
Tulum was an ancient Mayan city founded around 500 AD and last inhabited in the 1500's. It's now one of the more famous tourist attractions around here.

Honestly I don't have too much to say about this stuff. But it's old and it's neat to look at.

There were iguanas everywhere here. I guess this is their natural habitat but I was not expecting to see this many of them hanging around.

The tour guide probably told us what this was but it's been a couple years and I've forgotten. Those are either remnants of foundations or property borders in the ground.

A neat old doorway that's stayed surprisingly intact.

Coming here, I knew there was a beach attached but I didn't realize it was open to the public or that it was this nice, so I didn't bring a bathing suit or towel. I dipped my feet in the water but didn't hang around too much because the long bus ride back to the resort didn't sound all that appealing in wet, sandy khaki shorts.

Some of the larger ruins. I don't know how much restoration work they've done on this but I'd reckon when these ruins were rediscovered they weren't in as stable shape as they are now.

I wanna say this was the village temple.

If you'll recall in my last post where I dumped all my cell phone pics from this trip, outside the ruins there was this dead-ish mall. We'll be taking better look at that today.

The interior storefronts had all been taken over by local craftspeople, or at least somebody who sells their work. That's enough stuff I think it has to be a few different people making the merchandise.

Sunstop Pharmacy was one of the few storefronts left from the original mall. I think it was still open as a pharmacy, but it too was overrun with tourist merchandise.

Looking down the mall hallway toward where the Mexican Outlet swallowed up part of the mall. They cut off the hallway where they drywall partition is, and took the blocked-off storefronts as well.

Subway blocked off their mall entrance sometime prior to their logo change, which is a good indicator for what year the mall started going downhill.

Another look down the hallway. This was about all there was to see in the main part of the mall.

I forget what split this part of the mall off from the other, but there was another store that wedged its way in between the hallway we were just in and this one. Unlike Mexican Outlet, they didn't even bother to paint their drywall. This part of the mall had absolutely nothing left in it, and was being used as storage for the stores that opened to the outside.

Here's the entrance to the dead hallway. They really did nothing to keep people out of here.

This is inside the Mexican Outlet store in what was formerly one of the inline mall store spaces. Despite all the effort they put into remodeling this place to make it look uniform, they didn't bother to remove the recessed lights left by whoever was in this space last. Another giveaway that this wasn't always part of the store was that it has a different ceiling height than the rest of the store.

Sam's Club, Playa Del Carmen
More bad pictures coming up. Sorry again. Normally I'd cut photos like these but I doubt I'll be back to get better photos of these stores in the future. I knew Walmart had a significant presence down here, but nonetheless I was surprised to see they had Sam's as well. This Sam's Club opened in the early 2000's and was remodeled and given a logo update in 2013.

Chedarui, Playa Del Carmen
This location most likely opened in the mid/late 90's. They remodeled in 2016 and got a new sign that's about 5 times the size of their original one.

Office Depot, Playa Del Carmen
Playa is lucky enough to have both Office Depot and OfficeMax. This one has been here longer, having been opened in the early 2000's. With most big-box chain stores here, even if they have the same general design as their US counterparts, they're built with different materials. This one was actually built with the same textured cinderblock they use on their stores here. Despite that, it still has a roof more common of Mexican stores-pitched and full of narrow plastic strip skylights.

Extra/Circle K, Playa Del Carmen
This was built as a freestanding Extra convenience store, which was bought by Circle K in 2017. Extra had a large presence in the area, so Playa is now home to several Circle K stores. What's interesting is that none of these were attached to gas stations; these are the only non-gas Circle K locations I know of.

Burger King, Playa Del Carmen
This Burger King opened in the mid-2000's and as of the 2019 Streetview has so far avoided being remodeled. One thing I've noticed here is that every fast food restaurant has an indoor Playplace, even the ones that don't usually in the States like KFC.

Extra/Circle K, Playa Del Carmen
Here's another former Extra that was sold to Circle K. Like the other Extras, it doesn't have gas either.

OfficeMax, Playa Del Carmen
This OfficeMax opened with the center in 2013, and then relocated to a newly-built freestanding location in February of this year. I was surprised at first that they would replace a store this new, but thinking about it I'm coming to the realization that it's 7 years old already. I don't feel comfortable with that fact.

Vidanta Riviera Maya, Cancun, MX
I wandered around the resort one night and snapped a few photos. I don't think this room had any real purpose aside from decoration. The pathway just passed through it.

Outside on the path, they had these hanging light balls which looked cool at night.

The path also made its way up onto a bridge that wound through small patches of jungle left throughout the resort, which I really liked. There were lots of iguanas here, too.

Playa Souvenirs, Playa del Carmen
This was originally built in 2012 as Plaza del Fiesta Mexican Outlet and had a more traditional Mexican design (lots of arches, faux stucco, wrought iron lights, etc). In early 2017, they renamed/remodeled/expanded into the former shoe store next door and gave the place a sleek, modern redesign. The new look is nice but I prefer the old.

