King by Elijah Rivera

The intersection between capitalism and mass killings is a perplexing one. Visiting Ground Zero in New York, the site of arguably the United States’ greatest tragedy, is a humbling, somber, and contemplative experience. Every emotion one might expect to feel when confronted by a monument to mass death is present at Ground Zero. However, Ground Zero is a monument, not a place of business, and so the people visiting are doing so with a non-materialistic purpose. What happens when a tragedy strikes a place of business? How can an operating grocery store be conducive to any thoughts other than wondering if you have a coupon for that gallon of milk? How does one grieve at King Soopers?

Today, I went to find an answer while also performing my consumerist duty. The King Soopers I was closest to just happened to be the site of a mass killing a little over a year ago, in March of 2021. It took less than a year for them to clean the blood, plug the bullet holes, and reopen the store with a fancy new look. King Soopers is more of a common man’s establishment around these parts, closer to Walmart in purpose. But the renovations at this location were more reminiscent of the Whole Foods side of the grocery spectrum. As I entered the spiffy new building, it was bustling, full of people getting their shopping done, but I didn’t notice any signs of a memorial besides a big “Boulder Strong” banner out front.

I was reminded of the theater that was also the site of a mass shooting in my hometown of Aurora. There was much debate surrounding reopening, closing it down completely, or making it a memorial. So much so that one of the security guards at my high school came around to my friends and me at lunch to ask our opinion. I answered that I’d prefer the theater to reopen; in my irreverent high school senior mind, I thought it would be too much of a hassle to travel to Northfield just to see a movie when this perfectly good theater was a short drive away. My friends all concurred, though with their own varied, but juvenile, reasons. The guard seemed troubled at how little we factored the deaths that occurred there into our reasoning, as if we thought the theater was closing for renovation and he was conducting a marketing survey for local interest in the reopening. Eventually, as is so often the case in this country, capitalism prevailed over sentimentality and reverence for something other than money. The theater reopened with heavy renovations that, to my lower-class Auroran eyes, looked more like a theater meant for the rich folks in Aspen (minus the armed guard).

The thing is, even after what I told the security guard at my high school, I still went to the Northfield theater for all my movie needs, and I didn’t return to the theater in question until a few years had passed. Despite what I said about inconvenience, I still didn’t feel comfortable being in a place where so much death had happened so recently, but I might have been too young to understand that. Then again, maybe they reopened the theater so fast that before I was really ready to decide if I wanted to go back, the choice was presented to me not as an abstract “what if” scenario but as something I could already see other people deciding for themselves. I also wonder if my age was a factor, considering I entered school for the very first time while the Columbine High School Massacre was still fresh in the minds of those not just across the nation, but in Colorado specifically. I’ve always known school lockdowns and mass shooter drills. My fellow students and I were children who would never know an academic experience that wasn’t at risk from a person who wanted to come in and cut our lives short at the barrel of a gun.

This King Soopers gained a similar renovation that, to me, better fit its surroundings in Boulder. It’s as if, for the businesses involved, the shootings were the best thing that could have happened in the long run. They seem to take advantage of our crumbling collective memory. I wonder if in just 100 more years, mass shootings will be as mundane as any other crime in the eyes of the media, and will these businesses even wait for the blood to dry before they make their fancy renovations?

It is surreal to be in a place where so many died for absolutely no reason, yet the surrounding environment does not reflect the tragedy. If I were unfamiliar with what happened at this particular location, I’d have no idea, while walking the endless aisles of processed food, that these same aisles were drenched with the blood of innocents not but a year ago. Save for a lone police officer posted at the entrance, just like the theater back home in Aurora. This lone sentinel, shifting its appearance with each changing of the guard, is as close as we’ll ever get to any statue of commemoration.

I am angry that this keeps happening. I looked around at my fellow shoppers and wondered how they felt, if they felt anything about it at all. I grew angry at them and at myself for not making any gesture of respect to the dead or not being outwardly melancholy. Yet, what are we to do? Kneel and say a prayer every time we want a gallon of milk and some stale clearance donuts? This is a business, for Christ’s sake. I walked through the aisles, running this errand, and the mundane nature boiled this somber frog. I left the slaughterhouse without having seen a drop of blood that wasn’t in the deli section, and I loaded my groceries into the car as if I had been to any other grocery store in town.

I am back from my errand, writing this now to make sure not to let it pass as any other routine day would. I expected to feel so much, to have to prepare myself for something, whatever that thing was. Maybe ghosts or a curse would haunt me forevermore. But I sit here now in my computer chair, and I am not inclined to light a bushel of sage on fire. My salt will stay in its proper place tonight, instead of at the foot of my door. The only thing that really haunts me about my “experience” is how little of an experience it really was.