“Costco served your first point even better than malls did.”
Technically, yes; Costco is more efficient in many ways. Emotionally, I looked forward to going to a mall. OTOH, I have to psych myself up for a week before stepping in to a Costco store. (Just shoot me! I hate going to Costco.)
The last time I actually shopped at a mall was in Thousand Oaks, CA, and we left CA in 2010. I never noticed a racial component to that mall, so am surprised to see that it’s mentioned in this thread so often.
I’ve been to a mall twice in Knoxville but it’s a half-hour away, and it wasn’t to shop. The place that changes batteries in my cell phones is there.
In the ‘80s I enjoyed going to a mall in Seattle. I think it was called Southcenter. We’d fly down from Anchorage, DH would go to a football game, and I’d go to the mall.
Southcenter is the one I am most familiar with since I grew up in the Kent/Renton area and graduated from high school in 1972. I even worked for a very short time at the Penny’s gas station as graveyard shift janitor.
That was quite fortuitous because I got off at the moment the gas station opened, and it was during the oil embargo. I would park my car at the pump and fill up when I got off work. Two things that I never had to deal with that my generation was plagued by: I never knew anyone that was killed or injured in Vietnam and I never had to wait in a gas line, even though I did a lot of driving.
BTW, Southcenter is now “Westfield Southcenter”.
Also, regarding racial stuff, I became a Costco member in 1988 and the only store around at the time, IIRC, was Tukwilla. I remember they sold the hot dogs outside by a “steet vender”. But here’s the interesting part: I moved to Kentucky in 2011 and go to either one of the Louisville stores or Lexington. They are a LOT less crowded and, though I never noticed this until I visited Costco in Tukwilla a couple of years ago, their clientelle is mostly lilly white.
When I visited the Costco in Tukwilla, it was as if I’d left the US. I mean, I wandered through almost the entire store before I saw another white person. It was weird. That area has really changed.
Oh, and I can’t edit my previous post so I’ll just add this: The parking was so bad that if I was not a member and lived in that area, there is no way I’d become a member. What a zoo.