Seeing my childhood mall quickly become a “dead mall” is so heartbreaking. So many empty retail spaces and weird stores no one’s ever heard of. If malls die.. EYE will die
I’m a kid, but there is this area I live near that my parents used to go to. They said it was really cool and had many things to do. Now the place is full of abandoned buildings, closed businesses, dead mall, and just looks ugly. Kinda sad tbh
most of the malls around me are still really crowded and popular. They have realized that having more high end clothing stores is the key to sucess because clothes are much better bought in person at least imo
Thats a very good reason to keep malls. Quality over quantity. Because lets be real, what you get online is always a gamble. And lets not get into what Shein is
Yep, if JC Penney or Sears is your anchor store then your mall is in trouble. If Bloomingdale's or Saks Fifth Avenue are anchoring your mall its probably doing ok. I live in Glendale which is a few miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Not only is the local mall built in the 1970s still doing well, they built another shopping center across the street. Then right nextdoor to the original mall they built a very upscale shopping mall with commercial and residential properties. All these places are doing great. I was there last Christmas to see a movie and do some shopping. Packed with people of all ages. There were teenagers there hanging out, shopping, and eating at the food court just like I did when I was young.
There actually is a place like that in Providence Rhode Island. (This is an edit. Originally I said it was in Boston MA because I forgot.) It was a very old mall, one of the very first indoor malls ever built. I think it was from the late 18 or early 1900's. I think, by the 2000's, it started to die and the city wanted to get rid of it, but some guy bought it and turned all the upper level stores into tiny apartments. They still have some stores on the bottom level. The residents love it because they can go get food and stuff without having to go outside. There are a few videos about it on RUclips. I think it would make a great home for elderly and disabled people, who would otherwise live in nursing homes. Having a converted mall store all to yourself and having the freedom to go out and shop and socialize "outside," in the indoor courtyard of a mall, regardless of the weather, would be 100 million times better than being imprisoned in a tiny hospital room with strangers and not being able to ever see the inside of a store or restaurant ever again.
My Local mall is still doing fine normally but it was nice seeing it Packed during the Holidays. Even though I’m 16 I still prefer a lot of the traditional Shopping ways. It’s Saddening that I wasn’t able to experience more Crazy Black Fridays or chilling at the Mall with Friends.
I feel that. I remember when I was really small and being excited to go strolling in a mall with my friends in my "sweet 16 car present™." By the time I was old enough, I didn't have a license, I didn't have friends to go to the mall with, and the mall was dead lololol.
In Asia, malls are located in dense urban areas, everything is in walking distance, people live around it, there's a supermarket, pharmacy, bank, public parks, recreation, and other amenities. It's not like the US where malls are out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by concrete parking lots.
Some are like that but not all there's one in a college town in Arkansas that's in an urban area and my local mall is within 3 miles of a high school which has a lot of houses near it and its also close to a hotel so if people want they can walk though I don't know anyone who did
It´s similar in South America, malls are on major cities, no so close to everyone, but in the downtown, and full or people specially the weekends because there are everything, not only stores, the most successful business are the restaurants and all related with food
I've seen Walmart supercenters inside malls but for some reason Walmart hates being connected to the rest of the mall and almost always has the inside entrance sealed off, instead of drawing more people to the mall they only draw customers to themselves and if someone inside the mall decides to go to Walmart they have to go back out to their car and drive it around to the Walmart side.
It's the same in the UK, but local councils jacking up parking fees and several chains going bust have made what should be thriving inner-urban malls become dead, with out-of-town retail parks and large superegional malls like Lakeside in Thurrock, Essex, ironically thriving, though some urban shopping centres are thriving, but most, however, tend to be in really large towns and important cities like Manchester. Even malls in Continental Europe are thriving.
Ironically, one of my local malls has experienced an opposite effect. Recently, new restaurants and shops have opened at the mall, and many renovations have taken place!
I've noticed most malls can revitalize themselves if they let local business take over the empty space, some real estate companies practically ignore everything that isn't corporate and end up with an empty mall
Interestingly enough, malls are hitting their stride in other parts of the world, where e-commerce has not taken root. \Southeast Asia is a huge hub for packed malls right now
I'm from the US but now live in Belgium and there are 2 malls that I frequent. They both seem to be doing very well, no empty stores and there are always people there even at unpopular times. In fact I was just at the mall yesterday (big 3 level one) because of winter sales and it was packed! Took forever to get into the parking garage, there were so many people. Not just adults/families but many groups of teen girls too. It is interesting, because it's not like Belgium doesn't have online shopping. However, in my experience it can be hard to find things online often enough. Amazon BE recently opened and it sucks, everything is overpriced and there's hardly anything on there in the first place. Amazon FR has poor stock too imo. Some other sites, like local toy store chains, have very few items online compared to what's in their physical stores. Yet most mall stores like H&M, Zara, Bershka etc do have decent websites but that doesn't seem to stop people shopping there in person.
as a southeast asian who literally just dealt with borderline "black friday" level crowding for an entire month (probably because of christmas and new year), i can confirm how insane mall culture is here. Also, it probably also has to do with how most of the largest malls in the world are mostly located in southeast asia.
What’s so weird is that the Philippines is having an opposite effect where malls here are still going strong to the point of transportation issues when people want to go home (not like I’m saying that’s a good thing BTW). It makes me wonder what makes Philippine malls more popular and accessible to consumers compared to American malls. Culture? The fact that we have groceries inside malls? Not really sure, but I do want to learn more.
