Nationwide furniture shortage hits Sarasota
Every appliance in Debbie Mason s new house is a KitchenAid - except her refrigerator.
Mason moved into her home May 7, with appliances by KitchenAid outfitting her new house in Sarasota s Palmer Ranch neighborhood through her builder. But after she was told she was on her own to get a refrigerator, she visited an appliance store on Bee Ridge Road, where she was told that if she wanted a KitchenAid, she would have to wait. The salesperson said, to tell you the truth, I can get you the same brand, but I have people who ordered it in October and November and they still haven t gotten it. This was January or February, Mason said.
For a mall whose opening day in 1973 was so ceremonious, the DeSoto Square Mall had a quiet death.
On Friday, its last day in business, only four stores were open, and a handful of shoppers walked the halls – honestly, not too different from any other day at the Bradenton shopping center in the 21st century.
My colleague, Jesse Mendoza, who was there for its last day in my absence, found a lot of those same familiar sights – empty hallways, boarded-up storefronts and a handful of shoppers. There wasn’t even a formal announcement about the end of DeSoto Square, just a sign posted at the door that said “MALL CLOSING FRIDAY 4/30/2021.”
How many times in American history has a sitting president of the United States said words of that magnitude? It’s difficult to grasp, even now, 20 years later. And to think, they were said right here, at the airport in Sarasota.
Still, it was essentially a fluke that Sarasota has any connection to 9/11.
That’s because Osama bin Laden wanted to strike America in May, not September. Had that happened, the 20th anniversary of a terrorist attack that left nearly 3,000 people dead would have been commemorated this month instead.
According to the report, bin Laden had grown so anxious that he set the date of May 12 to attack. He stated the planes didn’t even have to hit their intended targets. They could have been flown into the ground instead.