“Let’s go to the mall, today!”
—Robin Sparkles, fake Canadian pop star
Epoch 1—Variety!
There weren’t that many phrases that could bring about extreme
happiness in my younger self than when my parents would say, “We’re going to
the mall tonight.” The mall! Just the excitement of thinking about the mall was enough to get me to smile from ear to
ear. Arguably, shopping malls were in their heyday in the 1980s. To me, though,
malls didn’t resemble the ridiculous visages one would see in movies: filled
with teenagers in bright, “radical” clothes hanging at the arcade and drinking
Orange Juliuses. No, malls were all about their intended purpose in the Reagan
Eighties: unforgiving, unadulterated capitalism at its finest.
The mall was where we went to shop! Our mall at the time was Ocean
County Mall, a one-level conglomeration of dozens of stores anchored by the big
names in retail. We didn’t go to the mall to see a movie (in fact, I wouldn’t
see a movie at that mall until I turned 14; we’d pass at least three much
better theaters on the way there). We didn’t go to have dinner (our mall didn’t
even have a food court at the time). The mall didn’t even have the best stores
(there was a Toys “R” Us right across the highway). For us, the mall was where
you’d go to spend the evening, with the added bonus of coming back with a few
things you needed and some other things you really didn’t need.
After a half-hour ride, we’d arrive and park outside one of the big box
stores (never the actual mall entrance for some reason). Walking in, we’d be
greeted by that smell: a combination of leather and new clothes. If I was
lucky, we’d head right through the store and into the heart of the mall.
Oftentimes, though, my mom would browse. And browse. And browse. Meanwhile, my
dad would find a chair to wait in and I’d be climbing inside circular racks of
clothes and finding all those ball-tipped pins stuck in the carpet. It would be
years until I found out they came from people unpinning dress shirts.
Eventually, we would make our way to the mall entrance. There, the
world was our oyster. Maybe there’d be a new He-Man figure at Kay-Bee’s.
Possibly, my parents would buy me a cassette at the record store (it would be a
few more years until it was feasible to get one of those expensive CDs in the
long cardboard boxes). Near the end of the night, I’d spend a good hour in the
bookstore trying to decide which volume of Garfield comics I wanted. With my
new treasure in hand, we’d head toward the middle of the mall where we’d stand
in line to get a Hot Sam’s pretzel (a place, I maintain, that made the best
soft pretzel I will ever eat: perfect crunch on the outside but soft and chewy
on the inside).
Really, those were the halcyon days—simple times where you’d simply
shop.
Epoch 2—Oversaturation
Brodie: That kid is back on
the escalator again!
—Mallrats, 1995 Kevin Smith
movie
Malls became a part of my extended family as I got older. My sister had
various high retail jobs from the late Eighties through the Nineties. So, our
beloved Ocean County Mall, with its one floor of delight, fell by the wayside.
Soon, we were making a slightly longer trip north to Monmouth Mall. Three
floors of retail! Higher-end department stores! What really got me were the
electronics stores. When Nintendo was a large part of my life, where else
should I spend my time but Babbage’s and Electronics Boutique? Those stores
didn’t cater to my parents or to my older siblings; they catered to me and me
exclusively. From there, it was a short walk to the other stores a
preteen/teenager like me would be interested in: CD stores, a comic book store,
Suncoast Video, and yes, two (2!) bookstores. At one point, that mall even had
a kiosk in the middle—three times as large as a regular kiosk—that sold video
games. Its draw, though, was that there were video game consoles set up along
the outside so you could play the games before you bought them. AND it was in
front of a pizza place! Nirvana? Hell yes!
It didn’t stop there. Soon, we were visiting other malls: Bridgewater
Commons, Woodbridge Center, and Freehold Raceway. But Monmouth was where I
would spend my teen years. A short drive away from Red Bank, another Nineties
New Jersey Mecca, Monmouth Mall was a great place to spend a day. As soon as I
was seventeen, the mall was a place of freedom. Going out to eat without my
parents at Garcia’s Mexican restaurant. Browsing in the stores where I wanted
to shop without being ushered out by my parents because I was taking too long
to decide what I wanted (a role that I would never outgrow, replaced soon by
girlfriends and then my wife). Wasting time before going to the new movie
theater. That was the mall where I would buy Christmas presents for my friends
and family during my teens. I bet everyone loved getting some kind of candle or
other tchotchke from me during those years.