@@manicpepsicola3431 yep, it's why I'm asking what makes Philippine malls different from the American malls in that many Philippine ones are thriving compared to American ones Don't get me wrong, some Philippine malls have died as well, but many are thriving even more after the pandemic
I think the issue with American malls is that the stores have become utilitarian and boring. They've become just like any other store with boring merchandise in boxes on boring shelves, where you just want to buy something and get out. That's fine for big box stores, (Like Walmart and Target,) but malls need the kind of stores where it's fun to just hang out and browse even if you don't intend to buy anything. In the 90's, when I was a kid, there were a lot of mall stores where you almost felt you were visiting an interactive children's science museum, or something. We had stores like Zany Brainy, where they had all kinds of educational toys out and kids could just hang out in there and play. They had a store called Natural Wonders, that sold nature and science related gift items, and toys such as all different kinds of lava and plasma lamps, polished rocks, and science kits, that would be out on display. They always played meditation music and showed time capture videos in the store. I LOVED that place and would never leave the mall without stopping by there. It was almost like going to a science museum. They also had a Warner Brothers store with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny statues out front, that had a toy spaceship with videos of WB cartoons playing inside. For the adults, there was also Brookstone, where you could go and try all kinds of different massage chairs. Now they've gotten rid of all these stores because they can't compete when there's so much less foot traffic because of online shopping. Does the Philippines still have stores like these? Because if they do, that's why the malls are still going strong there. Also, do they have music performances and events? Because that's another thing that American malls used to do all the time, but now they kind of suck at it.
Are there a lot of malls though or are there only a select few you can go to? Because in the US - i think there were too many malls, malls grew too fast and they were everywhere. I think thats why once the recession hit in 2008 and didnt really improve, they began to die out. Americans couldnt afford to shop like they could when malls first began being built.
My childhood mall died about 2 years ago and has been in the process of being torn down this year with barely any part of the structure staying. Wandering through the dying mall was one of my favorite activities, as much as it broke my heart to see the carousel go. I don't think I'll ever like seeing things change, but something about loosing a spot entirely makes it harder
It is kind of sad. A local mall in a town north of me was where my first job was : a Halloween store in a dying mall. After it died and was torn down, eventually a big apartment collection and mixed use outdoor mall finally completed in I think mid 2020. It has slowly had tenants move in over the past two years as it's becoming slowly a "lifestyle center"
Yeah we still have a fairly strong mall game I reckon because Westfield has quite a monopoly, they are usually right outside public transport, it's a cheaper way to escape hot weather than cranking up the AC and a convenient place to catch up with friends when you can't decide what to eat. That said, a lot of retail outlets including the one I worked at cannot afford the exorbitant rent and close down or move to an online only model. Even David Jones is closing down!!
One thing old malls have that they lacked in the early 2000's and later was entertainment spaces. My mom recounts the local mall she grew up near that had an ice rink and a waterslide. Now malls have the same dozen chain stores making them all feel like carbon copies of each other.
I've always preferred shopping in person, especially for clothes as I'm a very tactile person. Growing up in the 2000s has had me directly witness the booming popularity then downfall of malls all over the place, becoming defunct and empty, or only catering to the rich designer brands and overpriced food courts. It's really sad to see what once were community hubs of activity for all types of budgets become more gentrified or else be left to die...
People went to the mall to "window shop". It was the only way to see a lot of the new stuff. That and store catalogs. Yeah people bought stuff when they were there, but now, you can sit at your computer and see everything. I remember going to Best Buy almost weekly to see new releases in music, movies and video games. I haven't been there in years now.
It’s always so interesting to learn even more about how the concept of a large scale shopping centre in America is dying out because here in Australia it’s thriving. Shopping centres (usually called by the place they’re in ie queen street, chermside etc) only continue to stay popular here, and they’re always busy, no matter if it’s the holidays or just another Tuesday. It’s fascinating really
I’m actually living in Australia and I agree! When I was writing this video and I’d go out to the busy shopping centers it was such a weird juxtaposition to my American brain
@@dreamyjellies oh that’s so cool! It’s honestly a whole worlds difference between the shopping culture in America vs the rest of the earth, and watching dead mall and abandoned building exploration videos have always been part of my own fascination for it all! Things just don’t seem to get abandoned as much here and if they are they’re torn down so quickly you don’t really get the chance to explore. It’s living vicariously through someone else but in a weirdly dystopian way lmao
About 10 years ago a whole bunch of restaurants began opening in my local shopping centre. One level has a cinema and mid to high end restaurants, as well as a laser tag place. Then the escalator goes straight down into the food court for the fast food.
I am aware of the mall dying in this country but in my location I've always seen teens and young adults hanging out and the mall was really packed during the holidays
@@MirzaAhmed89 same here. i live near the valley fair mall in santa clara (not the Wisconsin one, california haha.) and it’s constantly packed. as are the other malls near me.
@@personwitharat9039 i mean youre near a big city so that might be why, but at the same time i live in a decent sized city and the mall is doing fine so maybe it depends on the area
Malls are still alive and well where I am, probably because I live in Canada haha. I did stop going to the closest mall near to me right around when initial COVID lockdowns began, since the piano lessons I took there were paused indefinitely and a book store I frequented closed down. There's really no experience like shopping in-store, especially in a mall! Dedicated stores not just for all sorts of clothes and accessories, but also "nerdier" places like stores selling books, games, physical music and movie releases, so on. And as a teen with only so much money, I very much appreciate being able to shop at these stores rather than have to order online and deal with shipping prices. I'm very much here just for the shopping aspect these days, not the social aspect nor most of the attractions within lol.
I’m also Canadian and I feel the same way. Shipping is so expensive (unless it’s Amazon, usually) so I prefer shopping in person. I’m also very impatient and don’t like to wait on my orders to come lol.
Also Canadian! Thinking about the malls in my area, many of them are constantly renovating and opening new stores, or rebuilding completely.The older malls I visit are usually for a specialty store but they are also quite busy, especially for food
@@AllycatlovesAG A lot of cool stores I personally like have closed down in the past like the Disney store and local hobby stores, replaced by clothing or vpe stores I don't really care about. I'm especially sad about one local hobby store closing because I never got some cool figures from there based on characters like the Indoraptor or Spyro the Dragon. Still peeved about never getting an Indoraptor figure, now it's overpriced in the secondhand market... I just want the funny killing machine raptor hybrid.
