This is where all the high school kids used to go after school. It seems like the decline of the mall coincided with a crackdown of kids hanging out there.

@@sdrc92126 where I grew up, banning young people was precipitated by young gang members/shootings/drugs/violence causing problems for everyone else. It seems like everything went to hell in the mid 90s. It's a real shame. Some of the most fun I ever had was cruising at various malls around my area. It was fairly innocent fun, screwed up by a handful of a-holes. I don't know if kids even have anywhere to hang out these days.

@@sdrc92126Teenagers going there shopping and hanging out didn't cause this. Teenagers going there causing mini riots and chaos is what caused it.

@@Epic_C Yeah, it was the response. I remember cruising around the mall was pretty popular. I never did either, but it seems like both events coincided. And I can't recall any riots, but I probably wouldn't know if they did happen

Dixie Square Mall used in The Blues Brothers car chase scene was already abandoned in 80. Shuttered in 78. Hard to believe.

Because a limited inventory store cannot compete with an unlimited inventory store, simple.

Sears lost money on its printed catalog for years before shutting it down in 1994. The Internet hadn't quite matured enough yet to get into that. By the time it did Amazon already had the market cornered.

If Sears had been forward thinking and embrace the internet we wouldn't have Amazon. Every two-bit town in America had a Sears catalog store. You went in you looked in the catalog you picked up what you wanted you paid for it and when it came in you picked it up. Even if you mail ordered something, it still came to your catalog store. So they basically had an infrastructure that covered the entire United States. That could have transitioned from print catalogs to the internet very easily. Amazon wouldn't have stood a chance.

Exactly correct!!! @@JimDean002

@@JimDean002 United States? Amazon is world-wide 😂🤣😂 Besides, nobody cares. Hindsight has always been 20/20. Were you born yesterday?

I remember when "the older people" hated malls around 1985 and 1995, they missed the "good ol' days" when all the business was in the downtown district by mom and pop shops. Malls were seen as too corporate and soulless. Fast forward to 2023, and suddenly now malls are MISSED. Crazy!!

@@John-ct9zs As someone who grew up going to the mall often as a kid, I can see where those "older people" were coming from. Downtown districts are better for communities, you didn't always have to drive there, and could often walk. You could also support small businesses, and keep said towns economy going. Malls did ruin that in many ways. I think we should go back to downtown districts again.

The inner city 'youths' took over.

Shopping on the internet sure did not help things either for malls or any brick and mortar stores.

​@@jcshavesI used to love hanging out the mall in my high school days in the mid 90's. You could find just about anyone of your friends on a Friday night, and there was a whole new world of girls from surrounding towns we didn't know "yet"😅. Food, fun, people, beeper chains and accessories. Such great memories.

It sucks but times change. Technology has changed everything. Movie theaters are dead too….we are going from a more social, outward society to a more antisocial, stay at home society. It’s unfortunate

To quote Clint Eastwood in "Unforgiven" -- "Deserves got nothin' to do with it."

I feel like malls became victims of their own success. Leasing a storefront in a mall became so expensive that the only shops still in today's malls are all too generic and overpriced. The same chains, a rather bland variety. Still a good place to buy new clothes, but very little else.

​@lemonyx4936 The internet also added to the downfall of malls. As a teenager, I would go to the mall to shop and hang out with friends. Online shopping and social media has made it where you can do that from home.

Y'all are just assuming that what happens in America also happens in the rest of the world, which isn't the case. Malls in Asia and Europe are still alive and thriving despite the prevalence of Netflix and Online shopping. You can literally look at European and Asian malls on KZfaq and compare to how US is doing their malls. The American malls are dying, but not the concept of malls as a whole.

What made the difference between the thriving Australian mall and the dying American mall?

@@karenryder6317 in Australia the major grocery chains (Woolworths/Coles/Aldi) operate as mall anchors as well as the major banks, post office etc. we ask so have fresh food halls with small retailers selling fruit and veg, meat, fish etc) so they cater for the everyday shopping.

True, and not so coincidentally, Westfield is an Australian company. They are one of the biggest owners of malls and retail centres throughout the western world.

