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Selects: Live From San Francisco: How Malls Work · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. This is your co host of
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know here, Chuck Bryant, and I'm gonna
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: recommend that you listen to this week's select episode live
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: from San Francisco, colin How Malls Work. This was in
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: February of twenty seventeen, February nineteenth specifically, and this was
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: our Sketch Fest performance for that year. And I'm not
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: sure how many times we did this topic live that year,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: but I just wanted to kind of put this in
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: as a Saturday Select as a way of saying, hey,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: here's what our live shows sound like, and they are
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun, and there's even a lot more
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: fun that gets edited out of these. So we're going
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: on the road this year, as you know, and we're
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: gonna hit probably six or seven more cities before it's
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: all said and done in twenty twenty three. So I
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: wanted to throw a live show in there to show
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: you what was all about. So please to enjoy this
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: week's Select live episode How Malls Work. Welcome to Stuff
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Brian,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: We're in beautiful San Francisco, California, at the Castro Theater.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: You should thank you. It's wonderful, our biggest, our biggest
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: show to date. Seriously today, yep, on a Sunday afternoon.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Ye who knew San Francisco sketch Fest. All right, So
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  Speaker 1: we're talking today everybody about a little something called the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Mall And I'm not joking. Yeah, that's what I have.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: So that's good. So we've been wanting to do something
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: on the mall for years now and years and years,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and we thought, well, what does San Francisco if not
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the Mall? Right, they're gonna love this one, and I
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: guess we were wrong. Now, you guys will love it.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I promise it's just like um, like the Grass episode.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: You may have been like, I'm not listening to that,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: and then you finally ran out of episodes. Listen to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the Grass episode and you're like, that wasn't as bad
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: as I thought it was gonna be. This will be
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: similar to that experience, okay, except the Grass episode was free.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I promise we will give it our all. I don't
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: know why we're selling it like this is going downhill
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: so fast. That's great, okay, so uphill, shall we get
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: in the way back machine? Ooh, which is imaginary? Oo.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: So when you think of shopping mall, you think of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the mall. Right, everybody knows what the mall is. If
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: there's somebody who doesn't know what the mall is, raise
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: your hand, and whoever sitting next to that person, punch
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: him in the arm really hard, be like, come on,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: you know what the mall is. I assume San Francisco
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: has malls somewhere. Oh yeah, they've got mall. I've never
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: seen one. They're probably out a bit. It's not like
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: a mall in the middle of the mission, or is there.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. Right, Okay, there's a few. Oh
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you did, I did a little They pop up here
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: or there. You guys will know, because I'll be like,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: so if we're we're all in the way back machine,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and we're going all the way back back back back
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: to ancient Rome where the actual the first what you
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: could consider a shopping center appears, and it was called
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Trajan's Market. And Trajan's Market was built in something like
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: one oh seven. I think, yeah, that's early. I think
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: its anchor store was Trajan's Horse that was okay. Sorry.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: If I had a store back there, that would have
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: totally called it Trajan's Horse. Yeah yeah, And it's known
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: as the world's oldest shopping center for good reason. Again.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: It was built in one oh seven and right now
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: it's in ruins. There's some guy who sells those little
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: balls with the raccoon tails on the end of them
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: on a tray, but he's technically outside of the mall
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't really count to the mall's closed. It
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: has been for several millennia now, but the oldest continually
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: operated what you would might call an outdoor market or mall,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: is the Grand Bazaar with an A three. A's actually two,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: now there's three. You've been drinking, Yeah, just not together
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: be a z a r oh oh gotcha, yeah, I
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: guess if I'm not gonna checking his math checks out,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: that's a joke from Fletch. If I'm not mistaken, I
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: don't like all right, deep cut the Grand Bizarre Istanbul.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Between fourteen fifty five and fourteen sixty one is when
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: that was built, and it is still an operation today.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: About five thousand coboard shops still gets about a quarter
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: million visitors a day. So it's still rocking day. Yeah, yeah,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of folks. So you've got what medieval market
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: towns kind of started to come later, seaports, all these things,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: these commercial districts where people went to shop. They all
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: had to kind of be centered in an area together
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: because people rode horses, or they walked, or they were
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: chased by their people, whatever. But you had to go
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: and get all your shopping done at one place. Right,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: And that's just kind of a very ancient idea, and right,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: it's wonderful. By the turn of the twentieth century here
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: in the US, we had something we still do. It
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: hasn't gone away. Pre mall. We had the department store.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And I think I even mentioned this on another show.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: It didn't dawn on me, you know how, like the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: simplest words dawn on you late in life, like what
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: it really means. I just always said, Hey, a department store.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: It really just occurred to me a couple of years ago, like, oh,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: it's a store full of many departments. Right, never really
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: thought about it. Do you ever have those? It's kind
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of nice department stores thirteen stories high in Chicago, the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Marshall end Field Company and Marshall Field, Marshall Field and Company.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: And then in Detroit there was one called J. L.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Hudson's that was twenty five floors of department store, twenty
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: five floors of retail space. And this thing took up
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: like a whole block. Yeah, and there's nineteen eleven, so
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff. It is a lot of stuff.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty eight, though, if you back up a
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: little bit, the first sort of enclosed shopping center that
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: you might kind of consider a mall mall even though
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: we really don't, as you'll see, because it didn't have
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: an arcade, even though it is it's called the Westminster Arcade,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: fun ironically didn't have an arcade. And Providence, Rhode Island.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Has anyone ever been to this place? Yeah? I've been?