@@AllycatlovesAG A few of them popped up in my favorite mall for some reason. You can't get a glimpse of whatever is inside from outside the store, presumably for legal reasons, and I have no intention to find out anytime soon
my local mall is still very busy and most stores doing great and a lot of people i know go there to hangout and walk around and buy stuff (i’m a freshmen in hs) and my mall has been around since my mom was a kid (it’s changed a lot tho) and thought this was the norm, until when i stayed with my aunt who lives an 2 hours away telling me how her local mall was dead except for 2 stores and was actually bought out by a CHURCH and how malls all over are dying, i was so so shocked!! so sad to see this happen, i love my local mall!!
It would really help to bring in essential stores ( Hence Target) Entertainment ( Theatres) family activities, good restaurants they can do really well revamping is key.
@@FitPassonyeah my local mall got an outdoor expansion 7 years ago that included actual restaurants, a Dave and busters, and a movie theater. It’s far from dead and actually made traffic awful this holiday season. Malls just need to evolve in order to survive.
@@FitPasson This is essentially what malls are like here in Australia. They tend to have loads of people especially on weekends and at peak times for traffic, like afternoons after school, and the lunch time area in general. Even smaller malls will have the supermarket (either Woolworths, Coles, or both here), essential department store (Kmart, Target and/or Big W, yeah Australia has some weird department store trends as Target is the weakest of these 3), a theatre, and some great typically local restaurants and cafes with some chains as well.
As an Aussie, its always amazed me that your malls don't have supermarkets. Here a typical shopping centre/mall will have at least one supermarket, either Woolworths or Coles, maybe both, maybe even also an IGA or Aldi, as such you go because you have to get groceries, and while you're there you might also have lunch with friends, go to specialty shops, or see a movie.
From the UK here, we also have supermarkets in our malls/shopping centre's and its weird to me that that's not a thing in America, here malls are still pretty popular and its always my choice to buy things in public than to buy online along with the social element of meeting with others to browse.
Where I am I think people are too skeptical of shopping online, and tbh I agree. Malls, shopping centres and physical stores are still alive and well. I couldn't imagine for the life of me ordering clothes online, unless it is something I genuinely cannot find in a physical store. I only order online if I know exactly what I am getting (i.e. electronics from a trusted seller, or products I have used before).
It’s such a coincidence you uploaded this the day I went shopping at my local mall, I had a lot of fun actually and the mall closest to me seems to be doing pretty well. In fact, it was actually extremely packed when we were leaving (we always go early before the big rush). I also wanted to add, while this isn’t on topic, that you’re extremely underrated! I’m sure you get it a lot but I literally binged watched all your videos, turned on notifications immediately, and was shocked you didn’t have at least 100k subs. Your videos are so welcoming and give lots of interesting information. I’m 100% sure you’re going to make it big one day, and I can’t wait to brag that I’ve been a fan since the beginning once you do! :)
Not including the topic of the video The way you organize, edit, and present your content feel so warm and nostalgic. With the help of the music in the background and timeline formation. Good Job
I live in Perth, Western Australia, which still has a pretty thriving shopping mall culture. It takes so long for deliveries to arrive and delivery fees cost so much, that in-person shopping is in most cases easier and cheaper than ordering online. Benefits of living in the most isolated city in the world I guess 😂
As someone who uses a lot of social media, I can tell you that those interactions are nowhere near as fulfilling as a real-life conversation. It doesn't come close to hanging out and wasting time with your friends at the mall.
I have 2 indoor traditional malls within 15 minutes of my house. Both are doing just fine, always busy. If there's an empty store, the space is filled with a new store within a few weeks. Large parking lots were very full most of December, even on weekday mornings. They are busy year-round including many groups of teenagers hanging out, especially when it's cold or rainy outside.
It's interesting hearing about the downfall of American mall culture as an Australian. In Australia we don't have the greatest postal system and so postage costs are sky high, so Amazon and things like that are only really used for things that are more difficult to get at in person stores. Malls are still very much a thing over here (atleast where I live)
I live nearly right next to the mall of america, so shopping at the mall has never been dead to me. I always never related to "dead malls" or such, cuz our mall is so huge just about anyone who is anybody still goes there. Going to any other mall than that one feels like seeing an evil dimension.
I also live by the MOA. Burnsville and Roseville malls are dead right now. I used to hate going to the MOA- but now if I need to go to the mall, it's the only one left with stores and people. Woodbury's outdoor mall is still hoppin' though, but when its -20 and snowing every day, outdoor malls suuuuuck
I would love to go back, i had 2 weeks of testing done when i was 15 at the mayo clinic so my parents managed to take me there two times for a day of fun. My dad not giving a crap about malls was however a amusement park person leading me into the magic of carnival rides since age 2. I'm in the Chicago area so the closest to the MOA would be our Gurnee Mills, the 5 mile mall conveniently located across from 6 flags Great America, which makes for a nifty weekend. Or did in my teens. I still have the brochure from my trip to the mall of America 1995 which is pretty epic as I can only imagine how much has changed!