@@karenryder6317 Maybe higher population density and the lack of big box stores like Walmart, as well as a better economy.

I wonder if they're hot climate also makes indoor air conditioned malls a more attractive option. Indoor malls are also incredibly popular in any affluent Arab country for the same reason.

That is a fair point, and somewhat ironic given what is happening to malls today.

@@TheHistoryGuyChannel , I personally am not nor have I ever been a fan of shopping malls and I have always avoided them like the plague. Part of me wants to revel in all these empty malls and point to them as monuments to conspicuous consumption and capitalistic excess, but now we have thousands of these empty "white elephant" buildings that aren't easily converted to other use and would be expensive to do so, not to mention the cost of heating, cooling and lighting them, or modernizing them so that they don't require as much power to run. Malls don't adapt themselves easily to other uses and as such they are a bit of a white elephant. They served their purpose for investors and now that the investors don't want them anymore they become deteriorating eyesores. They no longer generate any propert tax or sales tax revenue for the town, city or county and they might actually end up draining tax revenue if they become abandoned, and the owners stop paying taxes or perhaps even declare bankruptcy, in which case the building may actually revert to the local government and becomes their headache. The closest modest cities to my own small town are dotted with dozens of derelict or abandoned retail and industrial properties; And the closest mall to me which is quite modest in size ide is only about half full of retail outlets. But if you drive 10 minutes away the Walmart parking lot is full.....

​@@TheHistoryGuyChannelIt's funny how things sometimes circle back though. My small town of 30K, has developed the downtown area. Small shops, restaurant s, coffee shops, and even a brewery have filled previously vacant buildings. Very few vacancies to be found. It seems that people are looking for a taste of how it used to be.

City tax greed was a major factor. Cities increased taxes to such a high degree that the burden of taxes and gangs and internet shopping did them in. Get rid of taxes and gangs and they would be fine,

I agree, it did. I listen to my parents talk about going downtown to shop and how they enjoyed it when they were children. I had some of that same experience but I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s so the mall is where we spent a lot of our time. The difference today is there is nowhere to go, everybody is shopping on line, there is NO social interaction which is a major problem. Back then it just switched from one location to another, now it’s switching from a location to a “virtual” place.

I just made a similar comment about that when I moved to Italy last year. I think it’s a cultural thing. Here, when you go shopping, no matter where, there are people there to help you, just like there used to be in America, before the malls.

@@kevinbuja8105 That's cool. How do you like Italy. We are planning to move there in a year or two, God willing.

Why in heck does an American move to Albania?

@@alexmuenster2102 Well, we are missionaries here, simply Christian. We only plan to be here for a short time. Tourist visa is 1 year for Americans. Even though the US is rich and has plentiful jobs, it has gone mad. No one is pushing LGBT agenda on our children, no one is talking about pronouns, or sex changes for children. No Drag queen story hour. Everyone here knows what a woman is. It's poorer, but more sane in general . Albania definitely has its problems, and some of them quite large, but not bad to live here at all. Cost of living is very low. Food is good. People in general are very friendly. Very easy to make new friends here. Many benefits. I love America tremendously but we have become an absolute laughing stock. It's really sad.

Totally excellent, wishing you blessings. @@edwardcarlton

Same can be said for the library. And museums

The internet didn't kill the malls as most retailers in malls gave had a website selling to you for 24+ years, they are and was the internet. It's the income deficiency across the population that killed them!

@@American-Motors-Corporation Its well known how online marketplaces had a large hand in destroying local small businesses. Couple that with social media, and smartphones, eliminating the necessity for in person meeting places for young people. They no longer needed to congregate in the mall, they could just keep in touch with the phone. That, is what killed the malls. Income deficiency.... thats retarded.

