Yesterday, I was strolling about, when I came upon this beleaguered Rite Aid on Post Avenue. You’ll recall back in August 2023, I paid homage to a Rite Aid on Merrick Blvd in South Jamaica during its final hours of operation:
Rite Aid was once a formidable competitor to Walgreens and CVS, especially in the Northeast. Walgreens attempted to buy the chain outright back in 2017, but the FTC wouldn’t approve it. Instead, they were allowed to acquire & rebrand about half of the existing stores. Rite Aid hasn’t been the same ever since, and now Walgreens is also struggling, having been sold to a private equity group. (So its days are also numbered.)
This Rite Aid is currently involved in some form of astrophysical evolution, perhaps in an attempt to stay in business. You’ll notice that it exists in TWO different points in space-time. This unusual phenomenon is the result of gravitational lensing, where the immense gravity of a foreground drugstore bends and magnifies the light from the supernova behind it.
It similarly appears to be caught in a wormhole, either going back to a time before it first opened (before the shelves were ever stocked) or to its final day in operation, at some unknown point in the future. It is impossible to say which, but I wish it Godspeed on its cosmic voyage.
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