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Have you really? Yes? I didn't know that. Yeah, you
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: didn't type in here I've been there. Yeah, all right,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I didn't know I needed to say that. Well, it
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: was assumed. It's a pretty cool place. So if you
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: look it up online, it doesn't look like the mall
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: that you would consider a mall. Looks like sort of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: like a Greek revival building and it's like a big
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: ceiling Yeah, it's really nice. It's got three it sort
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: of looks like a train station. It's kind of three floors.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And recently they were going to demolish it, but someone
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: swooped in and built micro apartments. Now you can live
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: in there and they're really kind of cool. And I
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: was gonna explain again what a micro apartment was, but
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I forgot where I am. Yeah, so you all know,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: isn't that like a dresser drawer? Yes, and you walk
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: through the little thing that's like, oh my god, I
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: love living in thirty square feet and it's just some
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: guy standing in a broom cloth pretty much. Uh, screw
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: this up, herbs. Wait even well, even back further than this,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Russia should get its due right, even even before them,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: even before the the the Westminster Arcade, there is this
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: thing called the ghost veted Voor. And I looked at
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the pronunciation, but I should qualify that I looked up
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the pronunciation on the same site that I looked up
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the pronunciation on Disha chain, which I called dixiea chain
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: throughout the entire Underground City episode. So so take that
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: for what it. I was about to say, all our
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Asian friends, let us know that was wrong, but really
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: everyone of every race let us know that was wrong,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Thank you dummies. After World War two, things really kind
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: of evolved with the shopping center though. That's when things
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: kind of started going in In nineteen fifty Seattle's Northgate
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Center was But I feel like we say several times,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the first thing we think of a zamal. I guess
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  Speaker 1: it was just part of the evolution, right. Southdale was
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  Speaker 1: the first real mall. All right, so Southdale we're gonna
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: pick up with Southdale. Southdale was in Edina, Minnesota. A dinah,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: thank you live corrections very nice? Where were you? And
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I was saying Dixie a chance over and over and over. Deal. Well,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: previous to that, boy, we're jumping all around this designer
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: and really the man who were gonna either thank for
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the mall or blame for the mall, depending on how
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you feel about malls is a gentleman named Victor Gruen.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Anyone want to correct me on that. He's an Austrian
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: architect and he designed Northland Center in Michigan. Is that correct? Yes?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And it was. Northland Center is in Southland, Michigan. Now
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it's so confusing, it's terrible. It had a what was known,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: and I said anchor store earlier, and this is what
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  Speaker 1: malls have. They have these anchor stores which are still
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  Speaker 1: to this day, mainly department stores. And that anchor store
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: was Hudson's Department Store, had about one hundred and ten
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: other stores. But it still wasn't a real mall mall
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  Speaker 1: because it wasn't as you'll see, introverted, correct, and it
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: wasn't enclosed. It was open air. Yeah, like you know
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: when you go to those outlet malls today where it's
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: just all you're walking around outside like an idiot. You know,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: this is kind of like what Southfield was like get
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and that's what all shopping malls were like up to
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that point. They weren't enclosed. It was nineteen fifty six
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: in a Dina, Minnesota when the first enclosed mall like
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: we think of it today came about. Yeah, and I
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: actually looked up the previous Northland. They did close that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: in in the seventies and it finally shuddered for good
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, and I found this website
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: that said twelve weirdest things left behind in the Northland
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Center And it wasn't that exciting, but there was one
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the group to tension room and I started thinking, holy crap,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: malls had jails. Yeah, And I looked it up and
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: someone said I went to Yahoo. Answers like, where else
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: do you go to get the real truth? And the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: number one voted up answer said, it's not a real cell.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: It's just a small dark room with no windows, in
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: a chair and a camera in it that you're not
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: allowed to leave. It's like and this one I took
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: micro department basically, this one had changed on the benches
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: and I was like, nah, that's a jail cell. Yeah.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So I saw that too. There was like a target
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: cart under a spotlight. I think. I thought that was beautiful. Yeah,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: it was very arty, haunting. I'm with you, lady, all right.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: So jumping back forward again to Minneapolis. Outside of Minneapolis
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: is it Adena, Diana, Thank you, nineteen fifty six Southdale,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: twenty million bucks. The anchor store was Donaldson's and Dayton's, right,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: who can forget Donaldson's? I did, okay, And Dayton's actually
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: commissioned this mall to be built because they were building
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: a new outpost in the suburbs of Minneapolis. And it
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: wasn't just by coincidence that a Diana was ten miles
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: away from downtown Minneapolis, because again this is nineteen fifty six,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: so it's during the Cold War, and that's actually right
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: outside the eight mile blast radius of atomic bomb were
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: it to be dropped on Minneapolis. Because of course that's
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: what the Ruskies were thinking, We're going from Minneapolis first.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But they've built a mall outside of the blast radius,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: so I guess we'll just give up. So the original
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: idea for them all from Victor Gruin, was too he
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: wanted to kind of, you know how they have these
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: mixed use centers. Now, he had this idea way back
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: then and he wanted people to live there and kind
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: of congregate there. And we'll get a little more to
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: this later, but it sort of ended up just being
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: a shopping mall, to his disappointment. But he modeled it
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: on Northgate in Seattle, and sort of the big idea
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: was that you go to these department stores because that's
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: where people were used to. But how do you get
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: them to these other stores? Was the big question, right,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: how do you get them chopping? Oh at the mall? Yeah,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: like they're there because people went to department store. So
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: if you put a department store out in the suburbs.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: They'll go to the department store. They're like, oh, I
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: thought I was supposed to take a left, Now I'm
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: taking a right. I'm at the department store. Who cares. Right.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: The problem is is if you put one hundred and
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: ten other stores coming off of that department store, they
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: just go to the department store and leave. Not good,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: right if you're one of these other stores. So what
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Northgate figured out, and what is mind numbingly obvious but
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: really works, is you just take this department store, put
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: another department store, and then put the shops in between them,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and then the people take a rite. But they should
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: take a left. But they're fine, they're going to the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: department store. Oh, if there's another department store, well, I'll
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: just walk past this. Maybe i'll buy that, I'll buy
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit of this. Sure, i'll take a feather
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: boa And then they walk into the other department store
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: and consumerism is saved. That's right. It was revolutionary at
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the time. So he built he was commissioned at least
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: by Dayton's department store to build this kind of advanced
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: shopping center. They didn't call them malls at the time.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: They called them advanced shopping centers, and that's so high tech.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: He actually added space for a competitor at the other end,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: because you had this idea like how to keep people there,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: And I don't know how he talked Dayton's into it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Were like wait, wait, yeah, like hold on a second, no, no,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: we're paying you to do this, and you want to
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: put a competitor's store in there. He's like, yeah, it'll work,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: trust me. So a few minutes ago I mentioned that
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: it was introverted. My uncle's still texting me, still looking
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: for parking, just circling the castro at this point. So
