Posted on 04/27/2024 4:38:37 PM PDT by DallasBiff
Malls are dying—but a dead mall gives a community the chance to rebuild something that might have been doomed to begin with.
For countless Americans—especially those who came of age in the postwar years—malls were the new town square: a place to shop, eat, gather and meander. Envisioned as perfectly pristine, cast against the gritty danger of urban centers, the American mall became the image of suburban consumerism, the "pyramids to the boom years," as Joan Didion once wrote. But like the pyramids, the culture that the malls once honored—and survived off of—is starting to vanish. In 2014, traditional retailers will, for the first time, generate half of their sales growth from the web. For the American mall mogul, the reality is clear: rethink what it means to be a mall, or die.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Westfarms Mall is doing good,too.
What mall is that? Brass Mill Mall in Waterbury, CT
Yeah, we had one small mall in my town (Greenville mall in Greenville, SC ) that was a nice peaceful mall. It had a $1 movie theatre. Then that theatre decided to show Spike Lees “Do The Right Thing”.They showed it the whole summer. That attracted a “ certain crowd”. Soon after there were constant fights in the mall and parking lot. People stopped going there , especially at night, fearing for their safety.Businesses started closing. A pizza place that was opposite the theatre that offered pizza by he slice for $1, that had been there since the mall opened, closed.
Read later.
[[When I came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, the mall was the place to be]]
Same- the mall had everything practically, a theater, food courts- cool stores with oddball merch, nutrition stores, several shoe spots- it was just the place to go and hang out, have lunch or dinner, snacks, and catch a movie-
our local mall though is now a sorry remnant of what it used to be-
Just build homes there for our visiting friends from the South.
Brockton?
You’ve already reported yourself to everybody here by your boorish behavior. I settle my disagreements myself, thank you.
CC
as soon as the cities started routing the inner city busses to the malls, they were doomed.
lol
I just said the same thing before I saw your post!
quote “Malls only work if the people going there are civilized”
actually... that could be said of just about anything, theaters, public parks, public pools etc etc
People still go to Haywood mall?
Yep
Hence, get rid of public transportation and theaters at malls.
These old pics confirm what I say. Mostly white people, malls were safe and fine.
You found a rare pic of a black family couple walking together, more common then, but now...
-PJ
Amazon has been a factor.
However malls were dying off before amazon. Malls wound up becoming oversaturated in certain areas, and new malls that were bigger and newer often in better locations than existing malls, surpassed older, smaller, dated, less upkept malls.
Public transportation.
Moved from Greenville in 2007 ( in Taiwan now ) so don’t know about Haywood now. Back in 2007 people were still going there. Up until a few years ago, I used to listen to the Greenville Sheriff scanner online ( they have now converted to the PAL 800 system so can’t get it anymore ). There were a lot more calls to Haywood for “incidents” and they also had to deploy 2 cars the the main theatre in town ( forgot the name ) when the movies got out at 10 PM.
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