tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post195896379051834262..comments2024-03-28T17:12:01.740-04:00Comments on Face to Face: Dead malls and the bygone carnivalesque in American culture, part 1agnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-11460213173128370722019-11-22T00:05:06.287-05:002019-11-22T00:05:06.287-05:00The mall anchor store where I work, Homesense(TJ M...The mall anchor store where I work, Homesense(TJ Maxx company) recently experienced a steep drop-off in selling discount cards. What do you think this means? Would appreciate your analysis about the future of malls...<br /><br />Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-46356933360166146072018-12-09T20:07:28.881-05:002018-12-09T20:07:28.881-05:00Awhile ago, I remember reading an article about ho...Awhile ago, I remember reading an article about how some mall businesses lobbied to have a law passed that placed a curfew on teenagers at the mall. This happened in the early 2000s, when the crime rate temporarily rose.<br /><br />It made me realize that local businesses are often the ones responsible for policing public spaces. Not just by lobbying for certain laws, but by calling the police, also. Some bystander who constantly calls the cops may not be taken seriously, but a business who does so is, and some businesses form ties with local police.<br /><br />Businesses, of course, side with whoever spends money for their services. Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-43354890909911065272017-07-12T07:35:56.586-04:002017-07-12T07:35:56.586-04:00Dead Malls on youtube https://www.youtube.com/play...Dead Malls on youtube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQclearancepostnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-58929617494487244392010-07-04T12:33:01.599-04:002010-07-04T12:33:01.599-04:00Malls are still necessary in some places. Try walk...Malls are still necessary in some places. Try walking through an open-air shopping center in the middle of a Texas or Florida summer. There's a relatively new open-air mall in Las Vegas, not far from the municipal building that houses the county recorder's office. It's dead as a doornail in summer, because shopper's don't cotton to wandering from store to store in 110-degree heat. The point of a mall is cross-marketing, which is defeated when customers don't want to check out the other stores.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-1632616525662522292010-06-30T05:21:02.088-04:002010-06-30T05:21:02.088-04:00Diversity in shopping areas was shooting up from t...Diversity in shopping areas was shooting up from the '60s through the '80s, yet that didn't kill malls -- in fact, they were flourishing.<br /><br />If you ever wanted to fear black crime, it was from about 1975 to 1991. Watch Taxi Driver or any movie shot in New York in the mid-late 1970s to see what people were making themselves vulnerable to when they went out -- and yet they still went out!<br /><br />Plus malls are dead across the country, including lily-white suburbs, not just areas with a decent NAM population. Again just consider the Ogden City Mall from the Tiffany video -- Ogden was not taken over by NAMs.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-41186583815073592822010-06-29T20:23:48.321-04:002010-06-29T20:23:48.321-04:00Diversity is a mall-killer. People dont feel comfo...Diversity is a mall-killer. People dont feel comfortable around large numbers of "the other". There are three malls in our Metropolitian Statistical Area that are out in the undiverse burbs. They are doing fine financially, with tons of foot traffic. <br /><br />Ive seen what was once the biggest mall in the state literally lose 80% of its white customer base when it became "diverse". You'd have large numbers of young diverse males walking shoulder-to-shoulder 6-and-7-across down the mall aisles, intimidating other shoppers of families to move to store doorfronts to avoid them for kicks. Shoplifting went up, car-break-ins (once something that "just didn't happen") skyrocketed, and the mall had to hire security (the little white trucks with green-police-car-lights on the roofs). People still didn't come back though. <br /><br />The killer for me personally was the black teenaged scam artists who would set up shop at the mall entrances and openly (and very aggressively) solicited donations for obviously bullshit causes. This went on in roughly 1996 for about a year or so before the mall went through the apparent legal rigamorale to stop it. It was infuriating to tell some loudmouthed teenaged girl that you didn't have money to give to her "fund for ________", and have to listen to her harangue you when she loudly (with several people around her allied with her) noted that "you goin' shoppin', so you have some money". That scam, and the Farrakhan bums who were setting up shop at the interstate ramp, aggressively panhandling the whites a few weekends during one summer while they were stuck in traffic, is why I decided "fuck this place", and started driving across town to shop at the ritzy-new mall across town located out in whitetopia.