Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/16/stranger-things-teaser-hawkin.html
…
4 Likes
You had me at Orange Julius.
7 Likes
Vicious homage to Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
7 Likes
I was thinking Dawn of the Dead, but your mileage might vary.
5 Likes
That pic of Steve Harrington working a shitty ‘80’s mall job’ just made my day.
13 Likes
Don’t get me wrong, I love Dawn of the Dead, but the mall montage in Fast Times had to do with teens being both most of the customer base and employee base of the mall, which is what I think they are going with here,
4 Likes
Right up the road from me.
2 Likes
Walden Books, how I miss thee.
7 Likes
Yeah but this is Stranger Things. It will start resembling dawn of the dead before the season is over.
7 Likes
Ah yes, Gwinnett Place. I used to work in the General Cinemas across the parking lot.
3 Likes
I’d like to bring to everybody’s attention at there’s a sub sub genre dedicated to mall nostalgia* and I love it despite myself
*when I was young I hated malls because I was poor, but they seemed reliable and eternal. It’s been messing with my head that younger generations will probably not have that, and that malls will probably become vague historic signifiers like 1910’s St Louis stuff.
1 Like
WITH AN EGG!
me too. this whole thing felt so authentic i’d swear it was real. lots of attention to detail for sure, but the Wicks ‘n’ Sticks and Orange Julius put it over the top for me. the one niggle i have is that i didn’t see an arcade – there’s no way a mall built in 1983 or 1984 didn’t have an arcade in it.
8 Likes
I’m not old enough to remember new malls opening, but I did get dragged through enough of them in my youth before the 80’s got sand-blasted off of them. I have to confess I was playing a little bit of “spot the since-bankrupt company” throughout the whole thing. Waldenbooks, Sam Goody, RadioShack…
The squiggly neon blue-and-purple “Mall” in the logo was pretty on point too. I want to say there’s a local mall that still has that kind of logotype, but it could also just be my mind playing tricks. It’s distressingly easy to map this fictional mall onto any number of ones I’ve actually been to.
2 Likes
But here’s the thing that doesn’t quite make sense “in-universe” – the “ad” is for a mall that has yet to be opened (“coming next summer”). So presumably it would be have been filmed in a mall elsewhere than Hawkins. So what is Steve doing working at Scoops Ahoy? Either we are dealing with Steve clones or Starcourt has some time travel technology!
You’re overthinking it, methinks…
1 Like
Hello, sailor!
2 Likes
I’m hoping there’s a friendly neighborhood game store in that mall. I’d pay good money for some more shout-outs (shouts-out?) to D&D – or better still Traveller or Top Secret or Gamma World.
1 Like
No arcade shown, and no hobby store. Every mall of my youth had at least one hobby shop selling model rockets and model trains and model cars, tanks, airplanes.