@@ckmoore101 I do agree the young folks stopped hanging out a bunch (at the mall). However that's the fault of the mall. They ran off their core customer. Below are the real reasons they're dead! nope, it has been wildly said that that's the case, but it's bullshit. Yeah mom and pop has been in on it the internet for over 20 years as well. Some more than others. It's literally an income deficiency across the population as root cause. That's what the system is trying to cover up by explaining it away with blaming the internet. Sears, Penny's, Macy's and Kohl's Lazarus when they was around. All had websites with the capability of shipping directly to you or for pick up in store since the mid to late 90's. In fact the store catalog was moved to the internet format it's literally the same thing. Tell ya what, here's the hard prof, The stores I had mentioned above all had catalogs at one time. While they had actual retail stores. However there was other companies that was nothing but catalog stores with zero physical locations back in the day... So hummm why was there zero whining and balling from those very retails during the great depression about their catalog based only competitors? I looked didn't find one single article from that time, not one. And I've been researching this topic for over a decade especially since the lie started blaming the internet! Blaming the internet is for stupid people who know zero about business, the reason why is simply because those very retailers are the internet the money they collect from online sales still goes into the same coffers. Another point to debunk this crap is simply, It's only 8-10% of all retail sales that are online, the other 90+% of all retail sales are happening in the brick and mortar environment. So why the down turn? The income deficiency across the population was getting bad before 08 post 08 it's gotten worse. You see, the world we live in is simply either you have the money or you don't. So if you don't have the 10, 20, 35 or 80 bucks perhaps the 150 to 400 bucks to hand to the likes of a physical retailer then what the hell makes anyone think that you'd have any of those or in between dollar denominations to give to the likes of a retailers online arm or to Amazon? So no it's an over stated lie that's well known it's not the truth, it was the official story of last decade to blame the internet, it was an excuse drummed up to explain away the downturn to stupid people! Google it search for Jeff bezos, may 2016 interview even in there he admits online sales are only 8-10% of all retail sales this why he wanted to muscle in on brick and mortar. If course since then plans have changed simply due to the downturn of the economy yes but the income deficiency has become too great! That doesn't mean that Jeff won't try at some point to get back into the brick and mortar game, he's most likely waiting on commercial real estate prices to fall. That's been the great strategy among most of us business types especially on the small business front. The internet wasn't enough to have actually killed these places nor the retailers that occupied them. In further reasons why the mall is dead and the internet is not to blame you must understand why there was so many malls to start with. Simply put, it's because malls in decades past was a great place for the wealthy to hide money. It was a tax shelter. Well it being a tax shelter became less and less over the years, until it wasn't one. Couple that with neglect of the structures and high rent. Yep it's over! The money left it's that simple. Then another major reason for the downfall was most of the retailers themselves. Welp they made bad financial decisions, Sears, Penny's Macy's and Kohl's Lazarus... yeah go back and look at their balance sheets. You'll notice in and around 2005 they all took on mass amounts of debt and kept doing so. They drove themselves into the ditch. It was not the internet's fault!!

​@@ckmoore101as an observer I don't think that that is retarded internet was a reason but income deficiency all across North America with the declining middle class is part of the reason why malls have died no more middle-class anymore you are stop either rich or poor

Out here in sweltering California, it's the exact opposite. We go to malls to get out of the heat. It is always so bizarre to me to hear so many people talking about being cold, because that is a feeling I rarely get to experience.

​@@LividImp, People who live in the suburbs don't necessarily need to go to the mall on the edge of suburbia to get temporarily cooled-off, because if you live in the suburbs you probably have air conditioning in your house already. It's the poor people who live in inner cities who are less likely to have air conditioning at home and would greatly benefit from an air conditioned mall nearby, except that the malls are rarely if ever built anywhere that's easy to get to from the inner city.

Funny. Growing up in Florida, the best thing about the mall was that, unlike my HS, it was air-conditioned and delightfully cool.

@@goodun2974 1. By your logic then that means people in the north are only going to malls because they have no heat at home. Give that two seconds of thought. Not only is that ridiculous, but even if it was true I guarantee you there are _far_ more people without air conditioning in the south, than there are people without heat in the north. But the bottom line is that we are not even talking about subsistence shelter here, we are talking about leisure. 2. If you think poor folks still live in the inner city and not in the suburbs, then you must have got buried in ice about a quarter century ago and just now got thawed out. Malls aren't the only thing that's changed in the last few decades. Most cities are so unaffordable that even people that want to live there can't. Any poor folk that could get out, moved out to the suburbs, or more frequently, the exurbs. The blighted inner city is a concept that itself is decaying.

choose your parents wisely

Just commented similarly. Greed from landlords has been a huge problem. Plus as malls aged, many landlords couldn’t be bothered to spend money upgrading. In my area, the mall that is still bright, airy, and looks nice is thriving. The older, one story, dumpy mall, went out of business & is getting redeveloped into something else.

