Sunday Samplers are a “lightning round” of different subjects, none of which really warrant a full post, that have popped into my head over the course of the past week. They may or may not be regular weekly posts.
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Is it weird that I find malls more fascinating now that they’re an endangered species than I did when they were thriving?
I grew up in the peak mall years. Media portrayed malls as social centers and lands of plenty, where everyone went for anything they needed. Naturally, reality was a little different. In my personal experience, malls were usually a little more expensive than my family could regularly afford, so going there was a treat. And the more niche & interesting a store was, the quicker it’d be gone, well before the internet killed every chain store that wasn’t a boutique. Speaking of boutique, my adolescence was during the Gap/Limited/Wet Seal era of expensive clothes for slim kids, and being both poor & portly, I had no reason to frequent those shops. As bookstores & arcades vanished, as every electronic store turned into GameStop, and as music shops shifted to offering everything but music, well before the 2000s, I just kinda… stopped going regularly. I’d go around Christmas, usually to visit the card store or Bath & Body Works for gifts, but as those stopped relying on mall space for access, that practice eventually dwindled off too. So I am as guilty as anyone for the rise of the dead mall.
There’s so many reasons for it, though, more than just “the internet happened”. The malls themselves started to make the shopping experience… less than great; they’d rent out kiosks in the middle of the halls that not only clogged traffic but also were frequently run by extremely pushy clerks selling stuff that Temu would find too cheap to sell. Every single local department store got assimilated into Macy’s, so you’d wind up with cases where suddenly 3 anchors that were separate brands were now all the same, so 2 would have to be vacated. And the majority of the possible companies who could have taken those spots were either under that Macy’s umbrella now or having their own problems. Even food courts went from places with a decent assortment of local & chain offerings to “where that place that got shut down by the health department by the Acme moved after being evicted”.
Personally, I think the biggest death blow was the decision for every single mall to suddenly decide that they no longer wanted teenagers to use it as a social space. Yes, there were incidents where fights broke out & such (one of my local dead malls had one break out that earned it the undeserved reputation of “where gang members go to fight”), but to unilaterally decide that EVERY teenager is a ticking time bomb, especially if they’re with their peers? While media & advertisements continued to pitch the mall as THE place to go for the latest trends and to be seen? Yeah, drive away one of your biggest traditional markets, that makes sense. The end result is that you get a couple waves of kids who grow up with no real attachment to your mall or its shops and who have been trained to avoid it cuz it’s innately hostile to them.
But dead malls are endlessly fascinating to me. I’d never be brave enough to explore an actually closed one; besides the legal reasons, I’m just a big coward. The closest I came was walking around one that was about a year away from shutting down (due to a burst water pipe more than anything), when maybe 4 stores were still there. There was a children’s coin-op ride with a recorded loop of kids laughing that echoed through the empty hallways, making the place feel even more haunted. There was also an arcade, thankfully (even if it did have a Big Bertha looming ominously in the back), so that’s where I hung out playing pinball for about an hour (I would’ve played MvC2, but the tech was working on the machine next to it & I didn’t want to be rude). That was enough excitement for me, thanks. So I appreciate the folks who can go into closed & open dead malls and film their discoveries for us chickens back home.
The most fascinating ones, sadly, are starting to be lost. I’d argue that the dead mall that cemented my fascination was Dixie Square Mall. Tragically short-lived, riddled with crime & controversy while it was open, revived briefly for a popular film’s setpiece, then left to rot for literally decades until it was finally demolished (after multiple legal kerfuffles)... it’s an amazing story. Unfortunately, because it was demolished prior to the rise of YouTube, it’s quickly become forgotten to history, since people can no longer walk through the rotting stores and see what an amazing late 70s time capsule it was. Thankfully, you can still find some stunning photo blogs out there documenting its last days. On every logical level, the destruction of Dixie Square Mall is nothing but a good thing for the area where it’s located, given its reputation as a public safety hazard in an already struggling neighborhood, but its loss feels akin to the fall of a modern Atlantis.
I just kind of wonder WHY, at least on a personal level. Even if I wasn’t a stereotypical “mall rat” kid, there was still this sense that malls were this immutable presence in the world, as common & necessary as traffic lights. Mini conventions and festive events were held there; TV & movies kept reinforcing the idea of them as intrinsic to adolescent development & socialization as high school; everyone had their own preferences for which malls were better than others, for reasons as varied as stores offered or just unique design choices. Maybe the fascination is in watching something that was treated as a cultural foundation wither & die in real time? That’s the best that I have, and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a little ghoulish. But there’s a melancholy beauty in the abandoned, to appreciate it in that uneasy quiet interrupted solely by disembodied children’s giggling from the unused rides & your own footsteps. Maybe it’s losing a third space, then losing it again as a quiet place? Again, I’m not smart enough to say for sure.
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This week’s video recommendation is in keeping with this week’s mall theme, and it’s also a little old. It’s Sal Amadeo giving us a surprisingly eventful walking tour of the Burlington Center Mall shortly before its shutdown.
Whether this is the water main break that killed the mall or just a prelude to it, I’m not sure.
BCM had its own following for one reason - its fountain. Sculpted by Zenos Frudakis, it has alternately been called “The Watering Hole” and “The Elephant Fountain”. Although now, she’s been given the name Petal, after the live elephant that was used for inspiration, and is probably better known as such. No other mall in the area had a piece of public art quite like this one, let alone incorporated so perfectly into a common mall feature like a fountain. When I was a kid and my family went to this mall instead of one of the closer ones (with safer reputations), I HAD to see this statue. It was a ritual. Due to closures, I couldn’t see it when I made my last visit, and that still low-key bothers me.