Payless have started closing at malls here in Australia It’s interesting. While you have too many malls we don’t really have enough. Shopping online has made life so much better for Australians. But this is what happens when you live in the middle of nowhere. Malls are still flourishing here due to the global supply chain issues. We tend to search for what we need which means malls are still very much needed here. Most of our consumer needs are met by countries such as Japan and the uk who supply a lot of our clothing now. We do have Australian brands. But we still need that extra source is supply
This dying mall dynamic is only happening in the USA. So Sad! I recently visited Mexico City and i have never seen such amazing shopping centers thriving with all the luxury stores that one can possibly imagine. Recently they even opened more shopping centers. One called Mitikah. Artz Pedregal is beautiful too.🤩
The busy mall footage that you used throughout this video is actually from a mall not too far away from me. It's the Del Amo Fashion Center, another Simon Mall. About 7 or 8 years ago, the mall underwent a huge transformation and changed a lot! Two new parking structures were added too. However, what this video doesn't show you is that not too far away from the hustle and bustle of the new North End of the mall, the Southern section of the mall is much slower, quieter, doesn't have as much renovation done. It ends in an empty closed department store space that used to be Sears, the Northern Anchor store. Del Amo is simultaneously a thriving and dead mall, it's kinda bizarre.
The 80s and 90s were the heyday of malls and there’s so much I’ll always miss ❤ video arcades, music and book stores, nice yet affordable restaurants, the Nature Company shops especially were so beautiful - I’d love to go back in time, had so much fun then and it wasn’t even that long ago! It’s crazy how fast things have changed 😜
It’s a whole different story in South America, maybe because the mall got really late to South America countries, like on 1979 or 80s, but also the culture, kids in the 80s or teens in the 80s tend to go to parties or outside at downtown of the city or town instead of the mall because it was seen as an expensive place, with time this idea changed now recently in this years since 2018 I guess teens can be seen in the malls but in big groups, they buy, eat or enjoy a movie, maybe it will have the same result as here in the states overtime they will get bored and the new gen might not like to visit malls since online shopping or liking other places. Only time will tell
i saw one of my childhood malls go dead once. luckily, the community college i attend bought it years ago, and repurposed it as its main and biggest campus. it's so gorgeous and not only is it so atmospheric and stunning for a community college, but i get glimpses of my childhood just going through the campus. it's sad that lots of malls are on the brink of closing or getting to that point, but there are still lots of malls in my opinion that are MORE than active so long as the right stores and attractions and restaurant chains are there to sell, as well as where the mall is located. with that said, i don't think malls in general will soon come to an end, but any smaller/local ones may be at risk. with that said, still going to mall no matter what!!!! it's just fun!!!
You talking about Highland Mall in Austin? It was for the best that mall died. There was a lot of crazy stuff always going on lol there. At least since it closed ACC was able to renovate it and somewhat build up that area. Still pretty hood over in that area though
@@homedeezyfasheezy5662 yeah it's highland! and i agree, it had to pass on as a mall but i'm glad it got repurpoused at least. also yeah it's a mix, it's a hotspot for shopping and eating since lots of asian places like kura sushi and kinokuniya are there but also yeah it is very hood, it all just depends on what part from my experience.
It's interesting to hear the girl's perspective on the mall being some movie-like place. As a guy, I've always just seen it as a cluster of stores. Hanging out at the mall was only a thing when my friends and people I knew would all be meeting there
I used to hang out at the mall in the early to mid 2000s, and I'd run into so many other kids from our high school in the food court or at Spencer's. It was popular even for those of us who were alternative kids. Our local mall only survived because it was turned into a strip mall instead. It's been sad to see the changes in the last 5 years, but it's better than not having the mall.
Props for bringing up the downward class migration as a cause of shopping decline. Since the price of food has doubled or more in the past 2 years, more people than ever are having difficulty keeping food on the table.
there was this one mall in my city i remember going to as a kid that around the time was becoming dead. later on they turned it to a community college and a few years later i ended up attending that college. i thought it was neat how they were able to make some sort of use of the building and going back there as an adult felt a bit nostalgic
As a kid, we went to our local town mall sometimes and in fact I had one bday party at Claire's but sadly due to the lack of people going it the mall shut down but we moved away 1-2 years ago and we have a mall in our new place and I love to go in there when I can because shopping in the mall has a special feeling about it to me
Great video. As a guy the movies I remember reinforcing the Mall Experience would be Weird Science, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and of course Mallrats. "That kid is back on the escalator!"
Pausing at the start to make guesses : 1) Amazon and other delivery sites, and 2) The VAST majority of malls were poorly managed, and built as tax breaks, and 3) Malls failed to comprehend they were not so prestigious a place when things really started to fall, and kept trying to charge the same sky high places for shop rental they did when they still got floods of consumer traffic.
I love malls. Growing up in the 80s & 90s I'd get so excited whenever my mom would shout from the other room "get dressed, we're going to the mall!" Many weekend nights were spent at the mall with my friends, and even now my husband and I love going to the mall and just browsing around. I could rant for ages about how much I hate online shopping, it will never replace going to the store and holding an item in my hands to make sure it's worth buying. Online shopping is not only killing off malls and B&M stores, it's creating a disposable society too. We used to shop intentionally, individual items might have cost a bit more but we bought fewer and kept them much longer. Now you can go on Shein and $100 gets you 10 items of clothing that are cheaply made and fall apart after a few washes. We're also getting addicted to the dopamine hits from unwrapping a bunch of new cheap items instead of being happy with a few quality items purchased over time. Amazon and the other big players should open up stores in dying malls so people can buy the products in person that they would normally order online. I'd probably be in the mall every week browsing an Amazon store and I know I wouldn't be the only one either. It would cut down on returns and pollution from shipping, and revitalize the malls.
i used to shop at the mall and though my social anxiety often made me nervous, social media doesn't give you social skills, if anything it makes you less equipped to handle real people, but i get why malls closed it really does come down to the prices and how convenient online shopping is
You made a great video. Thank you. I grew up and lived in malls in my teens and 20s in the 80s and 90s. I was lucky I think and think of those memories as good warm and fun memories of life that I loved so much.
Watching this, I came to realize that my family was lower class. We never went to Sears, and my mother would say that JC Penny was just “too rich for our blood” 🙄. Back to school shopping was always at Kmart or Family Dollar.