You are spot-on about the rent. My cousin she worked in a shoe store in the early 2000s and said they paid $6,000 a month for rent... And thinking about it now that store wasn't that big.

I went to the Flagstaff Mall about 6 years ago when I visited my sister. It was not impressive.

Yes because Hollywood told everyone to hangout at the mall until everyone realized there was nothing to do and it was stupid. Of course the 90's came and the old people bitched so then the malks ran off the core customer which was the teenagers. Bye bye malls!

I’d agree with the caveat that malls accelerated their own deaths by filling their central corridors with stupid kiosks.

Malls were the evil small business killer that Amazon is now. It's always something.

When we have personal home replicators, we're going to feel nostalgic about Amazon.

@@theobserver9131 Never thought of malls as being small business killers, but maybe they were. Amazon, not so much.

Videos are great but could you turn up your story volume? The music seems louder than the story on this one.

Terrible mismanagement. Too bad. People literally ordered homes from them and they were delivered by rail.

@@MichelleCWeberit was worse than that, I remember pitching “selling over the Internet” to them around 2000/2001, they were in a perfect position to do it. “Nobody will ever want to not go to a store, who wants to order from the air”.

This is so correct. Sears had infrastructure and experience with mail order that would have made them the dominant online retailer, and they threw it away at the worst time.

They were *this* close to being Amazon; they just had to weather a few years between the catalogs and online shopping. We used to joke about "Sears sucker suits," but that didn't stop us from buying Craftsman and other brands there . . .

The neighboring town desperately wanted a mall. Once they got one, it failed, in part because it lacked an "anchor store" like Sears.

I live near Cincinnati in the U.S. We spent a lot of time hanging out at the mall when I was a teenager, but we couldn’t afford to buy anything. The prices were largely inflated over here as well compared to the alternatives. It was a fun place to visit…but not a worthwhile place to spend money. The death of so many malls doesn’t surprise me at all.

I also don’t think Malls ever became the substitute Town Centres in Australia that they seem to have been for a while in the US. Shopping streets, pedestrian plazas and urban parks are places to hang out and shop here.

The other key difference in Australia is malls have supermarkets among their anchor tenants, banks, post office etc as well as the discount chains Kmart, Big W, and Target making it the place in the suburbs for everyday shopping and not just anchored by department stores.

That's happened here in the US already, but largely as a result of mail owners trying to make up for lost revenue when the bigger name stores either close or move elsewhere. Given a choice between a dedicated location owned by your own company, or a place where a percentage of your profits goes to a landlord, the big stores moved out. They didn't need walk-by traffic to stay in business.

What the hell? A dementia village sounds like a bad horror Movie of Soulless people walking around.

@@shawnmason5290 It is actually a very amazing way to care for the elderly with dementia. They are surrounded with the familiar things of their pre-dementia life and can walk around freely. And they aren't souless, they are just forgetting. They are still people who deserve to be loved, and cared for, and treated with dignity.

I agree. Given their size & protection from the elements, they seem a very logical community location, as our population skews older.

It is a great idea, but will likely never work in the US outside a few examples near the largest US cities or near very wealthy enclaves. They are simply too expensive given that they tend to cost even more than tuition at Harvard at around or more than $60,000 a year per person.

Great idea but many malls have no windows. Seniors would probably like to look outside

The first US arcade is the Westminster Arcade in Providence, opened 1828

OUR CLOSEST MALL WAS AT OLATHE KS, OPENING IN THE EARLY 1980s THE PLACE NEVER HAD MORE THAN ABOUT 65 % OCCUPANCY! IN THE MID 1990s IT STARTED LOOSING MORE STORES , SINKING TO MAYBE 25 % OCCUPANCY BEFORE 2000. AFTER SITTING EMPTY , IT WAS KNOCKED DOWN BY 2016! IN THE KANSAS CITY SUBURBAN AREAS THERE WERE ALSO SEVERAL MORE MALLS LOST AS WELL!