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: we mentioned introverted and extroverted. Malls previous to this were outdoor,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and like we said, they were extroverted. So in other words,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: you walk the perimeter and the stores faced the outside
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: and they had doors on them that you would walk
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: into if you wanted to shop. So he had this
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: idea like, wait, let's reverse all that. Let's turn it
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: all inside. Where you walk into this huge building. You
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: got these two stores on both ends, and there are
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: no doors. They might have a gate they lower it night,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: but it's just open. Like people will just walk through
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: this little concourse and all the stores are wide open
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: for everyone. It's air conditioned, it's heated, not at the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: same time, at appropriate times, especially in a place like Minneapolis,
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: it's probably a nice place to go in the wintertime. Yeah,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: it was a big deal. He introverted them is what
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: they're called, right where they look in on themselves, and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: they're enclosed as well. So for the first time ever,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you could just walk around this beautiful place with trees,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and he put like a twenty foot bird cage, and
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: there were goldfish ponds and all of this stuff. And
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: it'd be the middle of winter and you could walk
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: around in short sleeves and be like, I live in
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a Dinah, not a dina. The other thing he kind
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: of nailed right out of the gate was previous to this,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: shopping malls were usually or shopping centers are on one floor,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: and they were spread out over this big, broad area
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and you had to enter from the outside and walk
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: around the cold and it was all this one big,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: single level. And he said, how about this, how about
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: we stack it, because this is a genius. Everyone put
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: a store on one end, put a store on the
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: other end. You stack him on top of each other.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: You put escalators on both sides. You park in this side,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: you go into your department store, you walk down on
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the first level to get to the other department store,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you get down the escalator, and then you walk back
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: on the other level to get to your car. And
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you've seen every store, right, and it was genius. It
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: was retail genius, exactly pretty amazing. And again we take
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: this for granted now, but at the time everyone's like, hum,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I never thought of that. Well, the point that we
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: take this for granted, like all of this sounds brain dead.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: All of this came essentially from this one guy, this
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: dude named Victor Grewitt, who was kind of like a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: high artsy Fartsia society type from Austria who fled the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Nazis in nineteen thirty eight and was a self taught
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: architect right who just started designing them all and he
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: invented the mall, and he got basically everything right out
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: of the gate, actually amazing. The Economist has a really
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: great quote about him. They say that he it was
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: as if Orville and Wilbur Wright invented not just manned
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: flight but also tray tables and duty free service. Not bad.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: The other thing he got right right out of the
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: gate was these low balconies. You know, if you'd ever
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: go into them all. You know, if you're on that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: top floor, you can look down and say, I gotta
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: go into Chess King and get some parachute pants. Or
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: if you're down on that bottom floor, you can look
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: up and you can see I gotta go to Marry
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Go Around and check out the ladies. Merry Go Around. Man.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: That takes me back right. There will be a bit
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: of nostalgia peppered in here and there. Actually, I don't
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: even think I put Marry Go Around. I put Camelot
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: music is what I have in my Camelot music everyone.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And the joke I have was the Duran Duran kissingle.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, the kissingle. It's like I just ate
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of member berries or something of what
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: member berries. I don't know. It's a whole South Park thing. Okay, Yeah,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Well three other people love that joke. So more than
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: seventy five thousand people. Seventy five thousand people turned out
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: on the grand opening day of Southdale Mall, and not
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: just local press, Life Magazine, Time Magazine, New York Times,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Business Week, Newsweek, They all came out and said things
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: like it's the splashiest center in the US, as a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: goldfish pond, birds art, ten acres of stores, and all
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: under one Minnesota roof. It's a pleasure dome with parking,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: said Time magazine. But one guy got it right. One
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: guy said Southdale has become an integral part of the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: American Way, and this is the first mall. And some
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: journalist points to it and says, this is how things
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: are from now on. And this is the page that
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: is very hard for me to read because, as you
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: can see, I crumpled it up. Well, hold on, so
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: if we're going to release this, we should probably take
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: an ab break. Huh oh yeah, sure, Okay, you're ready,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: so we'll be right back, and we're back, all right.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you thought of that. You guys get to
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: see how the sausage. So, as I was saying before
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the break, I don't know if you can see it there,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: but this is crumpled up and very hard to read.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Because Josh sent a new version and I in the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: hotel room, I said great, I printed it out, rumpled
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: up the wrong one and threw it away, and right
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: before I came I was searching through the trash and
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: here it is. It's not that bad actually, So we're
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: gonna entitle this next section the golden age of the
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: mall was you have to go like this one. It
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a live show if we didn't have a
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: golden age of skyjacking, Golden age of pr golden age
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of grave robbing, and now the golden age of them
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: all right. I was about to say golden age of
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Rodney Dangerfield, but it was all golden age for that guy.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: So the mall had its golden age. Between nineteen fifty
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: six and two thousand and five, fifteen hundred malls or
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: America were built, possibly two thousand, possibly three thousand, what
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: no one knows. They just stopped counting pretty much. They're like,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: forget it. We'll say seven thousand. Who cares. Million. A
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: million malls were built between that time in the US.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So there's a woman named Lisa Sharon who wrote a
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: book called America at the Mall Colon, because every book
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: has to have a colon if you're smart. The cultural
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: role of retail utopia. And she said, for the children seventies, eighties,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: and nineties, the shopping mall was the place to be,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: a space where we defined as our own. The mall
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: taught us how to fit in, how to be a consumer,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: ultimately how to be an American. So who I mean,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: we don't. You don't have to say how old you are.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: But if you grew up in sort of the seventies
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and the eighties, you know that the mall and into
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: the nineties. Of course, sure, the shopping mall was like
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: it's different than it is today. Like families used to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: go to the mall for the day. You'd pick a Saturday,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: and you'd all pile in the car. You go to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the mall. You maybe go see a movie, the kids
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: would go to the arcade. Mom and dad would do
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: some shopping, and you would literally spend like six and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: eight hours as a family outing at a mall. Right,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: pretty unbelievable to think about that. Now you gather around
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the laptop and go on the Amazon dot com. Yeah,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and I'll sit around and stare at your phones and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: ignore you. Just say, yes, I would like to get
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: into fermenting pickles. I could use some fermentation weights. Thanks
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: for suggesting that Amazon. Interesting. You just changed my life.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: But it was a big deal. You would spend family
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Day at the mall. And in the eighties it was
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: just it was a part of America as anything else.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: There were restaurants in the food court at the mall
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: that didn't exist outside of them all. They were born
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: in the mall, like Cinnabon. Someone gasped, that's it, we
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: can go home now, we're ever working toward as a
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: gasp from somebody. Orange Julius that was another one. And
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Express was only in malls for a long time. And
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: apparently Sbarrow. Everyone knows of Sbarrow, right. It was so
