In Defense of the Mall
When life becomes overwhelming, most people I know head straight for the spa, the beach, or the mountains to clear their head. Instead, you’ll probably find me sitting in a chaotic food court, devouring a Cinnabon and watching the world go by.
I’m not sure exactly why or when my affinity for the mall and all of its painfully suburban trappings began. Most likely, it traces back to one of the many sticky summer afternoons that I spent in air-conditioned bliss, eating a giant chocolate-peanut butter cup cone from Perry’s Ice Cream and tossing pennies — furnished by my dad, of course — into a deafening, chlorine-scented fountain. Or it may have taken hold a bit later, during a precocious visit to Rave or 5–7–9, when the combination of devastatingly stylish teenage staff members and a hip alt-rock soundtrack planted visions of future coolness in my head.
For me, the mall possesses a superficial, yet deeply satisfying, magic. It’s a Yankee Candle-scented wonderland that manages to be simultaneously quirky and sterile, a place where anything can (and has) happened. I got my ears pierced, rode a fancy carousel that was flanked by a Wendy’s and a Taco Bell, and chowed down on chicken fingers while animatronic monkeys howled in a Rainforest Cafe knockoff called Kahunaville. I received an autograph from the woman who voiced Disney’s Pocahontas, paid for an airbrushed t-shirt with Zac Hanson’s face on it, waited in line to meet fleetingly popular girl group Dream at the peak of their 15 minutes, and saw rock legend Ric Ocasek milling around Electronics Boutique. On an August afternoon in 2004, frosted-tipped troubadour and Ashlee Simpson coattail-chaser Ryan Cabrera performed a free concert in front of Macy’s that was worth exactly what my friend and I paid for it.
It wasn’t all celebrity sightings and emerald studs from the Piercing Pagoda, though; romance and intrigue abounded as well. A wacky stranger pointed at me from halfway across a food court and screamed “MySpace!”, I developed a not-so-secret crush on a hipster H&M clerk, and my friend once left my phone number on the check for an attractive waiter at a Ruby Tuesday. In 10th grade, my little cousins badgered me when a Friendly’s cashier — a questionably older guy I’d met at a school dance a year prior — made awkward small talk, doling out creepy compliments along with our sundae toppings.
That was the thing about the mall: you never quite knew who you’d run into during a given visit, which was equal parts thrilling and terrifying. Look, there’s my ex-boyfriend feeding his new girlfriend teriyaki chicken samples! And over there, my middle school social studies teacher making a discreet exit from Victoria’s Secret with her husband! Before the widespread adoption of online shopping for everything from clothing to kitchen appliances, the mall was a necessary evil that forced an occasional foray into the land of department stores and deviant tweens. As Brian, 30, admits, “To this day, malls make me anxious. The thought of someone from my past with whom I am marginally acquainted seeing me out in the wild gives me agita. Kids nowadays don’t have to experience this if they don’t want to. If we wanted to buy something, we HAD to run the risk of seeing someone from school; maybe even a teacher, which is the ultimate bad-case scenario.”
Farah, 30, looked to the mall as a means of in-person socialization that teens could probably use more of today. “I lived kind of far from anything, so the mall was a place we could go to hang out as teens. We could window shop and split something cheap at the food court. We were still out and about with people. I feel like young people don’t spend enough time together doing real things. Maybe I sound like an old fart, but I’d rather be with people in person, even if we’re just talking and wandering, than be obsessed with my online image or chatting in an app.”
Melissa, 31, has similar memories. “Back then, one of my favorite things to do was to see how far I could stretch a few dollars at Claire’s. The fondness of malls and the atmosphere stayed with me. I went by myself or friends when I was a teenager, and even worked at an Auntie Anne’s.” She also notes that the convenience of the mall — “the ability to easily shop at several stores and to eat at the same place” — draws her back to the mall today.
Personally, I value visceral experience even more than I value convenience, and the mall has always been a completely pleasant, glossy representation of that for me. I want to smell those cinnamon-sugar pretzels at Auntie Anne’s, run my hands along the ridiculous graphic tees at Forever 21, and feel the extremely uncomfortable vibrations of the Brookstone massage chair on my lower back. Each of these elements, like each of the defunct stores that were so beloved to me at a particular moment in time (KB Toys, Waldenbooks, Gadzooks), became a novel yet integral part of my coming of age in the time of boy bands, AOL Instant Messenger, and Nokia flip phones. Brian also credits the mall as being a crucial part of identity formation. “Before you could find literally anything ever on the internet, your style and persona was largely formed by where you shopped. Were you an Abercrombie snob, a Hot Topic goth, or a plain-clothed Old Navy kid? Today, kids can be who they want because the internet allows them to buy whatever. We were limited by a few stores!”
At the time of this writing, mall mainstays Sears and J.C. Penney are both facing their demise, Wet Seal is closing up shop, and The Limited will soon be ancient history. Yet, despite this obvious evidence and a prevailing attitude that the traditional mall is “dying,” you wouldn’t know it if you stepped into any of my local shopping centers. Long lines of families still form on Saturday afternoons to pose with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, snickering pre-teens still move in packs, smoothies in one hand and iPhones in the other, and person after person dodges the invasive lotion hawkers that mill around the Dead Sea scrub kiosks.
What’s more, a recent Mashable article revealed that Amazon’s online sales make up only a small portion of the total market, hypothesizing that the brick-and-mortar slump is primarily due to homogeneity on the part of retailers, and a focus on product instead of experience, which makes perfect sense to me. Why venture out from the cozy comfort of your home to purchase a product — which you could just as easily find in a few clicks — unless you knew you were going to have some fun in the process? After all, it’s the memories of concerts, crushes, and carousel rides that stick with me, not the jeans I bought or cheeseburgers I ate.
Hopefully, just like our music, movie, and food consumption, the mall isn’t dying … it’s simply transforming into something different. A meeting place, a community center, a brief escape from phones and screens and apps that serves as a glimpse of the way life used to be.
Only time will tell, but at least there are plenty of Cinnabons to tide me over while I wait.
