I’m a child of the 80′s, so I have a lot of mall-related memories. I spent my formative years in the glow of the screens from the video arcade. By merely listening to the arcade’s background noise, I could tell you where I was. I can visualize the layouts of old, forgotten chain stores. I remember Lechmere.
These days, malls are dying, and it’s bittersweet. On one hand, they’re monuments to naked consumerism. On the other hand, they are fun to roam, and house some of the best people watching moments out there. But, I rarely visit them anymore; it’s mostly a holiday thing.
Last Saturday, I headed over to Alderwood Mall. I didn’t buy anything, and I hadn’t planned to. That’s counter-intuitive, but my twisted logic is this: Everything is way too expensive. Some of these retailers appear completely ignorant of the existence of the internet. The prices are an affront to anyone who’s ever perused Amazon’s search results. I just wander, snap photos, then go home and look up the thing you’ll actually buy.
Highlights
Never is that more obvious than touring Brookstone, the nation’s leading emporium for massage chairs and novelty golf/desk accessories. It’s a fun shop. They can stick a pillow on virtually anything. Just browse, fiddle around, snap photos, then promptly buy it elsewhere. It’ll cost half as much and you won’t have to admit you enjoyed shopping in Brookstone.
The Disney Store is another great stop. Are you looking for a gift for your your nephew (who’s in kindergarten) or maybe your geek friend (who’s significantly older)? For the latter, why not buy a six pack of Tron novelty flying discs. Those final weeks of product testing will fly by in a blur of molded foam.
There are two Gamestops at the mall and it makes perfect sense. Want to buy a $15 videogame for your neice? Are there more than two people in line? Grab a tent and some dry rations. Customers do not buy things. They are processed a la Soviet Russia, thanks to the corporate policy of attempting to upsell every single item no less than six times. No, I don’t want the strategy guide. I also don’t want your gift card or those crappy ads. And no, I don’t want to preorder Fallout 7. Can I just go?
I really liked conspicuously unlabeled store. Want some hoopedy doo masquerading as foot therapy? The on-hand staff is dressed in blue scrubs (and therefore qualified) and completely available to separate you from your money.
I’m embarrassed to mock Teavana because I bought something for my wife there last Christmas. But, I had a good excuse. She likes tea! If she didn’t like tea, then it would have been a very thoughtless gift purchased at the last minute to fill out an empty element of my shopping list. But, it wasn’t.
About the calendar stores, I have only questions: How do they stay in business? And just how many cute kitten calendars can our economy support? Maybe the bubble will burst in 2011.
Feeling old and out of touch? You’ve probably been shopping for clothes. First, Victoria’s Secret has always frightened me. I caught an eyeful of a family peering through the glass to look at the latest pair of pink sweatpants with the word “Juicy” plastered on the ass. Something about that unsettles me.
But nothing has the bland-and-creepy vibe like Abercrombie & Fitch. When I first passed it, my eyes literally watered due to all the cool. Just kidding. It was the four gallons of cologne. I think they spray it from the sprinkler system in the morning. I simply can’t shop anywhere that requires a triple dose of allergy medication. I don’t need knit pullovers that badly. Plus, you can feel the bass from the sound system before you can hear the store music. And there are those weird, brown privacy blinders on the facade. Inside, everything’s illuminated by spotlights.
I would have to shop in a state of persistent nausea and mildly deafening confusion, tears blurring the inside of my gas mask. Trapped in some bizarre, preppy rave of fetishistic clothing worship, I’d swerve from rack to rack. Damn their $30 hoodies.
When it was time to grab a snack at the food court, I got in touch with my inner snob. The food isn’t very… food-like. It’s oversized, and everything has a neon glow. Especially the food. Everything is deep fried in buttered corn syrup, tastes like guilt purée, and costs a lot of cash. How much does diabetes cost? I was right next to a Cinnabon and I never checked.
So, there you go. I arrived at the mall, battled with various bland demons, and emerged not-poorer. It’s everything I hoped for. I didn’t buy a single gift or thing to eat. I’m pretty sure malls aren’t supposed to work that way, but I made it out of there with some great gift ideas. It’s not shopping. It’s intel.
You know, I’ve spent an astonishing chunk of the last twenty years mourning the loss of the independent bookstore. These days my guess is that Amazon is going to put Barnes & Noble and Borders out of business, and the independents will undergo a small renaissance. I think people will decide they want a place to hang out and browse books, and I think they’ll buy the occasional book to pay for the privilege.
Don’t know what that says about malls, but I haven’t commented in a while and I thought I throw it in. Hope you’re well.
Agreed. In fact, around here, indie-bookstores are de facto community centers. When we visit Third Place Books, it’s amazing just how many people use the thing for that purpose. I don’t know how the accounting ledger looks, but it sure appears to be successful. Malls, on the other hand, geesh – lousy for that purpose.
Of course mall Stuff costs more than amazon Stuff. Bricks and mortar cost money. Not to mention spotlight, perfume, shades and employees still getting used to their new contacts.
And yes the Things That Look Like Food are expensive. Someone else is making your food, and someone else is making a living ordering it, designing it, packaging it, sweeping the landing docks and slipping grift to their congress Critter. Shouldn’t “Good Americans” want to do their part by sustaining the unsustainable?
I think it’s been 10 years since I bought anything (except food and coffee) new. 20 years since I stopped buying processed food (well…) by shopping at the outside of the stores. Lost the car, along with gasoline, tax, license, tax, insurance, tax, tires, and tax. As a result I live in the Puget Sound area for less than many people pay in gym fees. Oh poor me. Oh how I suffer when I remember that I never, ever liked malls.
I went downtown at Xmas, my first time ever downtown, to buy a couple of bestseller books. Or videos. Barnes and Noble was out-of-stock. (Or else I didn’t look deep enough into the teen vampire section to find my target.) Borders had one of the options I sought, thanks to nobody shopping there, but I finally had to ask a salesperson to direct me to it … located in the “Independent Readers” section. Whatever the hell that is. Are all the other sections for Dependent Readers? It took me a while to collar the salesperson who was busily talking on a headset while strolling around, apparently to another salesperson hiding from customers in the back stacks. Too bad I didn’t want Clive Custler or I’da been done in 5 minutes.
It’s all too hard. Life’s too short. Bye bye American Dream. Drove my Chevy to the Levy and pushed the bastard over the edge.