Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/30/the-mall-footage-from-a-dying.html
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I haven’t seen a Hickory Farms in over 20 years.
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Needs more zooming!
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Looks like the long-dead Cherryland Mall that was in Traverse City Michigan. It’s not very clear in the video, but I can still recall how the trash cans in shopping malls had those sand filled ashtrays on top of them, filled with cigarette butts and wads of chewing gum. Seems like a different universe when people were allowed to smoke indoors like that.
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Reminds me so much of visiting either Towne West mall or Twin Lakes mall in Wichita, KS. The silence is palpable.
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Holy crow - Hickory Farms! There was like a rule or something that it was in every mall I went into in the 1980s. I kept expecting to see a dusty video game arcade - but then remembered that by the early 1990s those were all mostly long gone…
At least they could have filmed a car chase inside before they demolished it, like the Blues Brothers did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIdGxR-aU6o
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The first mall in Tucson (El Con) that folded like that; it even had a fountain (but not with a sculpture inside). Now it’s a bunch of big boxes, but the original JCPenney is still there somehow. I remember going in ~2010 when there was JCPenney, Dillard’s, a poster shop and nothing else. Weird and spooky.
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That was Dixie Square in Harvey, IL. When I was a kid, my family sometimes went there to shop - and it definitely had a Hickory Farms. After they trashed it filming the movie, it was left to rot until it was finally demolished in 2012, after many half-baked plans for redevelopment. The site is still vacant.
Not far away in Matteson, Lincoln Mall, opened in 1973 and one of many factors in Dixie Square’s demise, itself was closed in 2015 and demolished in 2017. They went to a great deal of trouble to surgically separate the Carson Pirie Scott store from the rest of the mall, only for Carson’s to close early last year, with the rest of the chain following suit shortly afterward. It still feels weird for me when I drive past there, and Matteson in general is ground zero for the Retail Apocalypse.
This is The Mall, first opened in Huntsville, Alabama and demolished in 1998.
Did they move the mall? Was it later opened somewhere else?
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First up - I hope whoever made that “The Mall” sign is still rotting in jail for their crime. Damn, that was unnecessarily ugly…
Secondly - From here in the UK, malls always seemed like a very American thing. Here every big town had a High Street, and in the 90’s many of them were pedestrianised. So people would drive or take the bus to the nearest big town, where one or two streets would function somewhat like a Mall. Except it was randomly laid out, and in the open air. So it felt more organic and less forced. It was much more pleasant to shop on a high street…
Sadly, we got malls over here gradually - often smaller, but just as artificial and sanitised.
Both our malls and our high streets are dying now, due to a combination of internet shopping and high rents and local taxes for stores.
Thirdly - Seriously, that sign is a travesty. Please tell me someone went to jail for that.
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Disagree. It’s screaming for I Can’t Turn You Loose:
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Considering it was built in Huntsville in probably the 70’s, it was likely right in character.
I wish my commercial architect grand-uncle-in-law were still alive. I could ask if he was involved. He mentioned a couple of shopping malls when he was alive.
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Clearly naming isn’t their strong suit.
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I feel like this could be the mall near my house, only the owner/developer uses the empty stores to store his odd collections (merry-go-round figurines, motorcycle collection, etc.). This makes me want to go shoot footage this weekend to preserve the memory.
One pops up in our local mall every Christmas season. It’s only there for a couple of months, but it’s reliably there every year.
Right?!? And have pet stores in malls? That part made me feel a little good actually, that we’ve moved past that.
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I was assuming that it opened in 1998 and was demolished that same year. No wonder it was deserted; it wouldn’t be open for another four years!
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Suddenly flashing back to the years I spent in the mid-90’s working at the Books-A-Million in Eastwood Mall in Birmingham, AL… It too had a prolonged, lingering death over the time I was there. The mall has since been demolished, and box stores built on the site. Weird how one becomes attached to such ugly places.
ETA: And here it is! BAM would have been on the left, just as these guys enter the mall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MKbe4AsL5U
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Minimalist before it was cool.