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: tied to malls that when Sabarrow filed for bankruptcy in
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, they cited unprecedented decline in mall traffic in
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: their filing. There's like, no one likes the mall anymore.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: We're borrow, We're dead. Yeah, word good Chick fil A too.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: You guys don't have Chick fil A here, do you? Oh?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: You do you do well? Long before we knew the chicken,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: it was back when everyone just thought it was delicious
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and juicy and crispy, not filled with homophobia. Yeah, but no, no,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: they've they've since walked it back. So it's all fine. Yeah,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: we're just not open on Sundays. Uh. Chick fil A
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: would used to only be in the mall. I think
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: there was one original Chick fil A store in Georgia.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I think that's where it was born. But aside from that,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: it was only in the mall. And I remember going
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: to the mall. Remember when malls used and they may
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: still do this. I don't go to malls. There's a
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: shop on Amazon dot com. Um. Malls used to have
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: events like a world record Sunday ice cream Sunday or
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: something to get people there. I went to Chick fil
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: A when I was about ten at Northlake Mall, which
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: was my them all because they had the world's largest
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: cup of lemonade on a Saturday afternoon. My mom took
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: me and I drank from that spigot among the thousands
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: of other people, and it was not even that impressive,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Like I thought it was giant, but now that I'm adult,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: it was probably like eight feet high. Right now it
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: was sixty four ounces. But they were just the first
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: ones to try, so whatever they did was the world's
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: biggest cup of lemonte. That was a mall event that
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I went to. What was your mall? I had two
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: because we moved a very formative time in my life.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I had Southwick Mall untiledo. Yeah, and then over a clause, Okay,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I had a town center mall in Atlanta. No, okay,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: you guys haven't been a town center mall. Believe me,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: I would recognize you. Were you a mall rat. No, no,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: not necessarily. No, I would not call myself a mall
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: rat because I wasn't. I didn't like sell or consume
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: drugs at the mall, so I wasn't a mall rat.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I was like there legitimately, like I was there to
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: visit the led Zeppelin box set on cassette that I
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: was saving up to buy, just to make sure it
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: was still there, you know, Or like I would go
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to Spencers and like put my hand on the plasma ball.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Let's be like, oh, you guys have Spencer Gifts. Well
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: I say that like you're from here. I know that,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: like eight people are from San Francisco in this room.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: You know, Spencer Gifts. Okay, okay, very titillating place for
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: a young Baptist is because after because the one section
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about, plus the posters too. Yeah.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: But it's funny now as an adult, the one section
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was like, oh man, and then
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: there are some children here just you don't know what
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Maybe may maybe she's used to pick lad.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that. It was, but
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: for a young Baptist kid, I was just like I would.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I would. I would walk by it and I would
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: pretend like I'm looking at other things and just look
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: in that section to see what I was in it.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I remember, and now it was so dumb the stuff
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: that was in that secure Yeah. Yeah, it's like a
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: stud collar. I was like, who cares. By the time
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh cool, I got it checking me out
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: yesterday was wearing one and nothing else. Yeah, maybe a
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: condom with bells and that's it. So silly. I remember
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: walking past Victoria's Secret like I was not doing that
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: on purpose, but just kind of like like I could
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: actually I trained my right eye to go like I
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: took a lot of exercise, a lot of work, a
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: lot of muscle relaxers, but I got it down path.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Oh that's good. And that was pret cell phone when
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you couldn't fake like you were doing something else. Right,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: good work, that's very impressive. You trained it back and
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: everything I did now I can't do it anymore, or
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: else I show you guys, I don't know where I was.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I got so sidetracked by North Lake Mall. Oh and
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the gold mine was my arcade at the mall. Sure wonderful.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: You can get like twenty tokens for a dollar on
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: a Wednesday, and now games cost like a dollar fifty
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to play one game. Yeah, a progress. That's what else
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: said they have back in those days? You made a
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: list Chess king. Of course, Mary go Around, I mentioned
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: contempo casuals, ladies, deb knew. This section was all into
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: that county seat. Remember county seat. Oh, that's that is
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: a deep cut where you could go get gene blue.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: But it was like when the gap used to be
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: like sweatsirts and blue jeans before they rebranded. Right, you
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: should go back to that, Mary go Around. Can want music?
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: What else? Oh? Well, bookstores? You could just say bookstore
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and that would be novel be Dalton, Yeah, Waldon books,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Walden Books. I think I consumed every single volume of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: truly tasteless jokes and those without buying a single one. Man,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: I remember those, God, those are great, Yeah, Pet Doctor,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the cruel List, cutest store of all the time, Remember
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: like the mall pet Store. It was like this, hamps
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: are so cute and then it died like an hour
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: later from Nigglay. They just shuffle it out and put
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: a new one in. There's a trap door. Nice John
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Hodgeman want to hate this show dripping with nostalgia. He's
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: here in this town. He refused to come because he
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: knew or are you kidding? He'd already be up here, like, Oh,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Nostalgia's toxic. The mall became a prominent fixture in movies
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of the day, of course, the Sherman Oaks Galleria and California,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: which is where we are, Yeah, California here. That was
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: the mall in Fast Times at Ridge Mount High, one
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: of the great mall movies, and full Mall movie, but
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: you can tell it's short. It also appeared prominently in Commando,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: where Arnold Schwarzenegger beats up like a ton of guys
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: at the mall, same mall. Nine of the comment you
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: mentioned anyone, I remember seeing that as a kid and thinking,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: because you know the here if you haven't seen the movie,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: this comment comes and destroys like everyone at night. Yeah,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: and everyone has these comment parties to watch the comment
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: but it kills everybody except for the two really hot
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: teenage girls that didn't watch the comment and then a
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: few other people. And what do they do. They go
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: to the mall shop because it's abandoned. And I remember
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: being a kid and thinking that would be the dopest
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: thing ever to just go in an empty mall and
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: it's all yours, or to order to live at Restoration Hardware.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I wore to run into Spencer Gifts into that section. Yeah,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: collar just like pass out from pleasure. That's what a
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: wayed you and you missed your chance. You could be
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: walking around the castro right right kind of look out
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: and there's this creepy guy with a wandering staring at
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: me and who knew? Who knew? What else? The Blues
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Brothers had a very famous mall scene. Yeah, they went
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: through the Dixie Square mall, sorry, the Decius Square mall
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: that where they were like, this place has got everything.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And maybe one of the most famous mall parking lots
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of all time the Twin Pines Mall from Back to
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the Future, which was actually the Quinte Heels Mall. Heels
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: that was possibly appropriate maybe, which I don't even know
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: where that is. I mean it's in LA obviously, but
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's a it's in City of Industry,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: which is that the name for a town? Everybody, No,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: it's outside of LA. I looked it up. And of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: course mall Rats, which we don't need to talk about
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: too much because it was a little Really that was
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Kevin Smith. Here's a really high voice. No, I'm Vin Smith.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You can't leave out Moon Unit. Zappa dude, Oh well, yeah,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: of course. Valley Girl. Yeah, she had a hit single,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: Valley Girl, and her father, Frank Zappa hated the Valley Girls, right,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and while it kind of blew up in his face
