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.
We had the Columbia Center Mall in the Tri-Cities, WA in 1969, and when I went to Tech School in Denver in early 1972, Cinderella City was already thriving.
“On the Road” with Charles Karuit, great family viewing before both were history
Oak Park Mall is still there, hanging on, but barely.
They’ve had a couple of shooting in or just outside the food court, you know the drill, somebody disrespected somebody else.
The mall where I used to shop, Bannister Mall, lasted 22 years, then it was shuttered and torn down. In its prime, it had wonderful little shops and restaurants, besides the big chain stores. Now, it is the “campus” for Cerner Corp.
Now we have big outside shopping areas, made to look like old-timey downtowns. Not the same and they’ll be gone when the tax credits run out.
Teenage girls wearing Blue Oyster Cult T-shirts.....Good Times!
Anybody here remember Eastland Mall in Charlotte, NC? I learned how to ice skate there! Many many fond memories of that place.
The hair was a bit fluffed or puffed, I don’t know how to describe, but you don’t see hair that way too much anymore.
Teen age fun.
But the mother ship was the Galleria in Sherman Oaks, center of the planet for the Valley Girls.
Just a few minutes ago I was going through some old books and found a receipt from the Two Guys (from Harrison) camera department. For flashbulbs.
How about Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh?
Always been a fan of super-malls and my grown children are as well. We have made special trips to places like Mall of America in Minnesota and Palisades Mall in West Nyack, NY.
I'm thinking they are all in their death throes now. We went to the Danbury Fair Mall (CT) recently and it was a ghost town. Only the Apple and Microsoft stores had any kind of traffic.
Yup, I remember going to the mall on a regular basis. Then after hours in the winter, it was a great place to do donuts in the snow. Made us all better drivers really but the cops would run us off eventually.
Some of these dead malls are creepy.
It was probably the hair dryers. Everybody used them, even the boys. For a while, I was looking like one of the Bee Gees.
Even before the lockdown it was in trouble...many stores,including Sears and JC Penny had closed. But now it's a ghost town.It seems that about half the stores are closed...including Lord & Taylor just recently. I cut through Nordstrom's to to the "walking trail" and it's *always* deserted...except for staff.
I just hope it lasts until the day I'm confined to a wheelchair...or walker...but I don't see how it can.
The difference is that a few judges decided that malls are PUBLIC PLACES and with that, they can no longer kick out undesireables.
That’s how much power judges have and that’s why it’s so important to have people like TRUMP nominating them.
Turns out he was just another showbiz piece of excrement.
My first job after college was Assistant Manager at Jeans West at Oak Park. I was never a huge fan of the mall - my heart was always at Metcalf South, RIP.
and who cares ?
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