Scruffy Town: Store and Strip Malls

scruffy town: The store had drawn desperate crowds of storm victims who had heard it took credit or debit cards and offered customers 20 cash back a lifeline in an increasingly cashless society, according to The Japan Times. Store employees allowed customers in, one by one, for rationed shopping trips of 15 minutes each. ; Then, at noon, the store closed after its generator croaked and before Jimenez could get inside to buy his grandmother's medicine. He ended up in Fajardo, a scruffy town of strip malls on Puerto Rico's northeastern tip, where a line of 400 waited outside a Walmart. Every day we say, What's the thing that we need the most today ' and then we wait in a line for that, said Jimenez, a 24-year-old medical student from Ponce, on the island's southern coast. For days now, residents have awoken each morning to decide which lifeline they should pursue gasoline at the few open stations, food and bottled water at the few grocery stores with fuel for generators, or scarce cash at the few operating banks or ATMs. By Saturday, 11 days after Hurricane Maria crippled this impoverished U.S. territory, residents scrambled for all the staples of modern society food, water, fuel, medicine, currency in a grinding survival struggle that has gripped Puerto Ricans across social classes. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.