Going to the mall with my friends after school was my favourite thing to do as a tween/teen. We had an arcade in our mall and we would spend so much time there, and we would try on expensive clothes we never planned to buy and just hang and talked. I missed these simpler days, when you could hang out with people without having to buy stuff. Now if you want to hang outside of your home you have to go to a cafe, bar or restaurant and it gets expensive.
for me personally, shopping online will never be able to beat shopping in a mall. i live near tyson’s corner mall and it is huge and booming with barely any empty stores
This was weird to hear, because my local mall is still absolutely thriving, and I go there every time my parents give me and my brother money to spend. The mall is such a wonderful place, I adore going there!
I live outside a big city, but the community college in that city bought the dead mall to be used as a campus. I wasnt able to see the mall before it died and was bought, so walking the school hallways and looking at the architecture has always been a fun activity to do when I'm on campus.
I've been watching a ton of content on this since I started researching in depth after looking into the mall that the Blues Brothers car chase was filmed in. Crazy that was already a dead mall the year I was born, and was being used by education, a frequently cited reuse case, but it didn't last and still took like 40 years to be finally torn down. How ironic they re-created a living mall from a dead one, as they were in their prime, just to smash the entire thing to bits. At large this is probably the best overall video I've yet seen on the total. Intellectually as someone invested in urban theory and anthropology, I can't help but think this is a good thing in the end, but watching the videos of dead malls, and then having that smash up, knowledge notwithstanding, against _just how many_ memories I have from being a teenager growing up in one... The emotions are there. I'm glad you pointed out the 3rd space.
Third space is a great description of what Malls were in the 80's and 90s. In the 80's before streaming, mall theaters where the best place to see movies. Rudementary game systems meant the Arcade was king back then, and like you mentioned, before social dating online, the food court, the book stores, and the record/CD stores were the hang out spots for teens. It really was a great time. I feel like we never replaced these as third spaces.
When I went to the U.s over the summer, I was surprised how most malls I visited or saw had lots of empty stores and were slowly becoming a dead mall. And even one that I visited their big anchor tenants had walled off their stores from the mall. It's crazy to see because here in my city of Calgary Alberta, canadamalls are a commun thing, and I visit them every few weeks. And almost every mall has only a 5% vacancy. I have only seen one mall out of the about 10 in my city close, and that one is being refurbished into an outdoor shopping area. And to be honest, it's sad to see all these malls in the U.S.A. closing because I prefer shopping in person rather than online.
My local malls are super busy, while the other one near the university I used to go to is pretty much dying. It always looks hella empty. The one I used to always go to is downtown so a ton of tourists go there plus they have lots of events.
Holy shit that dead mall clip 13:18 is from my hometown. You talking about dead malls and thinking of it then having footage of it slap me in the face lmao It was an awful mall. It was recently torn down
I live in a small town, so I never really got to hang out at a mall, the nearest mall was about an hour drive away and by the time I could drive it was basically dead, but I grew up loving the cartoon 6teen on Cartoon Network and wished I could hang out at a mall like the characters always did
A fun fact is that my grandfather used to work for a company that built malls, he always talks about malls all around the country that he helped design.
Fun fact, the mall shown around the 14:09 mark is my childhood mall! Located in Staunton, Virginia. That particular part of the mall had the children's play area, and ice cream shop, a miscellaneous sports store, and a radio shack. There was all a JcPenny, Claires, Hallmark, and more. The two stores left were the Belk shown in the video and a Bath and Body Works, and there was a small theater that had reopened. The mall was recently torn down, however, the Belk remains. Belk itself owns their portion of the building, but I'm told by a former employee that the store was supposed to close several times. I gasped when I recognized the little carousel ride by the sports shop!
Love the video! It’s sad that most malls are dying, but it’s nice in a suburb of NYC to see my local mall doing so well. It’s like always so packed but it’s also the only thing to do around here to if you don’t go to the city LOL
i don't think malls are going away for good. The amount of open malls is going down but I think having some malls is important. I still really enjoy shopping in person because it is a great way to do something that's not scrolling around on my phone in bed. Also trying on clothes is important to me as a consumer because clothes of the same size don't always fit the same in different stores or even in the same store. Not to mention returning items in person is so much easier and immediate that returning items through shipping.
This was an awesome video. You hit a lot of points real nicely, staying focused and real but also hopeful about the situation. I've been interested in this dead mall topic for a while now. Something about the melancholy of it is fascinating.
There’s a couple big, thriving malls near my area but nothing could ever beat the mall that was right in my town as a kid. So many fun memories. They lost almost all their stores in the recession and ended up transforming into a sports center :(
There is a kinda high-end mall that is really popular in my hometown. It was built relatively recently. My childhood mall is dead. The “new” mall is doing great though. It is always busy and they do all kinds of events in the mall and at the other shopping areas that surround it. They are even building an expansion nearby that would include a movie theater!
Here in Brazil, shopping malls are still very alive and thriving, even after the popularization of online shopping. There's a sense of security and comfort when shopping or eating something on a mall that no place outside could even dream of replicating this feeling.
my local mall is still pretty popular, especially for people my age. i'm about to be a sophomore in high school and i just recently went there with one of my friends. honestly i prefer to shop in person compared to online because it's honestly easier to tell if stuff will fit or not whereas online it's a gamble of the size you think you are not being right. just going to a mall and walking around alone is still pretty fun and i'm glad that my mall is still flourishing for the most part.
