Malls were, for a few decades, a center of US life- but in the 2000s a new term arose “dead malls.”
VIDEO HERE (16:56 minutes)
*****
I always hated the mall in Modesto. My ex used to drag me there occasionally to shop, but if I was alone, the only time I ever went was if I had to go to Sears' tool department and even then, I'd park outside of the store and enter it through it's back door. That way I didn't have to actually go into the mall itself. Fuck those crowds.
Malls were the place to be when we were teenagers in the 70's. Record store/head shop, arcades, hot chicks everywhere, Spencer gifts, etc. They seemed to have died once we grew up and the negroes took over the areas. The once daunted Galleria is now a danger zone.
ReplyDelete*vaunted...lol
DeleteI grew up and worked for years near Paramus, NJ where they had malls in the mid 1950s when I was in High School. Sterns, Bambergers, Sears, Newberrys were the anchors. Mall brat rat packs didn't exist then. I never liked them back then and they're no loss now.
ReplyDeleteAs an Aussie when I was younger and heard talk about malls on telly, I had no idea what they were talking about of course that changed as I got older and wiser. Now when I hear or read about dead malls I think of Newcastle's shopping district which had more run down, closed shops then open ones the last time I was there.
ReplyDeleteI saw my first mall when I got out of the army in 1981. Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto. Over the next 35 years, I've been in it less than a dozen times, and 10 of those was because my wife-at-the-time made me go Christmas shopping with her.
DeleteThe Tobacconist always had cool shit, and I loved going in their walk-in humidor to select a nice smoke.
DeleteSears, May Co., Robinson's, Broadway, Montgomery Wards,
Knife shop (only place to get a replacement for those Swiss Army Knife tweezers that get lost), Wilson's House of Suede & leather, & a nice refreshing Orange Julius.
All gone now.
CC
You mean the craftsman store, and yes that means we are both old as dirt.
ReplyDeletethe only time i liked malls is when ,as a carpenter, i was being paid to help build/renovate them.illchuck.
ReplyDeleteGood thing about Sears was they were always one of the anchor stores so they always were on the outside wall side and had doors straight into the parking lot.... Never needed to actually go in the mall...
ReplyDeleteJD
I did the same thing at Sears; in and out through the exterior doors. And yes, most often I only went there for tools. Used to be, that if you broke your Craftsman screwdriver trying to use it as a prybar, you'd walk into Sears, give the old one to the cashier, and grab a new one. Lowe's bought the Craftsman tool rights, but doesn't practice the same instant-swap philosophy. Hence, I don't buy Chinaman... er... CRAFTSMAN... tools anymore...
ReplyDeleteMalls worked until diversity is our strength came along.
ReplyDeleteYep, just one more White institution that the savages have wrecked with their reverse-Midas touch.
Delete“Yep, just one more White institution that the savages have wrecked with their reverse-Midas touch.”
DeleteReported for hate speech goy!
Oh, gevalt!
DeleteMalls in my area started dying when rapid transit arrived. Kids from the poor side of town would take the bus to the mall, start trouble, and hop a bus back home before the police could arrive. The outside of the malls also became a hangout after dark. Covered parking, dumpster areas, and other odd places became places to do drugs and have sex. As people became afraid of the areas, sales dropped, and the stores moved out. Many are being torn down to make way for new development. I miss the convenience of some of the stores, but it's no longer worth the hassle. Many have mentioned Sears. Their demise, a good subject for a study in holding on to outmoded business practices, simply hastened the mall's closures.
ReplyDeleteThe mall in Modesto was right on the very edge of town when it was built and the city eventually grew around it. I don't remember hearing of any problems with kids at all, but a few years ago I started seeing where different stores were closing down. I don't know if it's even open anymore.
DeleteI think that internet shopping is what killed most malls. Why go to a mall to shop when you can order the same thing and have it delivered right to your door in 48 hours?
