Decline of Mall Civilization by Michael Galinsky

[phart010 | 1,707]

On 12/29/2019 at 8:57 PM, Mario_Friend1982 said:

What do malls have to do with video games?

Back in the days before Gamestop existed, your parents would shop at the mall department stores and you and your siblings would split and run over to the video game section. Then you’d hang out until your parents came looking for you and then refuse to leave unless they buy you a new game.

Then you and the fam would walk together through the mall area. To finish off the day you all would stop at the food court and while your parents were ordering food you’d gravitate over to the arcade and spend all of your birthday money.

[JamesRobot | 5,798]

For an evening or a week, there's no place like the mall. Food, fun and fashion, the mall has it all.

[Galdius | 1,511]

For those of you who miss malls, you would love here in Brazil.
We have a lot of malls (specially in Sao Paulo) and they are all thriving.

We don't have many big brick and mortar stores but we sure have lots of malls from ones that have cheap stores to high end ones with stores like Cartier, Prada, Louis Vitton and almost every mall has a movie theater.

The violence here made people visit malls frequently and nobody sees them dying anytime soon.

[Teh_Lurv | 254]

My childhood mall died an early death. It was a small mall and stores were starting to abandon it by the mid-90s due to competition from mega-malls. Once the mall lost it's only anchor when Caldor filed for bankruptcy and closed down, the mall was shuttered and demolished. I've tried Google searches to find any old pictures of the mall, but I haven't found anything. It's a shame because I remember the mall had a lovely dated design: The exterior was mocked up to look like castle walls while the interior walls were wood-grain with mural artwork of jousting, etc.

Once the mall was demolished, a modern "U-shaped" designed strip mall was built in it's place in the early-2000s and filled with middle-class chain stores. Not nearly as awesome as a castle mall. History is repeating itself and that new mall is slowly beginning to die as an even larger and fancier modern strip mall was built a town over. Half the store lots are now empty and there are signs cash isn't flowing into the place like it used to.

 

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

Our mall was built back in the early to mid 70s and thrived through the 80s and 90s, and even the early 00's, when I worked there for a few years.  The beginning of the downfall for ours was really mall management (the mall's owners, really) being totally unreasonable about little things that they technically didn't have a say in (the pizza place I worked at wanted to put in a TV, the mall wanted half as much as our rent to place a dish on the roof, so we attached it to the top of our rooftop AC unit...then the mall manager himself went up there, tore it down, then held it hostage in his office until our chain's lawyers contacted him) and then keeping rent high and spiking it further as more and more stores found it easier to pay for construction of new space elsewhere versus staying in a mall that had been long since paid for decades before.

The real final nails in the coffin were when Belk, the first of three anchors, decided to close up shop and move to the new shopping plaza being built without much notice (something like 2-3 months from "Hey, we're leaving" to cobwebs in the windows), then both JC Penny and Sears started succumbing to their own financial woes, ultimately leaving the place with no anchors.  It had already been around half empty at that point anyway, but Belk leaving plus the other two anchors' longer term statements about closing their doors made most everyone else move out in a hurry.  Just before they closed permanently, I think the last tenants were the bridal/tux rental shop, the local Bath & Body Works, KSS (a local/regional school supply retailer), and a local indoor playground/inflatable bounce place.  The only one left when they officially closed the doors was KSS.

At present, a CBD oil production facility moved into the area where JC Penny used to be and the city and a developer are trying to turn the rest of the facility and surrounding property into a "big time" casino and resort (now bragging that they've talked the Hard Rock Cafe folks into managing the proposed facility--too bad casinos/gambling is illegal in the state!).  This was after the place was auctioned off twice, the first time for something like $35M, which the bidder ended up defaulting on, then something like $2-3M, which thus far has stuck.  Sad days.

[Estil | 1,264]

On 12/30/2019 at 9:38 PM, phart010 said:

Back in the days before Gamestop existed, your parents would shop at the mall department stores and you and your siblings would split and run over to the video game section. Then you’d hang out until your parents came looking for you and then refuse to leave unless they buy you a new game.

Then you and the fam would walk together through the mall area. To finish off the day you all would stop at the food court and while your parents were ordering food you’d gravitate over to the arcade and spend all of your birthday money.

My mall way back in the day had an Aladdin's Castle sort of arcade place...it was pretty sweet actually.

Not-so-fun fact: The mall featured in Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now Video was closed/torn down in 2002.   So when she did her remade/updated version of the song/video a year or two ago she couldn't use it

PS: She's still got it, doesn't she?

Edited January 4, 2020 by Estil

[Estil | 1,264]

On 12/29/2019 at 2:23 PM, CMR said:

Look at all that hair.  8O

I know I think the biggest hair and tallest "mall bangs" in those days looked incredible and awe inspiring  

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

Quote

Used to be a great place to interact and socialize back in the day . A great centralized meeting place along with being public ( not so much paranoid as it is today ) . An area in sharing similar interests along with having a great time . Sadly these days are gone for most =/ 

 

 

[Jfreakofkorn | 282]

On 12/30/2019 at 10:38 PM, phart010 said:

Back in the days before Gamestop existed, your parents would shop at the mall department stores and you and your siblings would split and run over to the video game section. Then you’d hang out until your parents came looking for you and then refuse to leave unless they buy you a new game.

Then you and the fam would walk together through the mall area. To finish off the day you all would stop at the food court and while your parents were ordering food you’d gravitate over to the arcade and spend all of your birthday money.

Back they used to have stand up arcades at what we play on our consoles 

[andrew244 | 26]

I'm too young to really add anything of value to this convo, but my local mall is still busy as hell. Maybe like two or three store slots are empty (smaller ones, big boxes have never been empty) and there's always one helluva crowd. Guess it helps that there's a bunch of nicer restaurants there now. There were two other competing malls that closed down years ago, though. One bit the dust well before 2006 (when I moved to where I am now), but the local technical college bought the building and uses it now (every year there's a massive book sale that covers the entire open floor...it's great). The other mall was like, literally visible from the current one, they were that close. Extremely beautiful place, green marble tiles and decorations. Relatively high end...that's why it ended up folding. Shame, too, since it's the only mall I remember going to that had a fairly large indoor fountain.