It was Freehold, though, where I began to see the cracks. I didn’t
really like Freehold Raceway Mall. Although it was huge, it was huge for the
wrong reasons. That mall suffered from what I considered “repeat stores.” Why
was there a Victoria’s Secret upstairs and
downstairs? Maybe it was because I started to grow out of my huge video games
phase, but why were there two of the same video game stores? Freehold reeked of
redundancy. Did the leaseholders decide to have multiple store locations under
the same roof because they knew about the sheer laziness on the part of
mallgoers? It wasn’t like Bridgewater, with its three ridiculous levels of
shopping mall bliss, where repeat stores may have been needed since you could
spend an entire day at that mall and not see it all. Bridgewater was more high-brow
for that. Hell, it even had a walk-in humidor at one time. Freehold, though,
was only two levels and not as upscale. Man, did it get crowded during the
holidays, though. I remember walking into that place once a few weeks before
Christmas, everyone running around in a panic, and saying to my friends, “Why
are we here? Why are we doing this?”
But much like the record industry, the malls weren’t thinking about the
future. They were simply enjoying having too much of a good thing.
Epoch 3—Apathy
Francine:
What are they doing? Why do they come here?
Stephen:
Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important
place in their lives.
—Dawn of the Dead, 1978
George Romero movie about zombies invading a mall
Last year, I went to a mall in Princeton with a friend of mine. While
she was shopping in a department store, I fell back on my old mall habit and
decided to explore a new-to-me mall—because, obviously, clothes=boring. What I
found really disappointed and saddened me. Instead of the happy shoppers I used
to see when I was younger, all I found now were people who were on a mission
and really needed one or two things. I walked around that entire mall and
nothing really caught my eye. Of course, with the few things I did see, I had
the same thought:
“It’s probably cheaper online.”
Yup, the Internet. Killer of such things as the record industry and,
now, shopping malls. I’m being facetious, of course, but the sentiment is
pretty close to reality. Malls will never be the same unless they can provide
something that shopping online can’t provide.
As the Internet grew in popularity, I started going to Freehold Mall
more often. I can’t really explain why, though. In the past few years, I guess
it was because it was the closer mall, but we’d just go there mainly for the
bookstore or because we needed clothes, had a coupon, and needed to try
something on. Malls have turned into living shopping catalogs, a showroom where
you can check out the merchandise before you go home and find a cheaper price
online. Yes, every once in a while, you’ll take advantage of the instant
gratification angle, even if it means paying more. More often, though, some
site like Amazon will be the go-to place, since it has seemingly endless levels
of shopping with your food court kitchen only steps away.
What I find really strange is how packed the parking lots seem to be.
It used to be that mall parking lots would be full every weekend. Holidays?
Forget about finding a spot anytime soon after arriving. I remember many
pre-holiday weekends driving around a mall parking lot looking for that perfect
space. Now, the lots still seem full, but once you go inside the mall, it’s
empty. People mill around like the undead, searching for the one reason why they
came in the first place, the thing that will make them human.
I can’t remember the last time I did holiday shopping at a mall. It has
less to do with the fact that I’m lazy and more with the fact that there’s
nothing there I want to buy for anyone. See, it’s much more personal to buy
something you can’t find anywhere facelessly from some stranger on the Internet
than to go to a mall and buy some mass-produced item from a faceless
corporation while hating all the crazy shoppers all around you during a happy
time of the season.
As I sit here and write this, it’s a gray, rainy day in New Jersey with
the holiday season right around the corner. Today would be a perfect day to
head to the mall…if it were 1995. Instead, I’m on my computer. If I want to
browse and buy something impulsively, I’ll go to Amazon. I still have my
memories, though.
This guest post was written by
Dennis. He may just try the recipe that he found online—where else—for a Hot
Sam’s-type pretzel.
Posts