Kenny, you went to the mall because there wasn’t anything else to do. Other than the library. I had an employee that came to me for an advance. His in-house combined credit card debt (revolving debt-remember that? No? Snap On tools racket?) at the mall stores was $10,000. This was in the late 80’s! I asked him what the hell had he bought??
DeleteHe said, Boss, it's all clothes and jewelry. I looked at him and said, Fucking shirts and necklaces?
His response? Boss, I look good. The girls pay attention.
Mall Life.
No, I went to the mall because my wife made me. I lived in Modesto 35 years and went to the mall maybe a dozen times.
DeleteMr Lane , The Modesto Mall , dead ' er than a door nail . Was their this past Saturday for a errand . Got in , got out . The Kiosk Hustlers , out number the shoppers . Just a matter of time ,when a for sale sign is out front of the place .
DeleteI was never a mall rat, but will confess in thought a couple of our local malls here were pretty cool back in the 70's and 80's. I was an odd kid, and I actually enjoyed taking in the architecture, more than going shopping, or just "hanging out".
ReplyDeleteWe had one here that was built in the late 60's and the mall concourse was kind of like a dungeon, polished concrete floors with black slate inlays every so often (at 4 way intersections, each with a fountain that everyone threw pennies into). Lots of wrought iron light fixtures and the like , kind of gave it an old world Europe streetscape feel.
Then the 80's came, and they remodeled it with pastel pink and blue ceramic tile floors and modernized (for the time) decor. I was kind of bummed about that. Then, in the 2000's they levelled the whole thing and built a brand new huge modern mall with zero personality or style.
As to malls now days, as I recently posted over at Art Sido's place:
MALLS is an acronym for "Malignant Apes Lowering Living standards".
"Avoid Crowds - Ol 'Remus
ReplyDeleteI miss the big ol country stores. Everything ya needed pretty much there. Ya could get groceries, hardware, guns and walk out with a sammich on homemade bread with a big slab of cloth baloney and mustard. Or a country ham sammich plus an ice cold bottle a Nehi grape. Maybe sit on the front porch and listen to the veracity league comparing notes what was pure as the driven snow. Almost a competition to see who could tell the biggest lie. Ya man, those was good days.
ReplyDeleteI remember when a new mall opened in the small city I lived in at the time (around 1992). A number of stores in downtown moved the mall including Sears. The one thing I noticed was that after a year of being open they still didn't have full occupancy. Even the food court was like that.
ReplyDeleteTen years later a number of stores that had fled downtown returned downtown as they simply weren't getting the foot traffic at the mall they were used to seeing when they were downtown.
Ten years after there was only one store left in the food court. Two major retailers had closed their doors - Circuit City which had gone bankrupt, and another whose name escapes me at the moment, left - and some of the kiosks you would usually see in the mall walkways started disappearing.
Today the mall is all but dead. Sears is long gone as is Bon Ton, The Gap, Old Navy, and a whole host of other retailers. JC Penney is still holding on, but they are the only major retailer still operating. The food court has been empty for years.
A charter school has taken up residence in one end of the mall. Almost all of the storefronts are empty.
And so it goes.
Columbia Mall, Columbia SC, killed by Demographics
ReplyDeleteRichland Fashion Mall, Columbia SC, Ditto
Harbison Mall, Columbia SC, on life support because.... Demographics
Village at Sandhills, Columbia SC, slow painful death due to.... You guessed it, Demographics.
There's clearly a pattern here and when you see a police or sheriff's sub-station open up in a mall that's the precursor to the place's demise.
Hell, there's a semi-indoor flea market in W. Columbia that has a police substation in it when it should have border patrol agents instead.
- WDS
I actually worked at the Southdale Mall from '79-'83. Loved the place as it was the town square and was able to see/meet some very interesting people. The fall of the mall started when the Dayton-Hudson corp (aka Target) sold the 'Dales in Mpls St Paul. They knew the numbers and got out at the top.
ReplyDeleteSpin Drift