I will 40th this statement haha, best arcade still around, live in OH as well

Unfortunately they still cannot find a good use for it and this fact is so very depressing.

I just stayed at the Hyatt there. It is very nice

The aging of the Boomer generation is another factor in the decline of malls. (How many things can you buy and stuff into a house?)

Yes! At age 74 I’m trying to give away as much as possible and not buy anymore than is absolutely necessary. Mostly I now buy only birthday and Christmas presents.

Oh no, Gurney mall closed ?😢

I remember the animal row markers! Thank you for bringing up that memory. Southdale. Rosedale. Such great memories.

@@seanseoltoir old skool racist.

@@mikeh9956 is being a violent pest intrinsic to their race?

That's exactly what happened to two malls in my area.

@@Nudhulits obligatory

There were incidents at some of the malls near me where people were being attacked, mugged, even raped by assailants hiding under parked cars.

I’ve been to Southdale. Loved it!

@@mikeymutual5489Minnesota summers get into the 100’s, too.

@@QueenOfTheNorth65 Wow! I haven't been in years. The last time I was there I visited Barnes and Nobel. I bought a pocket copy of Gibran's "The Prophet." Still have it!

Well, to be honest, what you are not doing, you said it yourself. Chicago. Leftist politics breed crime and economic decline. Pure and simple.

Let's see if I can name them. Lincoln Mall, River Oaks Mall, Orland Mall, Chicago Ridge Mall, Yorktown Mall, Southlake Mall. Louis Joliet?

@@ughettapbacon you forgot Ford City and the evergreen plaza

Even Oak Brook Mall is suffering from crime.

@@acmhfmggrulol no kidding. I live in the ATL, home of 4 of the deadliest cities in America. Even in #7, where Stonecrest exists, there ain’t no BS like that lmao Bunch of gang bangers collectively stopping non-gang banging people from shopping? In SEVEN malls? Ya I dunno bout that, chief. Walk around scared of the other, you’re gonna be scared your whole life. And btw just go ahead and say “black teens” or whatever jfc lol

The music of our youth is always the best music. Personally I think eighties music is garbage, but the seventies, definitely the best. 😂

You've obviously never been to Mississippi.

You can say the same about any random 5 mile stretch of suburban Interstate highway.

well played

You don't necessarily have to drop them in any shopping mall. You could drop them in the middle of anywhere. Most Americans don't know their own geography if their life depended on it. It's worse the younger generations.

True, it was part of pop culture when I was growing up. Movies like "Mallrats" say it all, though some 14 years before that "Blues Brothers" served as kind of a premonition of what would happen, with Dixie Square Mall already being closed and restructured for the car chase scene. Unlike the more modern town center concept, the enclosed mall was a place where you could be completely immune from the elements. During their heyday, parents usually felt safe dropping off their teenagers to hang out with friends, and hours could be spent walking store-to-store, in the ubiquitous arcade, or simply sitting in front of the fountain chatting it up. Come lunchtime, you'd head to the food court for some fast food, or maybe even the Ruby Tuesday or TGIF. After lunch, maybe go see the latest movie at the theater before meeting your parents at a predetermined time and place or pulling out a quarter and calling them on the payphone.

​@@anonymousm9113, Years after The Blues Brothers movie abandoned mall's figured prominently in the TV shows Stranger Things and The Last of Us.

When I was in grade school, my parent's used to give me $5 and drop me off in the morning and tell me where to be to get picked up in the afternoon. I guess things were safer then I remember trying to figure out how to buy tickets for the first time to see _Smokey and the Bandit_

You can blame online shopping for that! Sadly people prefer to lay on their couch and order online than go for a wonder and support the local stores.

The thing about the holidays is IMPORTANT. I always feel so much less holiday spirit each year for the big ones like Halloween and Christmas. Aside from TV channels going all-out with bumpers and theming, malls were the other big push of holiday decorations, festivities, and celebrations! The cartoon and kids tv channels were the only big holiday vibe rivals! With both these monumental institutions dying or dead, the holidays feel empty. And it’s certainly for a lack of trying because public spaces used to be the BIGGEST for holidays. But now, especially post-lockdown, a lot of people and places struggle to put up big holiday cheer and celebration at the scale I was used to as a kid. It IS palpable how much has declined!