I live in Danbury, CT and our Danbury Fair mall is still going strong. When Sears went bankrupt somewhere around 2014-15 a Primark opened up in its vacant 2nd floor. There's a Target moving in to take up the rest of Sears' vacant space sometime in 2023 or 2024 too. It'll be interesting to have a mall with a grocery section in it as well. There's also a vacant Lord & Taylor that went out in 2020. I'm kinda proud that we've been able to keep our mall alive through the decades especially when I see all the dead mall exploration videos on youtube. Hopefully ours won't suffer the same fate anytime soon. Easily one of my favorite places to go to growing up in the 2000s and also where I got my first job!
I graduated high school in 08. My local mall was a huge part of my youth and teen years, and into my early 20s. Once or twice a month, a group of us would walk around the mall, buy a shirt or a cd, grab some food, and make the 40 minute drive home. It’s now a half dead mall. It’s very quiet during the week, but gets some good traffic on the weekend. There’s some new mom and pop shops that seem to be doing well. The mall ninja store is still thriving, holding MTG tournaments weekly and video game tournaments as well. The mall ninjas will outlive the mall imo.
9:32 Oh my gosh that food court is at the mall I go to all the time. Since being able to drive, there are two malls I like to hang out at because they're close by. The mall featured has an anime store which is pretty neat. It's split into 4 hallways from the middle and one hall is just completely empty, it's pretty sad to see since I remember the old bustling days. But the mall gets a decent amount of traffic regardless.
Fun fact: 3 malls in the Cleveland Metro Randall Park, Euclid Square, and Rolling Acres were all demolished around 2018 for Amazon Distribution centers. Kinda sad
I love the mall even to this day, it’s so fun to shop there and see what there is! Or in other words “Hanging at the mall, is so much fun! Hanging with my besties in front of everyone!”-Flower bfb 27
Being a teenager between 1980 and 1990 I spent countless hours at our local mall, Century III in West Mifflin PA, with my friends. It really was our "3rd space" outside of home and school. It was a very special place to many of us, with memories all around. It is, as I type this, being demolished. 😢💔
I honestly like shopping for clothes in person rather than online as most of the time the size charts are inaccurate and inconsistent from brand to brand. It's already hard enough find clothes that fit right as a short plus size person but doing it online is even more miserable
I went into a mall today and realized a large problem of the malls is those really obnoxious “hey, you, misssssssss let me show you this”, etc. those kiosk employees are ravenous and so annoying to have to keep telling “no thank you” to over and over again.
Where I live, malls are still mobbed. The largest malls, the ones that were always the most popular in the 80s and 90s, still are. I can't find parking on a Saturday, etc. etc. The smaller, less adequate malls not doing so well. But I would argue it depends on where you are in the U.S.
I found your channel yesterday, and already I have watched almost all your videos only to find I have missed this one and I am pleasantly surprised! Please don’t stop making content this is feeds my obscure nostalgia needs thank you 🙏
I love malls and just physically stores in general. I have 3 local malls and all of them are frequently very crowded, especially around the holidays. My friends and I love going on the weekends, catching a movie or going bowling, browsing stores, and hitting up the food court and arcade. I hate that people are shifting to online shopping, it’s so boring
im a middle schooler and the mall is the best place to go hang out, like everytime I go to the school I see people from every school in the district. its insane and always so much fun.
Here in my country , in eastern europe, mall culture is still booming , malls are still very very popular and main hangout spots and are always packed. I cant imagine what its like walking thro a ''dead mall'' , yk i suppose being a still developing nation isnt always so bad. I really hope malls here dont become like malls in America , i think that experience of being able to go to the mall with your friends alone for the first time or just hanging out at the mall and being stupid kids is a very big part of growing up these days , it would suck big time if gen alpha dont get to experience that.
i'm personally so thankful my mall is generally still doing pretty well. they're opening a large asian grocery store in there soon too, so hopefully it will stay relevant to the area for a while!
Trust me on this your gonna blow up your content is so rich in goodness and it’s truly surprising that you only have 3k subs Remember me when Your famous
So many malls in my area are dying or are almost completely empty. It’s heartbreaking because I always loved the shopping experience. Smelling perfumes, trying clothes on, accidentally running into other kids from school and messing around in the food court. So fun 🥹
I went to my local mall yesterday to look for graphic/casual long sleeves. I usually can end up finding something I like even if it's not an item I intended on finding. I left with nothing and was there for only a little over an hour. All the good stores are gone but even the stores I like such as Forever 21 and H&M had nothing good. I bought some Starbucks just so I wouldn't feel like my trip was a waste.
I live in an area of the US with a very high concentration of malls and shopping centers and I’ve seen some die while others pop up and thrive in their place. The malls that are still always packed are the ones that create an entire day-long luxury experience. People don’t go to shopping centers just to do errands; they can get basic stuff online. They go to have fun, buy high end products, eat at trendy restaurants or snack shops, see a movie, do yoga, ect. People go to the malls that feel fancy, where they feel like they can treat themselves. Your mall has to avoid looking or feeling dated or it will die hard.
For me it’s completely different I think where you are may also play a big part in how popular malls are and how many people are in them. If you’re in a city it’s probably more likely that malls are packed and still really busy. Also I feel after 2020 people wanted to go out more just because they couldn’t. In my area malls have been really popular and even if you don’t buy anything you still go just to meet friends or get out the house.
God I miss those catalogs. Especially the Christmas ones. They added to the exciting build up of the season, rummaging through all the pages of goodies was just excitement in itself. Good memories.😢
Here in england, malls (We call them shopping centers here.) are doing great. In my local mall; at around 6pm, the Primark will have a huge line to the tills on both floors. Same with the food court at lunchtime, I'ts always packed. Makes me happy. I'm only 13, but I can get that experiance nowadays :)
Malls are very big in the Metro Vancouver area. It's always packed. The few times I went to the States, various parts like Washington and so forth. Yeah the malls are nearly empty.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Seeing my childhood mall quickly become a “dead mall” is so heartbreaking. So many empty retail spaces and weird stores no one’s ever heard of. If malls die.. EYE will die
Eye?
