Remembering old stores is now a news story

I spent a lot of time in malls in the 80’s. My dad was away a lot for work and my mom was in her mid 20’s, so it wasn’t unusual for us to be in the Staten Island mall or the Woodbridge mall more than once a week. Being able to read from an early age, I loved reading all the store signage. I also got plenty of rewards (toys, clothes, snacks) for being well behaved. To this day, I can remember those malls exactly as they were, which stores were where. I always associate that pleasant sense of nostalgia with being in a mall.

Was in town a few months ago, & had to visit my Great Aunt who is in a nursing home. I remembered the area, and the Mall not far from where she was, and I thought I'd stop at the Mall to get her something. Gurrrl! That mall was dying! I'm talking about 80% vacancies. It was dark and scary with only 20% of the stores open limited hours "because the homeless come in here at night" and the Macy's was getting ready to close for good, so they had empty shelves. It was a chilling jarring experience. I felt sorry for the people who had to work ther. They looked so defeated and sad.

I used to be a mall aficionado. Had to check all of them out -- locally and when I traveled. Now of course, it's a waste of time as most of them are dull and have the same stores.

But I appreciate the nostalgia for malls. When I was in high school, my mother got a part-time job at a brand-new Macy's opening in a brand-new regional mall in my area. I think that started my interest in malls and stores.

I loved malls. Paramus was a go to.

I loved malls. Paramus was a go to.

I was never a suburbanite again after leaving NJ at age 18, but I did enjoy the grande dame department stores, my favorite of which was Frederick & Nelson in Seattle. It's where I became a dish queen and had my first Frango.

We lived in a flyover hick town in the middle of corn and soy bean fields. Going to the mall in a city 45 mi. away was like going to Disneyland. Fountains, restaurants, cologne samples, genre stores (Helen Gallaghers, World Bazaar, etc.), book stores (naked pictures), candy... and a 2-screen cinema I'd go to while mom shopped (no cashier ever questioned my age).

I would get preoccupied and my mom and sisters would spend a lot of time hunting for me (long before cell phones). No one ever tried to kidnap me.

I love when you guys start the Department Store threads in which you all had teacakes and dainty desserts with your old bag great grandmothers.

They are very comforting for some reason...

I miss Jordan Marsh in New England as well as Fuh-leens.

I really love the Bloomingdales in Chesnut Hill, Mass because it still has a lovely old school department store vibe.

From the article:

Changes in retail spaces — say, new cash registers at the nearest big-box store — are met by most shoppers with a “huh,” if anything. But for some, even the most seemingly minor tweaks are noticed and documented online as part of modern American history.

On Facebook and Reddit, private groups and public forums like All Retail, Off the Rack or r/RetailNews are cataloging brick-and-mortar shifts. Like the “Dead Mall Series” on YouTube, by the filmmaker Dan Bell, their dispatches are rooted in nostalgia for stores and shopping centers that have closed. The groups also chronicle moments that may be harbingers of disruption.

In the last two years, big retailers including Sears, Toys “R” Us and Payless have filed for bankruptcy. Some have shuttered most if not all of their stores. Though the strategies of these chains hinge on standardized, replicable experiences, the stories people share about them are often quite personal.

There's a FB account I follow called Pleasant Family Shopping. It's mostly photo based but has some cool stuff in there.

Ugh to OP'S photo. While finishing high school, I worked for about three months in a Florsheim store in a mall. Awful.

Agreed, r11. Were malls really that orange (my least favorite color)?

It's just nostalgia. Most mall stores were awful examples of their type--chain record and book stores usually had limited selections an, over time, good independent ones were not recruited. Lots of cheap clothing stores that sold often poor quality stuff--Lerner's for women, Richman's and National Shirt Shops for men. They became sterile, homogenized environments but they were the place to go for pre-millienials, which tells you how uninteresting boomer and genX suburba life could be. Unfortunately, malls aren't very adaptable so if the neighborhood changes or a bigger better mall opens, they die because the place is very difficult to reconfigure and very expensive to maintain.

What Facebook groups?

Maybe there are former Gap employees there who also saved the monthly paper playlists.

One thing I don’t understand is why malls are closing but the outdoor ones are popping up all the time. It snows where I live every year. Why do I want to walk in the snow to shop???

Long lost period architecture.....

I’m not much of a mall crawler. I would go to a bookstore and a couple of clothes stores and that’s it.

R15: People don't spend as much time at malls as they used to and they like parking near the stores they want. And developers have figure out that if an outdoor center goes tits up, it's much easier to redo as something else than an enclosed mall. They noticed that old strips in areas with decent demographics often outlived the malls that, for a short time, supplanted them. Malls are just impractical. Retail is overbuilt anyway, so if malls die, let them.

I've read a couple articles about repurposing malls as apartments, condos, office complexes with a few shops and restaurants even indoor green spaces and sky lights. Very futuristic.

The thing is, malls at least had a little style.

Now they've been supplanted by every town having a series of identical little mini shopping centers, all cheaply made, all with Walgreens, Subway and whatever other shiteous, bland monstrosities.

It makes me sad to go anywhere so ugly, see those hideous huge store signs, and know it's where style went to die.

The shopping malls, at least for a while, had some grace to them. They were pleasant places to be.

I think it was a law that every mall had to have a Chess King and a Spencers Gifts.

Malls still make sense in places with long cold winters. In other locations, they will not survive online shopping.

R22 I wish. Here in MA, most are outdoor strip malls

I loved nothing more than to smoke a big joint then wander a mall and people watch and shop. I could spend hours in one.

R21 and a tobacconist at the central intersection where the wings of the mall met.

Tower Records on Broadway & 4th Street. While I primarily went to the independent record stores, I would usually stop here last to get whatever I couldn't find elsewhere.

What was your go-to mall as a kid? This was mine -- opened when I was in high school. (See if you can find a vintage/retro photo showing what it was like in the olden days.)

R26 you’re an idiot. We’re talking about malls. How the fuck do you come up with Tower Records at 4th and Broadway as a mall?

I too miss Jordan Marsh and I Magnin

[quote]Going to the mall in a city 45 mi. away was like going to Disneyland.

Me too, except we were more like 90 minutes from the nearest mall. The highlight for me was going to big record stores where you could buy imports.

R28 I'm the OP. It's really not necessary to be unpleasant. The thread has somewhat of a focus on malls per the NYT article but it also talks about old stores, ones that are now gone. Tower Records certainly fits that bill for me.

R26 I had friends that worked there in the 90s! That was the last era it was really a destination - everything sort of went to shit at the end of the 90s, for so many parts of retail.