CSotD: Attention Shoppers! Pity Party at the Food Court!
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To continue yesterday's conversation a bit, Retail comments upon the ghosttowns some malls have become, and I find my sympathy somewhat muted, given that most mall tenants are corporate chain stores that offer crap jobs at minimum wage and send their profits off to Wall Street.
Or they used to be, anyway.
I gather that enclosed malls are no longer a thing, but I was smack in the middle when they were.
I moved to Plattsburgh, NY, for a business reporting job in 1987, just as a new mall was opening up, though we weren't supposed to call it the "new mall" because it was owned by the same (out of town) company that owned the "old mall," and their existing tenants were understandably a little touchy about those terms.
One of the issues they had a right to be touchy about was a major shift in mall architecture that had occurred between the construction of the old south mall and the new north mall.
The south mall had been built in an era when malls were narrow caverns that housed stores, and they were dark and even a bit claustrophobic, so that you would be induced by often-garish lighting to enter the beckoning stores.
The north mall was designed under the new paradigm of "mall as public square," in which the mall was an open, bright, welcoming place that was, in itself, worth visiting, with the stores as places you could go while you were there.
Mall management persuaded the media to use "north mall" and "south mall," but they never got the public to adopt the nomenclature, and people remained confused by stores referring to themselves as being in the north or south mall instead of using the more plainly understood descriptors.
The new mall was where you went to hang out and do a little windowshopping and the old mall was where you only went if there was something you actually wanted to buy, which generally meant one of the two anchors, one of which was Montgomery Wards and I don't even remember what the other was, which is hardly a good sign if I can remember Wards.
The main benefit to me, as a reporter, was a constant supply of short pieces about who was opening, since turnover was fairly constant and, because we were a small city in a rural area, largely based on "bonusing," by which I mean opening a store in our mall was part of negotiations over leases for more attractive properties.
Which is to say, we were the homely sibling you had to invite to come along on your date with the cute one.
Which in turn meant that a large number of the tenants were not expected to be successful in the first place and, as it happened, what really kept the place afloat was that this was the heydey of crossborder shopping in which an imbalance between Canadian and American exchange, and the fact that Montreal was about 40 minutes away, meant a steady flow of shoppers.
And when that dried up, so did the mall. Tant pis.
But here's the critical factor in today's strip: Marla did not mention the word "Amazon."
She simply asked the guy when he had last been to the mall.
I remember when the new mall was a gathering place, but that moment passed, and my experience of malls suggests that, these days, people park just outside the anchors and go straight in, rather than wandering past the piercing place and the candy place and the stupid T-shirt place, and it's not because they prefer to buy candy and stupid T-shirts and get their noses pierced on-line.
Well, stupid T-shirts maybe. But you get my point.
They build strip malls these days because nobody wants to go to enclosed malls anymore, and, if you're not what is known as a "destination," you're out of luck. That is, people go to Home Depot on purpose, and they'll drive a long distance to visit a comic shop or antiquarian book store or some other niche specialty place.
But nobody ever piled into the car specifically just to drive over to Auntie Anne's for a pretzel.
Still, when we talk about dying malls, it's not like we're talking about real businesses owned by real people.
These corporate places just drop by long enough for a cup of coffee and to skim a few profits from the community, in the course of which they run local merchants out of business.
So if they are, in fact, having trouble competing against Amazon, well, we'll just give you your moment of zen a little early today:
On a bizarrely related note
I suspect Dan Thompson did not intend Rip Haywire to be remarkably hip this morning, but, rather, was trying to make a hopelessly out-of-touch reference to a pop band from back when cars had tape players and hanging out at the mall was cool.
But, against all odds, Hanson is back, or, at least, we're told so. I heard some odd rumblings and checked them out on Wikipedia and apparently they do, indeed, have a new song out, which they performed on "Good Morning, America," on Memorial Day.
And there is absolutely nothing more hip than appearing on "Good Morning, America" to sing your latest song, unless it is this, also from Wikipedia:
On October 23, 2013, Hanson served as guest judges on the popular show Cupcake Wars. Four cupcake bakers fought to the finish for the chance at having their cupcakes at a concert and an after party with the band, and a $10,000 prize.
Wikipedia notes that the Hanson brothers who make up Hanson (band) should not be confused with the Hanson Brothers from "Slapshot," or for the Canadian punk band "Hanson Brothers" which was named for the latter.
So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Or at least it used to be.
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