One of them legit GRABBED ME BY THE HAND when I walked by to get my attention. Like WTF? Grabbing people is never socially acceptable.

@@HatedAndLovingIt Yes! He grabbed my hand and then spent a good 5 minutes trying to sell me some Israeli Sea Salt......not the kind of thing I would ever buy. I told him maybe tomorrow and he's like "You aren't coming back are you!". This was a high end mall too

I will say that is my only con with modern mall shopping. I get that since there is much less foot traffic, sales associates have much more pressure to make a sale. Still, I miss the social experience and try to hang on to it, saddened each time I go...

Target wasn't acquired by them, though. It began as a side project of Dayton's before the merger.

@tucsonbillD and dont forget Hudson's had the first Thanksgiving Day Parade in the US, besting Macy's by a year, and during WWII hung the world's largest American flag from its storefront along Woodward Ave....

@@truthsayers8725 Thanks… I forgot about those.

In Louisiana, Target is pronounced Tar-jay and the j sounding like a g!

@TucsonBillD, the Northgate Mall in Seattle (@7:04) claims to be the “first post-war mall” in the US. It appears to pre-date Northland by a couple years.

I went to OU for undergrad and Crossroads was where you went in the 80’s. The Sooner Fashion Mall was very small and Penn Square, Quail Springs were too damn far away.

@@mhubbell9409I stopped at Penn Square mall for lunch once not long after Penn Square bank failed. It was eerie. Little did I know at that time how that event would affect the Okla economy for years.

Funny you mention See's. I took a walk around one of the malls in Orange, CA recently. See's was one of the only original stores left. Anchor department stores Broadway, JC Penney, & Sears gone. (Well, Broadway was replaced by Walmart long ago.) All bookstores gone. All men's clothing stores gone. All electronic stores (other than the relevant part of Walmart) gone. There used to be a pet store, but I don't even remember what that was last there.

And guess what, yer wife's been cheating on you and you never found out 😂

@@ChatGPT1111 Maybe poisoning me too...but the food's still good!

😂 pursued by a bazooka carrying princess!

"This mall has everytghing".

Were they on a mission from God?

The new Oldsmobiles are in early this year!

But they were puttin' da Band back together!

Agreed. There were amazing large seating areas, areas for kids to play in, and art installations in the malls I grew up with in Rochester NY and environs. They were FUN places to be in. The extra sales kiosks really ruined a lot of that in their desire to bring in more money per square foot. Suddenly there were no places to sit anymore, other than the food court, and you couldn’t just sit there; you had to buy something to justify sitting at the table. It made the experience exhausting rather than inviting, and paradoxically drove people away from malls. Pretty sad, actually. I still remember the day I ordered something off the Internet for the first time. I had this feeling that something momentous had just occurred. I had no idea how right I was.

Excellent point. It became a running joke that you'd get pressured and harassed by every kiosk vendor along your route. Nobody enjoyed or appreciated that.

Tell me again why America is so fat.

Yin and Yang, you complain about how big they got and on the other hand the old folks take walks in them, happy to have a covered, air conditioned place to get a little bit of activity year round

Indoor mall are very expensive security guards ; maintenance etc etc :indoor mall great cheap hangout for young people: Sam club & Costco got very cheap food in store & shopping 🛍 without the mall

@@Luke5100 I agree that America is obese, but a lot of the walking is done in the actual mall. It is inconvenient having to walk a mile just to get inside the mall especially when you have kids….

Wow. Sounds like you need a good walk now and then 🤷🏼‍♀️

That's a big part of the decline, but we're not allowed to talk about it.

We had a mall like that they closed it and now it has a bunch of offices jobs and what not in in it. My husbands job as a place there that holds servers for a medical insurance company.

@@lot2196 argy bargy from the fellas and their lovely ladies has killed more malls than amazon and walmart combined

Ah yes, the malls that featured only baby clothes and athletic shoe stores 😂

Yes I miss the 1980's Greater Minneapolis-St.Paul retail landscape. So many variety for a small metropolis.

