I went to the mall last week and the first thing I saw was a “bitcoin depot” by the entrance. I texted a photo to my friend Sabine who said it’s “antithetical to bitcoin for there to be an atm for it in the mall.” I hadn’t been to the mall in years, certainly not since the pandemic, and so much of it felt antithetical to itself. For example a corridor of the mall where Warby Parker, Casper, and Peloton storefronts stood next to each other. Sometimes you start out disrupting an industry and end up in a mall! Happens to the best of us.
I’ve only been to this particular mall a couple times, and I didn’t remember how fancy it is. It has Louis Vuitton and Tiffany’s stores. There’s both Eddie Bauer and L.L Bean. There’s a Williams Sonoma and a Crate & Barrel. That’s a fancy mall! I went because all my denim shorts are too small now and I wanted a pair of Levi’s shorts but wanted to try them on at the Levi’s store. I had a day off because my job gave everyone at the company a “paid mental health day” (which I think was just a way to give everyone a four-day weekend for memorial day). But it was apt because this was a bleak week for the general state of Society. Going to the mall on a weekday morning is one of the more frivolous things you can do in the wake of mass tragedy.
Aside from going to the Levi’s store (a success, I got the 501 mid-thigh shorts, if you’re curious), the one other place I wanted to go was Auntie Anne’s. A hot, buttery Auntie Anne’s pretzel is one of our country’s finest foods, and it’s a shame there aren’t more of them outside of the mall space (though this would probably ruin the novelty). The Auntie Anne’s in this mall was in a depressing location, practically hidden underneath an escalator, like ’arry Potta living under the stairs. There were two older ladies ordering at the counter before me, and when it was my turn to order, the cashier said to me “People crack me up asking if the pretzels come in on a truck. Of course they come in on a truck!”
While I was sitting in an armchair eating my pretzel – you know how malls just put loose armchairs all over the place – I noticed that on the escalator, the one above the pretzel stand, there was an ad for Klarna, advertising the fact that you can use it in-store too, not just for online shopping. Klarna is one of those services that’s basically like layaway and lets you pay for things over time instead of all at once. They’re extremely popular right now, especially with online shopping, and it’s driving a lot of young people to debt. Seeing this ad on the side of the escalator reminded me of a tweet I saw recently that said “the strip club is sadly a leading indicator and I can promise y’all we r in a recession lmao.” It makes sense, I’ve seen Hustlers!
To be honest, I thought the mall would look bleaker than it did. But since it’s a Fancy Mall, there were rich people wandering around with shopping bags. The type of people who go to a Michael Kors store on a Thursday morning. The bleakest thing to me was seeing that those mall kiosk stores are still abundant. They’re the type of stands that always change what they sell based on what’s trending. For example one stand was selling those big pop-it fidget toys that are gonna live in our landfills for eternity. Another stand sold the type of vulgar shirts you see for sale on the boardwalk. One shirt had images of guns on it and said “D.A.D.D – Dads Against Daughters Dating.”
I took a photo of the stuffed animals in the window of the Squishables store, which I guess is like a Squishmallow competitor. An employee inside saw me taking a photo and came out to try and lure me inside to buy one. This led me to believe that they sell Squishables to adults all the time.
A few months before the pandemic hit, I read the novel Severance by Ling Ma. It’s a book about a global pandemic, and I’m glad I read it then because it would hit completely differently now. The book is about a pandemic that has wiped out most of the population, leaving survivor Candace virtually alone in an abandoned New York City. The virus first turns people into zombies, walking and driving without any consciousness until eventually they die. Candace eventually joins another group of survivors who are journeying to a bunker that their leader promises is a safe haven. When they get there, it turns out to be an abandoned mall. Everyone in the group chooses a mall store to be their living quarters. When I was at the mall I thought about which store I would choose to be my living quarters. Crate & Barrel would be a fun one because I love home goods and they probably have example beds set up. Bath and Body Works would be suffocating due to all the candles that smell like cupcakes. L.L. Bean would be the most logical choice because in addition to all the clothes and gear, they probably have dehydrated camping food.
When I was at the mall, I also thought about how the mall could’ve been something great, a real hallmark of a functional society, but instead it represents everything bad with capitalism and cars and suburbs (or something like that).
The American shopping mall was created and conceived by Victor Gruen, an Austrian Jewish immigrant who wanted to create a walkable shopping and arts center like what he knew from back home. His vision included stores but also art and outdoor spaces. He wanted a walkable community because he hates cars. “Their threat to human life and health is just as great as the exposed sewer,” he once said.
It’s funny to think how people now drive to the mall just to have a place to walk around. Obviously malls diverged from Gruen’s vision immediately. (What if ear piercing kiosks and Build-A-Bear were in his original plan?) He eventually renounced the modern mall and wanted no association with them. People called him “the father of the shopping mall” and he said “I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all. I refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities.”
On the one hand, there’s no real reason for malls to exist anymore and they probably won’t for much longer. On the other hand I love the novelty of a mall and I love walking through stores. On the foot, every time I leave a mall –or any sort of vast shopping center I feel dazed, like I’m coming out of a consumer hypnosis.
I’ll give another report when I go to the mall again in another 3-4 years.