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: when he released a song with his daughter about how
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: stupid valley Girls were, that it actually popularized Valley Girls
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: and made him cool in America. Yeah, so eat that,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Frank Zappa. He's past eat that. In musical heaven, so um.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Alls started to really grow, not only in popularity but
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in size, to the point, as Josh says, of sheer
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: absurdity in Canada because they have malls too, I should say, yeah, yeah,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: we have some Canadians here, and yet no one from Toledo.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: The West Edmonton mall really all right opened and no
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: one from Toledo, anyone from Elm Street in Edmonton. Yeah,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: that's what I thought. It was open in nineteen eighty two,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: had an ice skating rink, It had sea lions in
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: a pool boo, and an indoor bungee jumps to tempt
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: fate for shoppers right over the sea lions. It's just
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: scared than Oh my god, sea lions hate being jumped over.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: And the developers knew it too. And of course the
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: Mall of America, perhaps the most famous mall in Minnesota.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: They were going to build a roller coaster there. They
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: did when they decided to build three roller coasters there.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: I've never been there. Have you been there in the
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Mall of America? No? I haven't anyone been there? Oh wow,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: all right, huge? Right, it's outside of a dinah, so actually,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: you know, really it's like seven miles from a dinah.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: That's true. Should we go to the mall walkers, Yeah,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I think so. This may be one of my favorite
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: sections of any show we've ever done, because I love
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: mall Walkers. Didn't know it existed until I worked at them. All.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: I worked. I think I mentioned on the show I
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: worked at the Gap for a month in college over
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Christmas break and I was a champion folder and I
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: still have those skills today. Were you really you know
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: I actually quit working in the Gap is because they
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: got mad that I wouldn't recommend socks and belts as
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: they checked out, And I said, I think if they
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: wanted socks and belts, they would get socks and belts.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: And my manager said, you know, I don't know if
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the Gap is right for you. I think you might
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: be right. I took off my little pen and I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: handed it to him, and me and my mock turtlenecks
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: strolled right on at it and that was it. That's
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the only retail job I've ever I did. But anyway,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a long way of getting to mall walkers. I remember
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: showing up for work one morning to open and there
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: were these old people walking around and I thought, does
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: anyone know that they're in here because the mall's not
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: open yet, And someone said they live here. Yeah, they yeah,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: they live in and merry go round and come out
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: at night from the giant pants they just sprouted out
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: of the legs. But they explained to me what a
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: mall walker was, and even at a young age, I
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: was like, that's wonderful. It wore my heart and it
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: became a legit, real American thing. It did. Apparently the
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: CDC did a report on this, because if you can't
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: study gun violence, might as well study mall walking out
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: sing And in twenty fifteen they said malls are right
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: behind neighborhoods for popularity of walking. They just went to
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: bed after that, but they did a little more digging
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: and they said the reason people love malls is because
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: there's restrooms, water fountains, benches, and level surfaces. And this
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: is one of my favorite quotes from any CDC rapport ever.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: They said that quote, the latest fashionable workout attire is
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: not a requisite for malwalking, And no truer words have
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: ever been spoken. You won't find any yoga pants on
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the mallwalkers. As a matter of fact, I would imagine
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: you would be ostracized if you did just kind of
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: gussy up, like you're putting on airs or something new.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: They don't play that in a dinah. Yeah. Actually, you
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: know what malwalkers were, those those workout pants that look
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: like waded up paper. You know, what I'm talking about.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: It's like this wrinkly, weird material. I don't even know
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: what it's made of. Fish skin? What, Yes, all right,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about all right, we'll talk about it later.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Let's hang on to this page to remind us to
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: talk about it. Well, that's fish skin, but you mean clothing.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: That's totally weird, but it makes sense in a way.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Uh So, these these generally elderly folks are walking around malls,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: and at the Mall of America, they have a PR
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: coordinator there named Tara Neebling, and she says, we love
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: our wall markers, mall walkers. They're very special to us.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And they even have a program there is so adorable
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: where they give them little swipe cards. It keeps track.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like a fitbit, but they can't wear
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: a fitbit, I guess because I don't even know why
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: they can't figure it out or something. That's a very
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: agist and is going to be against the wall for
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: that joke later on. But they give them these little
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: swipe cards that lets them track how much they're walking
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: and how much exercise they're getting. They have monthly breakfast
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: meetings where they have health experts come in and talk
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: about stuff. We should all go there right now. And
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: all this is in exchange for a fifteen dollars annual
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: fee if you want to officially be a member. But
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: don't feel bad, sir, because like I was, like, what
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: a rip. They said they welcome unofficial mall walkers aka
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: the old dudes who refused to pay the fifteen dollars
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: aka Society's leeches. That would be me. I'm not paying
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: fifteen dollars. That's me and about oh ten or fifteen years. Anyway,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's adorable. And the whole thing about mall
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: walkers is they it was a problem at first because
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: they didn't used to open malls to allow this. They
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: just came to the mall when it was open and
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: they would walk around and they said that there was
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: a quote in here they said they thought it would
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: upset the regular shoppers to have them just exercising among them.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: And they're like, you know what do we do? We
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: can't kill them. They got our they have our arms
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: behind our backs, like they really have us over a barrel.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: We can't kill them, can we? We could wait for
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: them to die, And I guess this is that they're
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: really healthy because all mall owners gets together year. Yeah. Yeah,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: like CAP's red satin inside black on the own. So
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: they decided to open them all just for them to
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: walk around before the store is open, which is just adorable,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I think. And speaking of the Mall of America, Douglas Copeland,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know if any of you have read Generation X.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: It's a really great book, but he basically coined the name.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Apparently no one's read it. Douglas Copeland, Wow, this really
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: would work so much better if you guys knew what
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Generation X was. Yeah, we wrote it. So he wrote
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: the book literally Generation X, and like just set the
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: tone for the whole thing. And he was actually at
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the opening of Mall of America on August eleven, nineteen
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: ninety two, and he was up there on stage with
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: the local radio affiliate, and he said that everybody was
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: walking by with what he called country fair face, where
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: they were like google eyed and eating ice cream, couldn't
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: believe this mall. It was the most amazing thing they'd
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: ever seen. And he said that the inner viewer just
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: assumed he was going to be like a slacker, ironic
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: wise ass and said, you know, I bet you think
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: this whole mall is very hokey and trashy, and Douglas
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Copeland said, actually not at all, Chuck. Where should I
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: start here? Oh? Oh, sorry, I can't finish my part.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Then the radio guy was like, what, Chuck, and he said, quote,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: I mean that. I feel like, I mean another era
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: that we thought had vanished, but it really hasn't, not yet.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I think we might one day look back on photos
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of today and think to ourselves, you know, those people
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: were living in golden times and they didn't even know it.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Communism was dead, the economy was good, and the future,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: with all of its accompanying technologies, hadn't crush society's mojo
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: like a bug drop the mica and they said, well,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: that's really not good for the mic, and we're please, please,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: don't do that anymore. And he goes on to say
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: it's true. He says that technology hadn't hallowed up the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: middle class and turned to all into like laptop click chunkies.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: He didn't say that there were no He said there
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: were no new boogeymen hiding in the closet. He said,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: we may look at the nineties as the last good
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: decade and all of this came to him at the mall,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: so they didn't get their snarky quote after all, which
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: is kind of ironic in a way. So he really
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: did zing them, but it was a meta zinc So
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: if you want to talk to the psychology of malls,
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: we need to go back to Victor Gruen, and he
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: has a quote where he said shoppers will be so
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: bedazzled by the store surroundings they'll be drawn unconsciously continually
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to shop. And this kind of goes against his ethos.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: He wasn't some big He wasn't like the pr guy.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I can't think of his name. We did that like
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: twelve times. He wasn't like Ed Burney's. He didn't have
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: this thing where he was like, yes, we need to
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: get people to shop, but he was commissioned to do
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: so and he did a good job. He thought the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: mall would be a little bit more like a sort
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: of like they had in Europe, like a public meeting space,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: and that's why you build these atriums in the middle
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: of the skylights in the fountain, and he thought people
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: would go there and hang out and talk politics and
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: maybe even stand up and like speak about things publicly.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: To people, because that's what happens at the mall. Right, Instead,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: the developers are like, you go over there, you're done,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: you did your damage. Right. We're actually going to go
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: so far as to name a psychological effect after you,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: something called the grew In transfer, which is where you
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: walk into the mall and you're like, I'm going to
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: buy a Hello Kitty pen and that is it. And
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: you get through the mall and you're like, oh my god,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: there's a water fountain. Oh my god, there's old people
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: walking around. There's just amazing stuff going on here at
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: the mall. I forgot what I was going to get,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and now I have a compulsion to get an Orange
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Julius with drugs in it. And you forget what you're doing,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you're shopping in general rather
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: than purposefully shopping. That is called the grew In trans
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: for the grew In effect, and Victor Grewhim probably would
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: not be very happy to know that that was the case. No,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: And as we'll see later, he in fact was not
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: happy about that. So Malcolm Gladwell, Josh's mortal enemy. He
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: did an interview with a Alfred Taubman and he said
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: it's called threshold resistance, he said. People assume that we
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: enclose the space because of air conditioning and climate control.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: He said, what it really did was allow us to
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: open the store to the customer. Just what we talked about,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: that introverted thing. All of a sudden, you're in this
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: huge retail utopia. All the doors are open at all time,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: and you're just strolling through the mall, and you walk
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: by Niketown and they have like looks like a nightclub
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: in there, so you're just sort of unconsciously drawn inside there,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: like I'd like to make some new friends, all right, truly,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: I can't Niketown. Back in the day in shopping centers,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: they used to have live bands, and that was replaced,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: of course, with muzak later on, which is you know,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: you'd take like a normal song like breads, I want
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: to make it with you, and then you remove the lyrics,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the percussion or place it all with strings, and all
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: of a sudden people are just walking around like bye bye.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: It works really well, so much so that the people
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: at malls who are typically in charge of the music
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: were the same people who were in charge of the
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: heat and the lighting. The facilities manager that's how much
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: music meant to It was like part of the building.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, you can't really call it music,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you know. In fact, you'd probably call it something weird
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: like muzac. Yeah, you think about the coolest DJ. I'm
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: not hip on that scene. Steve Ioki. Okay, the facilities
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: manager is the opposite of Steve Ioki. But they're sitting
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: in their room and and they're controlling the music and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the lights and the sounds of the mall all in
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: that little room. Dead mouse, Oh, I know what that is.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: But the s is a number five? Right, Yeah, so hip,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: so hip, I'm not old scrilling scrillis. I know that
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: guy too. So we talked a little bit earlier about
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the the cycle of the mall, the two story layout.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: And while you can go to malls where there are
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: three stories, most of the malls i've been to that
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: have a third story. It's not the entire mall. There'll
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: be like a section with a third story. I don't
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: know if they built it on or what, but generally
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: you see a two story mall because you had that
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: cycle the across, down, across, up back to your car, right,
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: and you've seen all the stores, right, But if you
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: had a third level, you go across, down, across. My
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: car should be here. But now I have a third
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: level and I'm stuck. I'm just gonna wander around in
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: this corner until some people come get me. And as
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, Valco Mall had three levels. Look
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: what happened to it? What mall? It's a local mall.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Oh and the fourteen people from San Francisco applied, right, yeah,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Oh it's in San Jose. It's like the same place.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Come on, I think you could default to Bay Area
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and you do yourself a lot of favors. You're hearing
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: this from like the guy who took off an Infinity
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: scarf right before he came on stage because he was
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: told like, it's not cool anymore. I don't even know
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: what that is. So your burn does not work? No, no,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I was talking about myself burning you, buddy. I wasn't
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: burning you, all right, burn? Yeah, it's an Infinity scarf.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: It's a stupid What else did they figure any when
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: you're fine? Lady? Your Infinity scarf is fine? Is that
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a that's lovely? Can you come up here and show
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: everyone when an Infinity scarf I'm kidding. No, everyone stopped
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: now because we thought about adding runway modeling to our shows.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Sure that would be a great time. Sorry about the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: infanty scarf joke. Now I feel terrible. Is anyone drinking
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: nothing but soilent right now? I should have made that
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: joke Instead, I'm looking over my glasses for more clothes.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: I can make fun of Tyler Murphy. That beard is
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: something else. He died of blue. Everybody, all right, this
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: is another part that's gonna be edited out later, So
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Tyler say whatever you want. So the other thing they
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: figured out with keeping people in the mall, which is
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: a big goal, is that people like to shop with
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: other people, but sometimes the people that you bring to
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: shop with you, namely husbands, don't like to be at
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the mall. So they said, well, let's put comfy areas
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: in the mall, like chairs. And in fact, there was
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: a quote that said a chair says we care, Yeah,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: a famous mall designer. But it really means is a
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: chair says we can keep your wife here longer than
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: you would like to be here. Right. The husband's like, Oh,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: I just want to lay down and die on my
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: floor at home. Can I just go home. You can
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: lay down and die here, sir, right lay there, shut up.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: So the ironies are grewing. We said earlier. I don't
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: think we specifically said he was a socialist now, so
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: it's really weird for a socialist to be the father
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of the shopping mall, wouldn't you think. And his original
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: idea was that people could go there and espouse their views,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and that maybe happened once in nineteen seventy six, until
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court came in and said, in the case
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: of Hudgins versus Natural Relations Labor Relations Board, basically, these
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: union dudes wanted to pick it inside the mall and
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: they did so they got kicked out. They sued, and
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Court said, actually, his private property, and you
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: can't bring your picket signs in here. And the picks
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: who are like, wait, wait, wait, the mall is the
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: new heart, the new civic center of American life, and
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: the Supreme courtment, don't be an idiot, it's a place
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: to shop, dummy, and everyone when I didn't hear what
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: you just said, we're gonna just keep pretending like the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: mall is the hardest civic life. So it was a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: big problem for grew and actually he also hated cars.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: He was big into walking. He was in favor of pedestrianism,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: and yet you have to drive a car to get
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: to the mall. And not only that, you have to park,
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: like some of his creations. I think Southdale had like
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: two point eight million square feet of parking, and he
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: called these things like land wasting seas of parking lots.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: So as he's as he's designing these things, he's like,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not very happy about this, and they would go
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: do it anyway, even the stuff he scratched out. They're like, no,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: this is a good idea. We're gonna go with this.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: And he had like, no, say whatsoever. After a while, no,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: and he got a pretty disc a gusted, and he
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: left the United States forever. In the nineteen sixties, went
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: back to Europe and said in nineteen seventy eight, a
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: couple of years before his death, he gave a speech
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: in London and said, I am often called the father
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: of the shopping mall. I would like to take this
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all. I refuse
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: And they said, sir, we have the paternity tests and
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: you are the father, right He said, no, I'm not, No,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: you really are. Yeah, we used luminal and everything. Maybe
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: we should take another ad break. Yeah, let's take another
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: ad break. We'll be back right after this. And we're back.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: We should, I guess move on to the death of
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: the mall. Yeah, because I don't know if you guys
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: know this or not, but malls are not doing very
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: well these days. I know some couple of all clap well,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: you'll probably like the rest of this episode. The mall
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: actually peaked in nineteen ninety at sixteen million square feet
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: of new space opened in that year, and it's been
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: tapering off ever since. And here's a little staggering statistic
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: for you. Since in nineteen fifties, when the first mall
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: was built, there was at least one mall built every
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: single year until two thousand and seven, usually many, many mall,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: well up to a million from what I hear, I
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: mean that's an estimate, but yeah, yeah, So two thousand
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: and seven marked the first year that a new mall
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't built, and I think there were no new malls
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: built until two twelve. In the United States two thousand
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and eight recession, the Great Recession had a really big
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: impact on retail. Yeah, that's there's like a bunch of
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: different reasons people put for what killed the mall. Right,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: the mall has long been known for killing the American downtown. Right,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: the mall moved out to the suburbs and the downtown
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: just kind of went away. Right, So reason number one
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: is that the Great Recession killed the mall. And this
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: is true to a pretty large extent actually, Like from
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: World War Two until I think two thousand and nine,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: every single year Americans spent more money than they had
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the year before, which is nuts. Right. Then two thousand
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: and nine comes and we stopped, and not only did
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: we stop, we actually declined tremendously. We stopped spending by
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: something like ten percent. And then the money that we
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: did spend, we started spending at Target in Walmart, not
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: at the mall, or at places like J. C. Pennies
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: or Sears who tried to keep these malls propped up
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: and who malls depended on. Because again, remember if you
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: go to a mall, the whole reason the mall exists
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: is for the department stores to spread their traffic out
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: to the smaller stores. And if the department stores are hurting,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: which they were, then the smaller stores hurt as well.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: So as these big, large anchor stores started to go under,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: the malls did as well. But people said, the Great
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Recession was pretty bad. It's probably not the only reason
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: that the mall is dying. Yeah, we mentioned Amazon dot
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Com earlier, and they're not the only online retailer, of course.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: And you can tell we're not from the area because
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: we say dot com after it. We just want to
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: make sure you guys know what we're talking about. We're
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: trying to communicate with you. I can't believe I said that.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: How nerdy we would both of us have said it
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: like five or six times. Yes, stuff, you should know
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: dot com. Well, there's dot orgs and dot nets do yeah, Amazon,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: dot EDUS, dot UK's specificity is a soul of narrative.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Oh good one, thank you. Take that, everybody, thank you.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, traditional retailers for the very first time
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: generated about half their sales from the web. But you
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: can't like I do all my shopping online now, I
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: literally haven't been. I think I went to the mall
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: last year for something and asked my wife. She's out there.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: I was miserable. I hated it, but we had to
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: go for some reason or another I can't remember, probably
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: to stay in line for our stupid phone. I'm just
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: kidding out and do that either, thank you. But I
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: almost stood in line for breakfast this morning right here
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco, because that's the thing. Jeez. Yeah, but
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: online retailing isn't that big of a thing yet. Even
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: if it hits the fifteen percent annual growth over the
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: next three years that they project by twenty nineteen, it'll
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: still will only be about two point four I'm sorry,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: twelve point four percent of retail, which is not enough
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: to kill them all. No, but it's a factor. No.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And plus, you can kind of find this weird confidence
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: in the idea that malls may continue limping along if
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: you're into that kind of thing, by the fact that
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: Amazon dot Com open a brick and mortar store a
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: bookstore to help boost their online sales, which is mind boggling,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: but they did it in Seattle. But more than anything,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: perhaps the reason the malls died, it's because they were
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: never meant to live forever. And this next part is
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: about the economics of malls, and specifically it sounds so
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: boring tax loopholes concerning malls, and Josh is going to
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: explain it. Okay, So if you build a building somewhere,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and I should say, hats off to Gladwell for planning
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: this too. This comes largely from him. But if you
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: build a building somewhere and say, like nineteen fifty, the
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: government said, you know what, your building's not going to
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: hold up forever, so you can deduct a certain percentage
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: of your building's value every year and put it aside
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: tax free to replace that building eventually. And at the
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: time when shopping malls first started to come about in
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: the early fifties, the deduction for this wear and tear
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: was one fortieth, right, Like, you had a forty years
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to deduct this value of your building. Yeah, this is
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: not going well. No, that's perfect so far. I'm checking
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: him for accuracy. Okay, all right, I feel like like
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: my fingernails are bleeding. So every year, right, if you
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: went and built a shopping mall, you could deduct one
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: fortieth of the value of the shopping mall. Not a
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: huge deduction, but it was something it's called depreciation. The
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: problem is is this depreciation deduction was? It was something,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't enough. If you built a shopping mall
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: in the early fifties, you were really asking for trouble
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: because they were hugely expensive. They cost like twenty million
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: or thirty million, which are on par to one hundred
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: and eighty or two hundred million dollars today, right, and
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: you were going to make your money back very very slowly.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: But then, and I think nineteen fifty four, yes, the
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: US government said, you know what, we really want to
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: kind of get things going on building and construction. We
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: want to make sure Josh and Chuck have something interesting
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to talk about at the end of their Malls episode
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: years from now. So we're going to change the tax code.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: And they did, and they created or allowed for something
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: called accelerated depreciation, and this changed everything, Chuck. So I'm
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: going to go back to nineteen sixty one. The Wall
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Street Journal wrote a little article trying to describe this
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: financial situation for a real estate company named Krader Coorp.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Sound totally made up like an evil villain's business that
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: you would run or an std I abbreviated what does
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: that stand for? Cratter Corp? It won't go away, doc,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna gona million to one, I tell you.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: So this was a nineteen sixty young and around the
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: numbers just to make it easier. So let's say Cratter Corp.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty made about ten million bucks overall. Is
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: everyone writing this down as we're saying that you don't
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: need to? So deductions from operating expenses and mortgage interest
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: is about five million bucks. So they still make about
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: five million bucks. Not a bad income, but not good enough.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Then came the depreciation, accelerated depreciation to the tune of
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: about seven million dollars. So all of a sudden, Cradder,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: instead of having a profit of five million dollars on
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: the books, has a loss of a couple of million
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: dollars on the books. And everyone has these huge tax
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: write offs. And now you fully understand, if you didn't before,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: why our next president doesn't pay income tax. Right. It's
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: basically this accelerated depreciation on real estate that allows you
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: to write off these massive amounts of money to show
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: big losses where you're in fact making gains. Right, And
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: the big change of the tax code was to the irs.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: They're still getting the same amount of taxes over the
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: life of the building. They just said, if you want
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: to deduct this depreciation at the beginning of the life
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: of the building, that's fine with us. It's all the
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: same to us. Well, if you were a developer, you
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: would build this building, deduct as much as you could
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: over say three four five years, maybe even break even
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: just from the tax deductions, and then sell that mall
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: for pure profit of fifty or one hundred or one
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars and talk away laughing and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: laughing and laughing and exactly wearing your cape. But here's
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the thing. They wouldn't like put that money back into
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: the mall to make it better. They would sell it
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: off like you said, and just go build a bigger
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: mall further out. And now we'll call these excerbs. They're
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: not even suburbs. Because they were all about going where
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: the land was cheapest. Right, the mall stopped being a
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: place to actually service people. They would just build malls
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: where they could get the best deals on land and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: found that people would drive to them and sometimes even
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: build entire towns around them. Right, yeah, let's move to
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: the mall. And it's true, and so under this view
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: when you really understand why there were two thousand or
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: three thousand or a million malls built in the United States, huge,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: huge mall. Some cities had multiple malls. When you realize
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: that they were built for text breaks and not to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: fulfill some consumer demand, then of course they were destined
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: to shrivel and die because they were part of an
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: official supply. And once that became exposed and the text
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: bricks went away, mall started going down. And it's sad
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: in a way when a mall goes under. People have
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: associations of memories with the mall, you know, like you
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: you think about all the mall walkers you've seen and
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: loved walking around the mall, and when it dies, it's
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: it's sad. But even more than that, it can actually,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: depending on the town, can take an entire city down
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, there was a place north Randall, Ohio. No,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: I'm satisfied. What do you mean really, I mean it's
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: outside of Cleveland. I figured half of Cleveland probably tried
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: to move to some Even Emily didn't cheer for that one. No, No,
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: she's from Ohio. Yeah. So they had the Randall Park
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: mall and it costs about one hundred and seventy five
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: million bucks to build in nineteen seventy five. And get this,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the grand opening, five thousand guests had champagne, twelve hundred
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: pounds of fresh shrimp, crab, cold roast turkey, hot corned
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: beef and ham, melan and cheese, small crapes filled with
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: chicken and spinach, coffee and dessert. It was like a
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Roman orgy basically and disguise of the opening of a mall.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: You got you got the world's largest cup of lemonade.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: That wasn't too bad. I just hate that I put
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: my mouth on that thing along with the other people.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: He should have at least had smaller cups or maybe
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: not professional swimmers inside the cup. No there were seahorses. No, no, no,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: those are fine. You just they passed right through your
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: digestive chap. You don't metabolize this so gross. Tommy Dorsey
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: showed up at the grand opening of this mall with
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: his orchestra to play. It was a big event. But
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: Randall Mall has since fallen on hard times and those
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: two point two million square feet of retail space have
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: been shuttered and um almost along with it. North Randall,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Ohio as a whole. That whole town is sort of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: on life support basically because of closing up the shopping malls.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Really sad. Yeah, but there are some malls that are
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: still doing well. Outlet malls are thriving. High end malls
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: in case you're wondering how they're really wealthy, are doing
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: pretty good. High end malls are thriving like you would
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: not believe. They're up by fourteen point six percent since
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: the economic crisis. And there's this dude. His name's Rick Caruso.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: He pretended the death of the mall. Malls are dead,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: They're gone unless they reinvent themselves. And it just so
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: happens that I build the type of mall that malls
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: should reinvent themselves into. So he basically is trying to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: recreate downtown, but a nice, happy Disney esque downtown where
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: nothing ever goes wrong and everything is great, and by
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: the way, it's also a mall and it's outdoors. And
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to follow this trend, malls are doing the exact opposite
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: of what they did when Gruen started designing and closed malls.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: They're tearing the roofs off and following this new trend
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: to try to survive. Yeah, he calls them lifestyle centers.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's one here. There's one in
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Atlanta called Atlantic Station. I hate them more than anything
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: has really strong opinions. At least a mall is a mall.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: It's not pretending to be a small town. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: You know it's true. It's like, look, we just built
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: these streets and there's it looks like a stoplight, but
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: your your child can control it fully and no cars
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: are allowed. Then there's no cars with a button. So
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: it's like downtown USA. There's no crime anywhere, security guards everywhere,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: and I'll you do a shop, shop shop. So to me,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: there's like there's a certain sadness over the death of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: the mall. Like for me personally, I think even for
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: some of the booers in here. You spent time at
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: the mall. The mall represented something to America. But if
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: you step back and look about exactly what the mall represents,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: and even more to the point, with the death of
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the mall represents, is it really the death of a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: golden age or a golden era when things were great?
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Because if you look at the mall, it's an outpost
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: of consumerism. It's like a church of consumption, right, So
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: if we've lost that, then maybe out of the ashes,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: out of the things that are so broken right now,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: you can find some kind of weird hope that maybe
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: we can rebuild in a new, better way to where
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: the most important part of civic life isn't the mall. Wow,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: and that is mall. That's malls. Thank you everybody, you
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: can do that stuff you should know is a production
• 1:05:51
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• 1:05:57
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