Nah, it's very real. There are very few places for teens and young adults to socialize anymore.

It's because so many of the teens that were just there to cause trouble ruined it for everyone else that wanted to enjoy it. The mall was always a great hangout for my friends and I when we were young, but there was always that element of delinquents there, fighting, shoplifting, vandalizing, etc. It got so security would start dispersing groups of more than 4 or 5 teens, and yes they took away many of the places to sit. I'm old enough to still remember when our mall had several smoking lounges throughout the concourse.

actually, i believe it's mainly for profit, as it's a general trend even for malls in affluent areas,@@digitalfootballer9032

@@digitalfootballer9032even McDonald’s have cracked down on hanging out. Many if not most now impose a 30 minute time limit.

You can hang out by yourself at malls here in town,walk for hours and barely see a soul.

Correct. We're not allowed to talk about it.

Yep

I don't see why you can't talk about it, unless you're gonna claim only one race was responsible for the crime, but i'm from New Orleans and can say even with our demographics, the crime was equally represented by multiple colours and cultures.@@lot2196

Yes

And the malls were originally intended to avoid the so called city problems. “The mall” is part of the death of the city, and the internet is the death of the mall. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Ever seen "Mallrats"? (Directed by Kevin Smith)

@@skyden24195 Only the last Stan Lee seen on a basic cable channel.

Arizonan here! I became an adult just this past year and it’s so unfair that I couldn’t ever see Metrocenter (San Dimas) Mall in its prime. I hope my other local malls don’t have to suffer the same way.

That's basically what happened in the United States in the 70's and 80's, the downtown shopping areas were all marginalized and many left vacant as everything moved to the suburbs into malls. I still vaguely remember as a very young child in the early 80's going downtown in our small city and shopping with my mom, by the time I was a teen in the early 90's all that was long gone.

Here in Baltics if they would make online deliveries more easier, I'm sure most people would only shop online, since we are extreme introverts and hate socializing in general. 🙄

Flagstaff is 7,000 feet above sea level, so it gets lots of snow in the winter. Denver Colorado is only 5,000 above sl.

Been to the Mall of America. Same stores on 4 levels. I wasn't impressed.

Wow I didn't know that, cool. The History Guy got it wrong though. The first enclosed shopping mall was built in 1828 not 1956. It's called the Arcade & is in Providence Rhode Island & is still open today. Googled it just to double check it because I learned it from school field trips.

I'm disappointed that the West Edmonton Mall wasn't even mentioned. It was a tourist destination that had a huge international draw. It could almost be a story unto itself. The world's largest mall, situated not in one of the population dense American coasts or European countries, but rather in Edmonton alberta with a population that was 1/30 the size of New York City (the entire Province had a fewer people that Los Angeles itself). Could talk about Fantasy land and the fight with Disney. The Mindbender tragedy. The Pirate Ship and Ice Palace. The fact that, at one point, the Mall had more submarines that the Canadian Navy.

@@sdyrkach2785 as a resident of Minneapolis when the mall of America opened, a lot of us were asked why we never went to Canada's mall, and we answered, because nobody goes to Canada for fun.

@@IzzyTheEditorI've lived in California and Florida and have been to Canada 6 times for fun. Several Cruise stops, skiing Banff, the Montreal Olympics, intense white water rafting (Ottawa River), sightseeing Quebec City/Toronto/Vancouver/Victoria/Ottawa, Via rail journey and Niagara Falls. Amazingly beautiful country.

For years my city had one of the only chik fil a locations not inside of a mall. It was amazing as a kid, they had a better playground than any other restaurant and you didn't have to navigate the mall Parking

@jessicasmith5728Ames went under due to their 55 Gold program 😅😊

I wish Orange Julius had done the same! lol

Oh hellz yes--care to share the recipe?!

At least the icing recipe. @@ingridfong-daley5899

Yah, device consolidation really took its toll on major segments of consumer electronics. Look at a Radio Shack catalog from the 1980s or 90s; maybe 3/4 of it is gadgets that all got obsoleted by smartphones and computers.