Haagen-Dazs, Playa del Carmen
I only recently learned that this was an American company, for the longest time I was sure they were European. This location opened in the 2000's and was given a remodel around 2010.

Hurley, Playa del Carmen
Hurley is a brand I had known about for a while, but this was the first time I'd ever seen a Hurley-branded store. This location opened in 2016.

Starbucks, Playa del Carmen
You would think in the part of the world where most of the coffee is grown there would be more options than Starbucks. That is not the case here, they're just as common in Mexico, or at least this part of it, as they are in the US.

Sunglass Hut, Playa del Carmen
This location opened in 2016. Despite being a streetfront store, they gave it the same facade they usually put inside malls.

Señor Frog's/7-Eleven, Playa del Carmen
Señor Frog's opened here in 2009. They're a Mexican-based bar chain with locations in several different vacation spots. It sounds like a wild time. As their CEO described it, "You go to Señor Frog’s when you're on vacation, if you want to get crazy and nobody knows you." I'm a little confused about what happened with this location. Their website isn't that helpful and it hasn't been updated on Maps, but it sounds like they moved to the former Guy Fieri's down the street sometime last year, and this location became a 7-Eleven. Talk about a downgrade.

Liverpool/Sfera, Playa del Carmen
This opened in the 2000's as a Duty-Free outlet of Liverpool, Mexico's largest department store chain. Whatever loophole they used to get out of charging a sales tax must have closed, as by 2016 it was operating as a normal Liverpool store despite them having a 2014-built full scale department store in town already. It closed in 2018, and was replaced by Sfera, which from what I understand is the Mexican arm of Spanish department store El Corte Ingles.

Quinta Alegria Mall, Playa del Carmen
This mall was built in 2012. While it doesn't have a traditional department store anchor, it features most of your basic inline store tenants. I'm not sure if or how bankruptcy affected Forever 21's international stores, but it would seem this one is still in operation.

Forever 21, Nike, Victoria's Secret. Yup, this is a mall.

I feel like i'm saying this about everything but I was surprised to see an American Eagle here. I tried to get some interior mall pics but none of them came out. It was kinda dark inside.

Pemex
This seemed like it would be an easy one to track down based on the sign painted behind it, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to. Aceros Medina closed this location back in 2009, so searching for it didn't help much. This station opened in 2015.

Pemex, Playa del Carmen
This one, on the other hand, I could find easily. Nothing too exciting to report though.

Sears Billboard, Playa del Carmen
Unlike in the US, Sears is actually still a very strong brand in Mexico. I believe Lampert only has a 10% stake in the Mexican company, so in the inevitable event that the main Sears chain goes under this will not be impacted too severely. Also of note is that they still use the 80's logo and the company color is red instead of blue.

Exteria Furniture, Playa del Carmen
This was a short-lived furniture store. It opened in 2009, closed in 2014, and has been essentially destroyed by vandals in the fairly short time it's been vacant.

Oxxo, Playa del Carmen
This location opened in 2008, carving out a portion of the attached service center. I's strange seeing how many non-gas convenience stores they have here.

Pemex, Playa del Carmen
This Pemex opened in the mid-2000's. I thought the 2-story attendant's office was interesting.

7-Eleven, Playa del Carmen
This 7-Eleven shares a parking lot with the Pemex in the previous photo, but I don't think these two are affiliated. It was remodeled to its current look in 2016.

Telebodega, Playa del Carmen
This is a local appliance and furniture store chain. Their website doesn't work but Maps lists four locations.

Pemex, Playa del Carmen
Another 2-story gas station, although this is part of a larger shopping center and aside from the pumps, the gas station only has the end space on the first floor.

Santander, Playa del Carmen
I wasn't totally shocked to see Santander here considering they are an international company, but it struck me as kind of odd to see them down here when their US presence is limited to the Northeast and Florida from when they bought out Sovereign a few years ago. This location opened in 2010 and has since received the new logo. They've been sort of slow rolling it out, it's been around more than a year now and so far the Wayne, PA location is the only other I've seen it on.

Liverpool, Playa del Carmen
This location opened in 2014, making it the newest full-scale non-replacement department store I have seen in years. Overall, department stores and malls in general seem far healthier down here than in the US.

Puenta Venano Men's Club, Chacalal, MX
There were a few abandoned men's clubs along this stretch of road, all in various stages of decay. This one was closed by 2012, but the property was being used as a storage yard for the garden center next door for a few years before they vacated the property as well. As of the latest streetview, the property has become so overgrown you wouldn't even know a building was still back there.

Oxxo, Tulum, MX
This was another Oxxo store without gas. It was built in 2010 on the site of a woodworking store and a taco stand.

Super San Francisco de Asis/Super Aki, Tulum, MX
Going based off the name and logo, I thought this was a church at first. Turns out it's actually a supermarket, presumably run by a very religious person, or quite possibly Franciscans. It was bought by Super Aki and heavily remodeled in 2018.