@@Periwinkleaccount as in “i” lol
You can blame capitalists for that. They killed the working class' momentum.
I’m a kid, but there is this area I live near that my parents used to go to. They said it was really cool and had many things to do. Now the place is full of abandoned buildings, closed businesses, dead mall, and just looks ugly. Kinda sad tbh
@@saturn6563 Kinda sad boomers let that happen.
most of the malls around me are still really crowded and popular. They have realized that having more high end clothing stores is the key to sucess because clothes are much better bought in person at least imo
Thats a very good reason to keep malls. Quality over quantity. Because lets be real, what you get online is always a gamble. And lets not get into what Shein is
@@SemekiIzuio If I don’t see the products in front of me it’s hard to browse when I am shopping for someone else.
The mall I live near is pretty popular too and I see people my age there :)
Yep, if JC Penney or Sears is your anchor store then your mall is in trouble. If Bloomingdale's or Saks Fifth Avenue are anchoring your mall its probably doing ok. I live in Glendale which is a few miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Not only is the local mall built in the 1970s still doing well, they built another shopping center across the street. Then right nextdoor to the original mall they built a very upscale shopping mall with commercial and residential properties. All these places are doing great. I was there last Christmas to see a movie and do some shopping. Packed with people of all ages. There were teenagers there hanging out, shopping, and eating at the food court just like I did when I was young.
Do you live in a major city ?
I want malls to be turned into housing communities like imagine apartments with daycares and businesses mixed together with lots of walking spaces
There was an abandoned mall near my house however, they turned it into a Amazon factory
weird, there was a daycare near my area which is now a boba store
That’s basically what malls originally were envisioned as
I want malls to stay malls
There actually is a place like that in Providence Rhode Island. (This is an edit. Originally I said it was in Boston MA because I forgot.) It was a very old mall, one of the very first indoor malls ever built. I think it was from the late 18 or early 1900's. I think, by the 2000's, it started to die and the city wanted to get rid of it, but some guy bought it and turned all the upper level stores into tiny apartments. They still have some stores on the bottom level. The residents love it because they can go get food and stuff without having to go outside. There are a few videos about it on RUclips. I think it would make a great home for elderly and disabled people, who would otherwise live in nursing homes. Having a converted mall store all to yourself and having the freedom to go out and shop and socialize "outside," in the indoor courtyard of a mall, regardless of the weather, would be 100 million times better than being imprisoned in a tiny hospital room with strangers and not being able to ever see the inside of a store or restaurant ever again.
My Local mall is still doing fine normally but it was nice seeing it Packed during the Holidays. Even though I’m 16 I still prefer a lot of the traditional Shopping ways. It’s Saddening that I wasn’t able to experience more Crazy Black Fridays or chilling at the Mall with Friends.
I feel that. I remember when I was really small and being excited to go strolling in a mall with my friends in my "sweet 16 car present™." By the time I was old enough, I didn't have a license, I didn't have friends to go to the mall with, and the mall was dead lololol.
Same. I grew up going to the mall every few weeks as a little kid and now I'm a proud mallrat.
Jesus Christ loves you
Eh, I beg to differ on the Black Fridays. I worked at Victoria’s Secret on a Black Friday. Never again. **shudders**
My local mall is still always packed, especially on the weekends
In Asia, malls are located in dense urban areas, everything is in walking distance, people live around it, there's a supermarket, pharmacy, bank, public parks, recreation, and other amenities. It's not like the US where malls are out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by concrete parking lots.
Some are like that but not all there's one in a college town in Arkansas that's in an urban area and my local mall is within 3 miles of a high school which has a lot of houses near it and its also close to a hotel so if people want they can walk though I don't know anyone who did
It´s similar in South America, malls are on major cities, no so close to everyone, but in the downtown, and full or people specially the weekends because there are everything, not only stores, the most successful business are the restaurants and all related with food
I've seen Walmart supercenters inside malls but for some reason Walmart hates being connected to the rest of the mall and almost always has the inside entrance sealed off, instead of drawing more people to the mall they only draw customers to themselves and if someone inside the mall decides to go to Walmart they have to go back out to their car and drive it around to the Walmart side.
It's the same in the UK, but local councils jacking up parking fees and several chains going bust have made what should be thriving inner-urban malls become dead, with out-of-town retail parks and large superegional malls like Lakeside in Thurrock, Essex, ironically thriving, though some urban shopping centres are thriving, but most, however, tend to be in really large towns and important cities like Manchester. Even malls in Continental Europe are thriving.
to be fair i think thats its less that asia is special its more so that america just fucking sucks
Ironically, one of my local malls has experienced an opposite effect. Recently, new restaurants and shops have opened at the mall, and many renovations have taken place!
A few malls in my area have that too, the one closest to me is getting 90% rebuilt as a shopping, eating and living complex
I love that ❤ I’m glad that some towns are putting in effort to make malls functional for the newer generation
me too
I've noticed most malls can revitalize themselves if they let local business take over the empty space, some real estate companies practically ignore everything that isn't corporate and end up with an empty mall
Interestingly enough, malls are hitting their stride in other parts of the world, where e-commerce has not taken root.
\Southeast Asia is a huge hub for packed malls right now
Unfortunately, yes
And for some reason the part of Massachusetts I live in.
Because of how they designed. They have better parking spaces unlike US (which it tooks large space to park) and accessible for walking.
