I miss malls. I miss the dynamic nature of them. I miss exploring them. I miss seeing all the things that people could buy. I miss the atmosphere. I miss the fountain you throw your pennies in. I miss meeting so many different people. I miss the escalators. I miss the joy of going into the mall pet shop and seeing the animals warm up to you. I miss sitting at the food courts, eating my weirdly quality pizza and taking in the ambiance. Hell, I miss getting lost in malls.
One of the things that feels like a stab in the heart as an aspiring parent is I will never be able to take my kids to the mall and have them experience the same experience. I look at malls now and want to cry. Look at me, a commie crying over a pillar of capitalism. That’s how much of a friend malls were to me, yet nobody I know will say they relate.
When I lived in Taipei, Taiwan, there was a military exercise in that area with civilian curfew for a whole day. Finally the constant traffic roar went silent and I could keep my windows open and listen to birds and insects. A pleasant curfew.
Forest floor dirt after a rain…smells so earthy and good
The smell of pine tree resin in summer. Mixed with the salty coast winds gusts, and the rusting iron of the train tracks. My childhood in a nutshell
In 2003, there was a massive power outage over a big chunk of the midwest. Power was out for about three days. My entire city just kinda… shut down and took a break.
It wasn’t all great–a few elderly folks even died of heat stroke (it was hot, in the middle of summer if I remember right). But there were some positives: the city functioned as a community in a way I’ve never experienced before or since. It felt like we were all on a broken elevator together–a sudden sense of camaraderie in the face of a shared experience.
Most businesses couldn’t function, so everyone was pretty much outside in the parks and at the waterfront, and everyone seemed pretty welcoming to everyone else (they kinda had to be, there were a lot of people out). My dad had a portable generator, so we went around town taking turns at friends’ houses to run their fridges and freezers for a while, and got to just spend time with them.
I don’t expect that the world could function like that all the time, but it was kinda nice for a few days.
I think that’s the event this song is about. It definitely reflects the mood.
I wish it could happen repeatedly though. Like, once a month eg.
Let’s bring more chaos to this process! At some random time during the month, the power grid will just automatically turn off. No warning. Just instant lights out.
Its duration will be determined by a log-normal distribution or similar. So the average duration will be 24 hours with a long thin tail going towards longer durations. There will be a very small chance power is out for the whole month. There will be an even smaller chance power will be out for a whole year. Also, the duration will not be announced at the start of the outage. You’ll just have to sit there in the dark for who knows how long.
All home power generators will also have to be hooked up to this control system. Any home with active power during a deliberate grid blackout will be bombed by automatic drone.
At some random time during the month, the power grid will just automatically turn off. No warning. Just instant lights out.
Yes like a fire drill
I want to eat a Minecraft bucket of lava
I definitely relate to that. I spent a good chunk of my formative years just hanging out at the mall after school with my friends, sitting on the outdoor balcony with ridiculous coffees, openly smoking although we were underage, and just shooting the shit. Maybe we’d have hit up the music store beforehand and we’d chat about what we’d bought, read the liner notes and talk about the artwork. I miss music stores too, but I think a lot of people my age do. The mall used to be somewhere you could just hang out. I don’t know what’s changed, maybe it’s me. In my area they seem to be as busy as ever, but they all seem so sterile and hyper-optimised now, even though the floorplans are still the same as they were decades ago.
Me, I miss the proliferation of arcade video game cabinets. I miss arcades too, but I don’t think that’s out of the ordinary for old nerds. Going to them for a lock-in session was always a fun event, even by myself. Also having one at nearly every mall and being able to just go there and drop a few bucks and kill half an hour while you wait for a bus. What I really miss though, are the machines they’d just have randomly in places; corner stores, video rental places, restaurants, bowling alleys. We’d spend entire days riding around, scouting out new places for good games, which place had the cheapest Street Fighter 2, discovering weird obscure import titles no one had ever heard of. Of course now if I have a few minutes to kill I can game on my phone, but it’s such a non-event. Arcade cabinets were special, they had -presence-. When you found a good one you kept that location burned into your brain, told only your closest friends, and when they removed or changed it, it was such a tragedy.
miss the proliferation of arcade video game cabinets.
One of the few nice things that’s come around my area is a $15 all you can play pinball place. I love it.
KFC Little Bucket Parfait…
I completely relate. Grew up in the mall, and worked there in my teens. Was just visiting home and it’s completely dead. There were literally 4 stores open.
Mad me sad.
It was a pillar of capitalism that fortunately allowed for all of the positive sides of commerce… Mainly community to physically engage with. Tangible unique experiences.
Now we stare at a screen and type into a void hoping somebody listens.
I know this is probably a very dumb question but I must ask- are there no malls near you or which is the reason you miss them so much? I work at a mall, it doesn’t have a fountain in particular (others do) but otherwise it’s still pretty much as you described
Can’t speak for OP’s situation, but I live near one of the largest malls in the country, and there’s maybe about a half dozen smaller malls scattered around within about an hour or so.
The big mall is still doing pretty alright, but if you were around maybe about 10-20 years ago, it’s pretty obvious that the crowds are way smaller than they used to be.
The mall used to pretty much be the place to go meet up with friends, spend time walking around hanging out, a lot of times there would be different events going on at the malls, they were always packed Friday nights and weekends, etc.
Now except for maybe a few key days during the holiday season, they’re just not busy.
The smaller malls are almost deserted, lots of empty stores, and some of the spaces are being rented out for kind of weird purposes (I think one of our local politicians- a state representative something, has their office space in a mall) a few of them have closed down entirely.
Right. I’m intrigued now. I can’t say my situation relates to yours and I didn’t know that was the trend in many places
Yeah, malls in the US at least are really dying in a lot of places.
I stopped into one of the smaller ones near me a few months back, I had maybe an hour to kill before I had to meet someone for dinner and it was close by so I figured I’d walk around for a bit, and it was downright eerie.
There were probably as many vacant spaces as actual stores, and half of the occupied stores were closed at like 5:00 on a weekday. Parts of the mall actually seemed like they only had some of the lights on, half of the escalators were turned off or out of service and there were maybe a couple dozen other people walking around the mall.
There was one part of the mall with no open stores, dim lights, and I didn’t see anyone else around and for a minute it almost felt like I had noclipped into the backrooms.