The restrictions on teens had to happen because of thugs. Thug families move near malls, they see it as prestigious and they use malls to congregate, menace shoppers, shoplift, shoot each other, conduct drug transactions and abuse shop owners. THAT is the real reason malls died, they became dangerous. Age restrictions only help a little bit because thugs mentally remain juvenile criminals their entire lives. As middle aged people, they remain hateful and dangerous. Nobody is going to shop in an unpleasant, dangerous place.

but I like buying clothes in person better than on-line so I can feel the quality of the cloth and see to quality of the tailoring. I don't miss the mall as much as I do the department store. Walmart and Target clothing is not of high quality.

@@karenryder6317 Indeed. I'm fortunate enough to have a couple of Nordstrom stores nearby - I've favored them since High School because they have a lot of their stock available in tall sizes. Far more than any other department store. Rumor has it that all the Nordstrom boys are over 6 feet and they like to shop at their own store.

Now the malls are becoming crime centers, ironically enough.

Depends, usually the bigger and conveniently placed malls are still booming, but the superfluous nearby smaller malls seem to be the ones getting the axe, unless they innovative with unique experiences or vendors.

🍑💨

There are 2 excellent songs about malls and their rise and decline: " Then God Made Malls" by Uncle Bonsai (who also wrote songs about "K-mart", "Billboard Love", and the "Family Restaurant"); and "(Time just turned it all) Into A Mall" by Don Henry ( that's Henry with an R and not the Eagles guy).

wow... i remember when flagstaff mall was built and opened... it kinda killed off the downtown ... i got a job at that mall (one of the worst jobs i had and i had a few of those but i wasn't working in the cold or unemployed).... to tell you the truth the malls are dying off because society is changing ... malls expose persons to lax and passive controls of unsocial behaviors (crime and vandalism)... if social controls are re-inserted within the communities to reinforce positive social behaviors and personal social behavior is rewarded (currently it's not) then malls may "make a comeback"... but the "buying experience" of malls is pretty much gone, who really wants to "go shopping" anymore when you can get stuff delivered at your door?... and most persons try to avoid areas where antisocial behavior is accepted/tolerated so the idea of "gathering for a social/cultural experience" at a mall is kinda dead as well... maybe in the future, society/community will again start accepting some type of public personal norms and not tolerate all the public displays of daily protests and unsocial behavior... or most likely that "old school" sense of community and society is dead and gone and we'll all just creep along in isolation brought on by all the iconoclasts that seem to be the vogue... anyway, the iconic memories of "shopping malls" are most likely now just "history that deserves to be remembered"

@@superman9772. That happened to my hometown too. Beaver Falls PA. as well as other towns along the river. And that was another example of societal change-sadly I think. I agree with you😢

@@janetcarbone4213 you know he brought up "mall movies" and that culture... well, one he didn't mention is "skaterdater" (1965)... it's on youtube if you'd like to watch it, it's about 20 minutes long...

"Then God Made Malls" ( Uncle Bonsai): When we were small, life was complete/wandering and working in pastures of meat/ Little to do, little to wear/mornings for chores and evenings for prayer..... When we were small Father would say/ plan for your future with every new day/ God gives us shelter, clothing and health /the devil will tempt you with women and wealth...... Then came the light at the foot of the hills/it grew brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter/ Men with machines building walls in the weeds/a crew higher and higher and higher..... Father was silent as he pulled up the blind/he said, boys mark my words/ it's the end of mankind..... Father died broken, a man of belief/ Winter brought frostbite, famine and grief/ But there was a light we always could see/ to lead us back home, to set us all free..... Then God made malls, and we were saved/ The hills were plowed and the fields were paved/ We found a place to kneel and pray/with B Dalton books and Bon marche'.... Then came the light with the sale of the day/ it grew cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper/ Designer names and video games/ We sank deeper and deeper and depper and deeper...." There's more but you'll get the general idea. They're not a religious group either, in fact they're indeed extremely sacrilegious in other songs.

Yep, Shoppers’ World was the first drive-down, 2 story mall.

Yeah, them and Burlington Coat Factory. You can usually smell the cheap leather a hundred feet away.