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-14592545843331993222010-06-29T18:26:03.379-04:002010-06-29T18:26:03.379-04:00"many of the dead malls died because of compe..."many of the dead malls died because of competition from newer and larger malls in the area."<br /><br />That just means that the niche will fill up to a certain point, not that it will go through a downfall. So there's more than competition keeping the level steady; there's a dying off.<br /><br />"Downtown malls are more likely to struggle than their suburban counterparts"<br /><br />I've never been there, but I'm guessing Ogden, UT is not what most people would call "downtown." And anyway, downtown malls did fine for decades, as did suburban malls. The death of malls is across the board.<br /><br />"they weren't "safe" anymore."<br /><br />That was definitely the conclusion, but it's odd that people felt less safe in public during the '90s and 2000s when crime was plummeting, compared to the peak era of crime that was the 1980s.<br /><br />I think again your basic level of trust is what matters, since that's what colors your perception of how safe a place is. As your trust level falls, you perceive even safer places as less safe. It also keeps you less out in the open to be preyed on by criminals, so that dries up their niche and sends crime plummeting.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-90414430504013198202010-06-29T10:40:05.323-04:002010-06-29T10:40:05.323-04:00Despite the overwhelming presence of poor people a...Despite the overwhelming presence of poor people and nams at places like Wal-Mart or Target, these places haven't run out working and middle class people, including kids. The loitering spots of cafes and fast-food outposts haven't brought harm, either. The difference is the presence of all the older generations. Even rowdy nam kids mostly behave when they are outnumbered by *their* elders. These places are more personal than either the mall or the lifestyle center.<br />Just don't go to them at night or on Black Friday.Dahlianoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-68152150183714383752010-06-29T10:19:31.538-04:002010-06-29T10:19:31.538-04:00"Nor have these peaceful, human-scale spaces ..."Nor have these peaceful, human-scale spaces made us more sociable or trusting. Trust levels and "social capital" in general has been plummeting during the rise of lifestyle centers. Indeed, it's precisely because people began not to trust each other very much that they abandoned the more unpredictable malls in favor of the sleepy yet safer lifestyle center."<br /><br />You are definitely onto something here. I was a teenager in the nineties and hanging out at the mall with my friends. Even back then I wasn't too crazy about the place, because of what they sell, but my friends loved all those stores; for me, it was just a chance to be with them.<br />They (I followed) began leaving the mall for the same reason proffered by everyone I've ever encountered on the subject: they weren't "safe" anymore. In other words, the ghetto began to encroach. I remember one of the last times we were out as kids, probably in 1995-6, a huge gang of black teenagers was running around, laughing, and plowed accidentally into one of my friends. This person quickly apologized, but the mayhem was hardly interrupted. We read the writing on the wall and got out before we could become statistics.<br /><br /><br />These lifestyle centers will go the way of the mall, I believe. I like them neither more nor less. The one thing they have over the mall isn't their open space, but lack of menacing NAMs. That is already changing as they want some place to hang out, too.<br /><br />I wonder what the fate of the high-end malls will be. There is one in Tampa with a Neiman Marcus, but I've noticed over the years a few of the high end stores go out of business and be replaced by tacky shops; it's saving grace is that all the restaurants are located together with a clear demarcation between the "food court" (inside) and the upscale restaurants (outside) with their valet parking. This makes life so much better for the businessmen with money. <br /><br />Personally, I like the downtown centers and/or historic districts of towns and cities with their mom and pop stores, but they're completely different things.Dahlianoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-84181444976046977122010-06-29T10:00:14.963-04:002010-06-29T10:00:14.963-04:00One thing to note is that many of the dead malls d...One thing to note is that many of the dead malls died because of competition from newer and larger malls in the area. Not quite the same thing as saying that the mall concept is dead. <br /><br />The now-dead mall show in the Tiffany video, the Ogden Town Center, was a downtown mall rather than the standard suburban type. Downtown malls are more likely to struggle than their suburban counterparts, often because they were designed as "solutions" to declining downtowns rather than being carefully thought out to fill untapped demands.<br /><br />PeterPeterhttp://ironrailsironweights.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com