Last week I was looking for something on Google and ended up stumbling across an old picture of Salmiya which I hadn’t seen before. I started digging around looking for a higher resolution version and turned out I had actually posted the photo on my blog back in 2009 with a bunch of other old photos.
My memory is terrible and I’ve published over 12,000 posts so there is no way I can remember everything. I tried to find a higher resolution version of the photo online but everyone else had taken it off my blog so I couldn’t find one. So I decided to go through my emails to see if the source had originally sent me better quality scans. Turns out he had scanned the images in high res but because they were over 160MB he only sent me low res versions. I decided to randomly reply back to that person’s original email 12 years later asking if he still had the high res images. Turns out he did! He sent me a link to all the photos and I downloaded them and just put them up on Flickr and you can check them out here.
Anyway, I wanted to do a before and after comparison of Salmiya and you can view that in high res here. It’s impressive how many old buildings are still there but sadly they haven’t been maintained and are all in a state of disrepair. The whole neighborhood honestly is disastrously mishandled with no sidewalks or parking spots and loads of large open garbage bins that stink up the neighborhood. My neighborhood has so much potential and it’s sad I can’t do anything about it.
Thanks Khalid!
16 replies on “Salmiya Before and After”
This is truly sad and depressing.. and those three buildings behind Salam Mall are such a decrepit eyesore, the owners should be heavily fined. Does anyone know who owns them?
Mark for Mayor of Salmiya!
I wonder who were living in those 3 buildings back then
I was about to say those three buildings r still intact but rigidly old reflects the era back then
Do people still live there?
yup
The round building was such a unique landmark. I’m not a fan of al Salam mall at all, I believe the only reason people even go in there is to shop at Lulu. The rest is an eyesore and a waste of space. Don’t even go there anymore because the parking area gets so congested, would be useful if they kept that multi-storey parking lot at the back. Must have been built and demolished between the two photos.
all the shops above the ground floor already closed down, the only thing working in the mall is Lulu and the mobile network kiosks.
There’s still the PharmaZone pharmacy and two clothing stores.
Al Salam mall is a disaster. Every time I go to Lulu there i get super frustrated with the parking, curse myself and promise that I will never return. I wish everyone boycotts that place including Lulu to teach such dumb mall designers/ planners a lesson.
The weird thing is there was a multistory parking lot in the back which they demolished before opening the mall 🤷🏼♂️
Thank you for the high res photos
I didn’t realize I was scrolling this far on your blog lol, I’ve been enjoying your posts. When I saw this pic, I felt nostalgic. We used to live in that old house (the first one) ever since I was born and moved out in 2017. Even though those houses look like they’re going to collapse anytime soon, I feel very sentimental when passing by it sometimes.
lol how did you end up here!
I was bored at the office last night and wanted to read interesting stuff about Kuwait and ended up clicking on the next pages of your blog not realizing I was so hooked and reached page 100+
😂😂 that’s amazing. Well if you just want to flip through one category you can. For example https://248am.com/category/50s-90s/