Chichen Itza, MX
I believe these are the most famous ruins in the Western hemisphere, although I learned on the tour that these are not really ruins anymore. The exterior of the pyramids were for the most part rebuilt when this was turned into a park. The stone which they were originally clad in had broken down over the years, leaving behind an overgrown mound of pyramid-shaped dirt. After they were rediscovered, historians restored them to look like they would have originally.

Some parts of the original stone survived; I believe all the carved pieces on this building are old.

Same with the stairs on the right here, the left half was rebuilt though. If I remember correctly, the restoration was done in the 1920's.

The restoration didn't rebuild everything though, the upper part of whatever these pillars held up has been lost to the years and rather than rebuild something historically inaccurate, they left it as it was.

Oxxo, Valladolid, MX
This Oxxo opened in 2012. It shares a small parking lot with general Tire (which had been there for years before), so I'm assuming this is a franchise owned by them.

Automaya Chrysler, Valladolid, MX
This dealership's been around for a few years now; it has since been remodeled. They didn't do anything too drastic, just painted it gray and put up new signage.

Valladolid, MX
Valladolid is an interesting city, it was first settled in the 1540's. Most of the buildings in the city's downtown area date back to that time period. I had a feeling these buildings were old but I was kinda shocked to learn they were almost 500.

San Servacio Cathedral, Valladolid
This church was built in 1706, replacing a 1545-built structure that was destroyed the previous year. While it's not the oldest church in town (another 1540's one stands elsewhere), its central location has made it one of the more heavily photographed buildings in the city.

Old colonial-era building facing the main square. I remember hearing one of the building here was originally the governor's palace, I think this might have been it. It sits diagonal from the city hall.

Looking down one of the historic streets, complete with a classic Beetle.

Cenote Zaci, Valladolid, MX
This looks like it belongs in the middle of the wilderness, but believe it or not this is a park only a couple blocks away from the center or town! It's named after Zaci, the Mayan settlement that used to stand where Valladolid is currently.

Hotel San Clemente, Valladolid

From the looks of it, this appears to actually be a newer building built in the Spanish colonial style. It's definitely one of the area's more upscale hotels.

"Sure I'll take a Corona, hold the virus."
There. I did it. I made the obligatory joke. Let's move on.

Shopping Center, Atlanta, GA
Some more aerial shopping centers I couldn't identify. I'm positive that's where the layover was so I've got no clue why these are so hard to find. I've reached out for some local help identifying these and will update the post as information comes forward.

Forest Square, Forest Park, GA
I'm positive this place had a department store anchor at one point, but the center seems to have fallen on harder times. Currently the anchor space is split between Wholesale Food Outlet and a Rose's Express. Thanks to Pat from Raw & Real Retail for helping me find this center and the next one!

Clayton Plaza, Forest Park, GA
I can now say I have a Piggly Wiggly photographed (albeit from a distance) on this site! This center was built in the 50's, and while the exterior has been updated somewhat over the years, many of the center's stores haven't been updated much. Piggly Wiggly still has its original painted tin ceiling.

Echelon Mall/Voorhees Town Center, Voorhees, NJ
Unlike Atlanta's shopping centers, the stuff closer to Philly's airport was easy for me to identify. This mall opened in 1970, anchored by Lit Brothers (now Boscov's), Strawbridge's (most recently home to Macy's), and JCPenney. It was expanded in 1998 with a new wing featuring Sears. The mall unfortunately dried up quickly after that, losing Sears in 2001 and Penney's in 2003. When PREIT bought the mall from Rouse, vacancy was about 75%. They began a redevelopment attempt in 2007 which for the most part was a failure. Half the mall was torn down and replaced with a lifestyle center, including the former Penney's and the only 9-year-old Sears wing. The redevelopment still has not been finished, as evidenced by large grass patches where retail space used to be. PREIT sold the still struggling mall to Namdar in 2015, who after letting it die some more handed it off to Brandywine Financial (not to be confused with office developer Brandywine Realty) in 2018. Official plans for the mall have yet to be released, but it sounds like Brandywine has a solid re-redevelopment plan.

Eagle Plaza, Voorhees, NJ
This center was originally built in the 70's, anchored by ACME on the far end and an anchor I couldn't find any information on at the other end. In 1998, ACME built a new store on the near end of the center; their old location became an Office Depot but is currently vacant. The unknown original anchor is now home to Ross. A new facade was put on the center last year.

Penn Fruit/ACME, Audubon, NJ
Gotta finish off the post with one of my favorite ACME's. I try to get a picture of it every time I fly. ACME took over several Penn Fruits when the chain went under in the late 70's, but over the years has closed or relocated all but this one. It's always one of the first to get remodeled when they come out with a new decor, indicating it's a successful store and won't be going anywhere soon. I'm just hoping they aren't planning on moving.

To make up for not posting for the past month or two (and to give you enough to listen to for this long post), I'm gonna leave you with 2 songs.

And this since this post was originally supposed to go up in December: