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

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