I read a report this week about how the mall was “coming back, baby” and I’d like to take a moment to refute that.

I went to the mall last week, a thing I used to love but now fills me with unimaginable sadness.  This mall was recently sold, which would lead one to believe that it was about to transform into a beautiful butterfly. Instead, there’s a tattoo parlor, carnival food in the food court and at least 3 kids on BMX bicycles. I used to beg to go to this place.

It was the first place I ever had Taco Bell, which was a magical sit down restaurant somehow always covered in shredded lettuce, but never quite dirty. I drank many a Dr Pepper out of a plastic Batman cup there. The 1989 Batman movie transformed my brain in a number of ways, but the most unexpected has to be my love of the cinnamon twist, which debuted in a fun paper pouch with a Batman logo on them. To this day, purchasing cinnamon twists is the only type of gambling I partake in. For just $2, you get to see if you won a dessert.

I purchased a grilled cheese dipping taco from what now passes as the mall Taco Bell. I was impressed when the girl taking my order managed to do so without stopping her TikTok scroll and even more impressed that they actually had an up-to-date menu. I had gotten a grilled cheese dipping taco at another local Taco Bell and it was an absolute mess, so I wanted to try another location before writing the whole thing off (judging new fast food items is very important to me). Though I wasn’t impressed with the extra $1.50 tacked on as mall premium pricing, the taco came out quick, napalm hot and not overly messy. They run a tight, if sinking, ship there.

While I was there, I figured I should wander. The former Record Town is still standing, now as an FYE. I did not go in because there is no one else in there and somehow FYE corporate still thinks human interaction is something people want from the mall. Visiting an FYE is essentially like visiting an old friend now on life support, surrounded by Funko Pops that are 1-2 months away from becoming the nicest items in the dumpster. No, I do not think I’ll be getting your loyalty card. Look at your business. There’s no loyalty here. Loyalty is dead.

And for the record, my current estimate is that Funko Pops represent about 30% of mall inventory.

Having not satisfied my hunger with a single taco. I also got some Buffalo Wild Wings to go. The wings were small and dry, and there was not enough flavor on them to really impact the taste, but the dust of the Desert Heat Wings did somehow manage to make my fingers itch for about 24 hours.

I would have checked in on the Spirit Halloween currently possessing the old H&M, but the escalator was roped off and walking halfway across the mall to access the staircase seemed like a lot of work at the time. One used to be able to use the escalator in Sears to ascend, but Sears has become a spirit in status, if not name. Still, I was able to see that the H&M left a fancy vinyl “Goodbye and Thank You!” decal over one of it’s windows, which is a step up from the 8.5”x11” piece of paper on the plywood boarding up the Macy’s that says “Hey, maybe try the internet?”

I thought the big draw of the mall was a Christmas Tree Shop. I didn’t go in there because it’s the type of store where an old lady will fight you over curtains, but it certainly looked open. However I just looked up Christmas Tree Shops so I could give a better explanation of it than “crap store” and I just learned they closed all their stores on August 12th. It is very possible that it now stands as a trap for lost souls and all who enter are doomed to wander the aisles of b-stock home goods forever. Or it’s filled with rats eating expired popcorn, who knows?

Thus there remains one anchor store: JC Penney. I believe you could live in JC Penney for at least a month before anyone even noticed you, let alone asked you to leave. There are other people and employees in the store, they just do not care about what you’re doing. JC Penney exists for a venture capital ghoul to make money through some byzantine rent scheme, so everything else that goes on there is surplus to requirements. Sometimes they have nice shirts though.

There actually is one very nice store in the mall. They sell all the old action figures I went to the mall to get back when it was thriving. It is right next to the now closed secondary market sneaker place and around the corner from the previously mentioned tattoo place currently taking up residence in what used to be a Champs Sports. I would have spent more time looking around there, but the mall was actively draining my will to live.

Or maybe I see a little too much of myself in the mall. Way past expiration, but persisting regardless, filled with useless crap as the architecture slowly fails. I think in this example my pancreas is the Christmas Tree Shop and my lungs are—surprisingly—JC Penney. The mall has more pinball machines than I do though, so it’s got that on me.

Things I Like

That dipping taco was actually pretty good.

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