Mall Trip
From Dawn to Death Throes
Yesterday was cool and gloomy, so Sam and I thought it would be fun to go someplace we hadn’t gone in years: the mall. We picked one close to us known for its more staid, upscale shops- Madewell and J. Crew, for example, rather than Hot Topic and Piercing Pagoda.
A whole lot has transpired since 2018, when we were last in this particular mall. For one thing, we discovered that the Madewell and J. Crew have been replaced by Hot Topic and Piercing Pagoda. We walked the corridors and saw not one store that looked like we’d be even remotely their target demographic. Many were empty with big RETAIL SPACE AVAILABLE signs affixed to their front windows.
The mall itself was bustling, though with zero actual shoppers, just families looking for a way to kill time with their kids and roaming herds of feral teens. The food court was packed. I reminisced about yesteryear, when the mall had a fun carnival vibe, its recirculated air stale but electric with retail possibility. Today, it felt like we’d entered the Ninth Circle of Hell.
We finally ended up at Macy’s, where the first thing to greet us was one of those yellow danger signs with the airborne red stick figure signifying Danger! Peligro! We proceeded with caution, wondering what pool of vomit or spilled milkshake we’d just missed. Two salesladies in the makeup department had gotten into a screaming match. Sam inspected some suits before remembering how much he hates wearing suits. We walked up a broken escalator to the home furnishings section to a towering display of Food Ninjas and KitchenAid mixers, as well as a clearance section of furniture that looked like a set piece from 1985. I told Sam that a splotched beige sectional marked $2,400 was so gross that I would not have accepted it had it been offered to me for free. We clomped our way back down the broken escalator to the parking lot to the inevitable traffic jam on the Merritt to home.
Once upon a time I was a teen roaming the New Haven mall with my friends, feeling every molecule of my independence. Once upon a time I was the mother of toddlers I carted on inclement days to this very same mall as entertainment, and later, the mother of pre-teens I brought after finally caving in to their pleas to go to Claire’s and Abercrombie and Fitch, and still later, the mother of teens I left off with their friends so that they, too, might enjoy their first taste of autonomy, and also, Panera.
I was there for the dawn of the mall and now, I have seen its death throes.
Thomas Wolfe once famously observed you can never go home again, and this applies to the mall. I guess the mall experience has historically been in flux, but as a construct, malls weathered the shifting sands of societal change. Yesterday, though, the curtain was coming down fast. It made me sad, a little, but my sorrow was immediately offset by the relief I felt upon arriving to my actual home just in time to see the Amazon van pull up, and the sneakers I’d ordered online dropped off. Convenient, predictable; all those things a mall is not. I’m finally ready to accept not going home, and embrace staying home.