Since the closure of the mall, Petal has gained her own little following online. She was supposed to have been given a new home on the Burlington riverfront (as shown at the end of the video), but between the statue not being built for outdoor use & the river bank being prone to erosion, the city has had to keep her in storage indefinitely. Last I heard, circa 2024, they’re fundraising to build an enclosure to display her on the shopping street near a military memorial. Hopefully that will come to fruition. At least she’s safe in storage and wasn’t leveled with the rest of the place.
But back to the video. Sal is one of my favorite dead mall guys, and his insights in this video illustrate why. This video predates some of his running gags like the intercom lady, but his discussion of leisure shopping history is extremely interesting. And as the caption hints, we got a surprise visit from the then-owner’s favorite employee, a timely & destructive pipe burst (see his video on Century III out near Pittsburgh for another mall visited by this trusted agent). So if you like this one, consider taking a walk with Sal through some other malls. It’s always a relaxing time.
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Lightning-squared round! Also known as “lighting-squared”, cuz I made a typo at some point and only caught it this week. Oops.
It feels like there’s a real generational divide in regards to “treats mental health as a health issue to be treated” and “treats mental health as a quirky personality guide a la zodiac signs that cannot & should not ever be treated as a health issue”, and that’s possibly more of a destructive division than any age or economic one.
I didn’t have “sequel series to Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors” on my radar at all, but now that it's there, it's going on the “I hope this gets localized” list with the Restart anime. The trailer is definitely… interesting, if only for how much character design sensibilities have changed between the OG series and this one.
Nothing sums up small towns quite like randomly seeing one of your school bullies’ names on an election ballot. And immediately voting for the other guy on principle.
Not sure what’s more annoying, the inevitable shrieking about “hypocrisy” from Wrestlesky’s finest (especially hashtag-autists like Fizz-Chan) over Punk’s title win or the decision to throw him into a feud with (eugh) Logan Paul.
I really hope Matt McMuscles covers Twin Goddesses for his “Worst Fighting Game” series. He’d probably be able to find out why it’s… like that. It feels like half the footage came from a scrapped Toei Fushigi Comedy entry and had the rest added by the art team from a CDi game.
I’ve long felt that Spotify was as responsible for the increasing presence of Extruded Music-Flavored Content in lieu of actual music on the radio as anything, but hearing someone who covers music not only confirm it but flesh out exactly why & how feels damn good. Barely-paid session musicians making generic tracks to pad playlists, oceans of AI & botting, fudging the stream numbers to avoid paying artists that aren’t the big names you can’t escape… it’s pretty bad. And that’s before the whole mess over their (apparent) politics. Don’t mean to sound like a smug hipster, but I’m glad that my much-loved iTunes library hopping from iPod to iPod kept me from ever getting suckered into using them long-term.
Spare a thought for those of us who are the lone non-conservative in our families and have to sit here watching as our relatives spin out over this week’s election & pretending to sympathize. And miss me with that “you have a MORAL OBLIGATION to cut them out of your life” bullshit because, unlike the people who immediately react that way when reminded situations like mine exist, it’s a situation with nuance, a concept that’s completely lost on them by their own choice.
The way Wrestlesky didn’t so much as turn on Joe Hendry as just decide to pretend that he doesn’t exist, all cuz he’s doing cross-company work that’s not with their comfort brand, is… well, it’s entirely predictable but still eye-rolling.
I’m just always amazed at the lengths people will go to convince themselves that a work that’s dripping with venom, cynicism, & casual bigotry somehow… isn’t all of that, solely because they like it & thus if it’s bad then so are they. And man, do they make that reaction to themselves a self-fulfilling prophecy…
I’m not gonna be specific about it, but MAN, some of y’all cannot be normal about some political issues to the point where, even when I broadly agree with you, I start to turn solely cuz I don’t want to be associated with such monomaniacal weirdos. Also, for people who tend to be most vocal about hating the horseshoe theory, you sure love to prove its existence.
Thank you, random & extremely specific YouTube comment bot, but I was already well aware of the circumstances & fallout around the death of Owen Hart. Unfortunately.
Watching what's currently a strong contender for The Worst Fandom On Earth defending what's basically sexual assault on The Worst ‘Ace Rep’ Character On Earth in their favorite show from The Worst Creator On Earth is reminding me of multiple things that I hate about the modern world, and I have no outlet for my frustrations.
And on top of that, the lone fandom space I still peek in on has an update with a weirdly rapey AO3 story about the fandom's favorite ship. Again, no outlet exists for my disgust & frustration that everything has to wind up Like This.
Oh, the things Secret Galaxy will cover before he even entertains the idea of covering Jonny Quest… No shame to Animalympics at all (I actually enjoy it quite a bit & think it got a raw deal through no fault of its own), but I swear at this point it’s a running gag. When he does a Pro-Stars video before the first American action-animation show, you gotta wonder a bit. If he does a video on The American Rabbit (a genuinely bad early-days-of-VHS-rentals animated movie) before any of the non-licensed H-B animated stable shows, I will scream loud enough to get a diagnosis.
Someone at MeTV Toons gets it.
IYKYK… Also, this is one of the most pre-9/11, pre-Fox News episodes in the series. Again, IYKYK.
Had a guy old enough to know better randomly belch out loud behind me in the middle of a very crowded store today, and if that doesn’t sum up how dead the concept of basic decorum is, I don’t know what does.
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Well, that’s it for this week. Next week is gonna be a skip week, since I’ll be at in-person work training for most of the week. Given how that means that I can’t do any yarn work to keep myself focused during the duller parts of the lessons, it’s probably gonna be a rough time. Honestly, given Thanksgiving & all, this month will probably have another skip week, but we’ll see.
This week gets a dog photo! My parents’ black lab, sunning her belly.
Not pictured - the snoring.
See everyone next time!
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