Posted on 02/20/2021 12:05:29 PM PST by SamAdams76
This is an excellent 1982 documentary of mall culture in America.
Could it have been so long ago (nearly 40 years!)?
Before the Internet. Before cell phones. MTV was just getting started and most youngsters didn't even know what it was, much less have it.
I remember those days well. The mall was the place for teens and young adults to hang out. It was where boys and girls dated. They'd start off at the Orange Julius at the food court and make their way to the multiplex, where they might see "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" or maybe "ET". Then they might end at the video arcade to sling a few quarters into Pac-Man and Space-Invaders before finding a makeout spot in the corridor where the Things Remembered and Radio Shack stores were while waiting for their parents to come pick them up.
Maybe you are thinking by now that I know of this mall culture all too well...anyway, check out this video. Excellent time capsule of American culture in the early 1980s, just as President Reagan was turning around the economy.
Take note of the fact Kuralt and CBS are doing a hit job on malls.
“Teased Hair” maybe ?
Great picture. Big hair, mullet, fanny pack, spandex, and pens in the shirt pocket. What a great snapshot of the time.
I shopped at malls in the early 70’s when I was in Jr High. But once I could drive, I rarely went to malls. In fact, the main reason I went to the mall was to people watch and get a starbucks, once starbucks started opening in them. I did spend money in the arcade.
I always thought mall prices were too high.
Come to think of it, my wife and I were big fans of Bombay. We got some furniture and stuff there.
I learned recently that the Bryan Adams song "Run To You" was originally offered to BOC but for some reason, they turned it down. They would have had a massive hit with that and done it way better too.
good ole pg county maryland...
my old stomping grounds... 😎
Yes, maybe teased hair is the terminology I was looking for.
In general, it can be interesting to look at pictures from the past, to see how people dressed, what hairstyles were like, etc. Consider pictures from the ‘50s showing men in suits and wearing hats. Hats went out of style somewhere along the way.
What a difference between then and now. Well, it was forty years ago.
A classmate worked as a clerk at a Kodak store in our mall late 70’s while in HS, then manager, then district manager, then regional manager of 6 states. Let go from in late 90’s/early 2000 when cell phones and digital cameras took over. He told me at a reunion he thought he had a job for like..I mean who would of thought Kodak going out of business
My sis was in that era and teased her hair, our mother ustah say,”Your hair looks like a rats nest”
During the early 1980s, I went there all the time. Before compact discs became the main format, I was buying cassettes all the time. As well as blank ones to tape off the radio.
Sometime in 1982, I picked up "Escape" by Journey in that store. I literally wore it out and eventually re-bought it on CD.
Forty years later, they are still playing the hell out of "Don't Stop Believing".
I remember that mall and ice skated there as well. I think interest in ice skating grew because of Dorothy Hamill winning at the Olympics in 1976. She and her bobbed hairstyle were popular. I also remember the old timey Farrell’s ice cream parlor at Eastland, although I liked the Swensen’s in Chapel Hill better.
Chris Rock had a hilarious standup bit about how every town had a white mall and a black mall. (I guess he’s racist!)
They certainly weren't a chick band though, LOL. But that made the chicks who dug them really cool. There was nothing worse than a guy's favorite band turning into a chick band. That happened to REO Speedwagon when "Hi Infidelity" came out. I had a friend who was their biggest fan, who swore after Hi Infidelity came out, he'd never listen to them again.
Thanks! That is a depressing website.
I wonder how much of the problem is just the general coarsening of society. So many people just do not know how to act in public, and, like water, seeks its lowest level....
I was in my 30s in the 1980s and we called it "Big Hair."
Ironically, Kodak actually invented the digital camera. But they put it on the shelf out of fear that it would cannibalize their lucrative high-margin film business.
Drove up from Topeka often.
Wow. That could have been the Ocean County Mall here in NJ. Man. Look at that big hair. Those were the days.
Harrison, NJ? I lived in Kearny. Two Guys was in Kearny.
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