I'm from the US but now live in Belgium and there are 2 malls that I frequent. They both seem to be doing very well, no empty stores and there are always people there even at unpopular times. In fact I was just at the mall yesterday (big 3 level one) because of winter sales and it was packed! Took forever to get into the parking garage, there were so many people. Not just adults/families but many groups of teen girls too. It is interesting, because it's not like Belgium doesn't have online shopping. However, in my experience it can be hard to find things online often enough. Amazon BE recently opened and it sucks, everything is overpriced and there's hardly anything on there in the first place. Amazon FR has poor stock too imo. Some other sites, like local toy store chains, have very few items online compared to what's in their physical stores. Yet most mall stores like H&M, Zara, Bershka etc do have decent websites but that doesn't seem to stop people shopping there in person.
as a southeast asian who literally just dealt with borderline "black friday" level crowding for an entire month (probably because of christmas and new year), i can confirm how insane mall culture is here. Also, it probably also has to do with how most of the largest malls in the world are mostly located in southeast asia.
What’s so weird is that the Philippines is having an opposite effect where malls here are still going strong to the point of transportation issues when people want to go home (not like I’m saying that’s a good thing BTW). It makes me wonder what makes Philippine malls more popular and accessible to consumers compared to American malls. Culture? The fact that we have groceries inside malls? Not really sure, but I do want to learn more.
Malls in America have been dying for many years
@@manicpepsicola3431 yep, it's why I'm asking what makes Philippine malls different from the American malls in that many Philippine ones are thriving compared to American ones
Don't get me wrong, some Philippine malls have died as well, but many are thriving even more after the pandemic
If your still interested on why US malls fell off Ordinary Things did a video called the Rise and Fall of the Mall.
I think the issue with American malls is that the stores have become utilitarian and boring. They've become just like any other store with boring merchandise in boxes on boring shelves, where you just want to buy something and get out. That's fine for big box stores, (Like Walmart and Target,) but malls need the kind of stores where it's fun to just hang out and browse even if you don't intend to buy anything. In the 90's, when I was a kid, there were a lot of mall stores where you almost felt you were visiting an interactive children's science museum, or something. We had stores like Zany Brainy, where they had all kinds of educational toys out and kids could just hang out in there and play. They had a store called Natural Wonders, that sold nature and science related gift items, and toys such as all different kinds of lava and plasma lamps, polished rocks, and science kits, that would be out on display. They always played meditation music and showed time capture videos in the store. I LOVED that place and would never leave the mall without stopping by there. It was almost like going to a science museum. They also had a Warner Brothers store with Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny statues out front, that had a toy spaceship with videos of WB cartoons playing inside. For the adults, there was also Brookstone, where you could go and try all kinds of different massage chairs. Now they've gotten rid of all these stores because they can't compete when there's so much less foot traffic because of online shopping. Does the Philippines still have stores like these? Because if they do, that's why the malls are still going strong there. Also, do they have music performances and events? Because that's another thing that American malls used to do all the time, but now they kind of suck at it.
Are there a lot of malls though or are there only a select few you can go to?
Because in the US - i think there were too many malls, malls grew too fast and they were everywhere. I think thats why once the recession hit in 2008 and didnt really improve, they began to die out. Americans couldnt afford to shop like they could when malls first began being built.
My childhood mall died about 2 years ago and has been in the process of being torn down this year with barely any part of the structure staying. Wandering through the dying mall was one of my favorite activities, as much as it broke my heart to see the carousel go. I don't think I'll ever like seeing things change, but something about loosing a spot entirely makes it harder
I know how you feel
It is kind of sad. A local mall in a town north of me was where my first job was : a Halloween store in a dying mall. After it died and was torn down, eventually a big apartment collection and mixed use outdoor mall finally completed in I think mid 2020. It has slowly had tenants move in over the past two years as it's becoming slowly a "lifestyle center"
The mall near me is so deadbthat a sears ans izoss moved out, for heavens sake a izoss moved
I feel this, except it happened to my elementary school. Now it’s just a parking lot. It’s surreal
recently my favorite mall got rid of their giant two story carousel and it was heartbreaking.
As someone who lives in Australia and goes to malls as a way to cure boredom, i could not imagine not having them
Yeah we still have a fairly strong mall game I reckon because Westfield has quite a monopoly, they are usually right outside public transport, it's a cheaper way to escape hot weather than cranking up the AC and a convenient place to catch up with friends when you can't decide what to eat. That said, a lot of retail outlets including the one I worked at cannot afford the exorbitant rent and close down or move to an online only model. Even David Jones is closing down!!
also for us online shopping can be really expensive or take months to deliver if we order from other countries :(
We just didn't make the same mistake of overbuilding
@@s8wc3that's true however I feel to many malls are closing down. Cites like Columbus and Kansas City don't have as many as they should.
One thing old malls have that they lacked in the early 2000's and later was entertainment spaces. My mom recounts the local mall she grew up near that had an ice rink and a waterslide. Now malls have the same dozen chain stores making them all feel like carbon copies of each other.
Right? I stopped going to the mall when I was 16 and realized that my only options would be Hallmark and 12 different clothing stores.
I've always preferred shopping in person, especially for clothes as I'm a very tactile person. Growing up in the 2000s has had me directly witness the booming popularity then downfall of malls all over the place, becoming defunct and empty, or only catering to the rich designer brands and overpriced food courts. It's really sad to see what once were community hubs of activity for all types of budgets become more gentrified or else be left to die...
People went to the mall to "window shop". It was the only way to see a lot of the new stuff. That and store catalogs. Yeah people bought stuff when they were there, but now, you can sit at your computer and see everything. I remember going to Best Buy almost weekly to see new releases in music, movies and video games. I haven't been there in years now.
It’s always so interesting to learn even more about how the concept of a large scale shopping centre in America is dying out because here in Australia it’s thriving. Shopping centres (usually called by the place they’re in ie queen street, chermside etc) only continue to stay popular here, and they’re always busy, no matter if it’s the holidays or just another Tuesday. It’s fascinating really
I’m actually living in Australia and I agree! When I was writing this video and I’d go out to the busy shopping centers it was such a weird juxtaposition to my American brain
@@dreamyjellies oh that’s so cool! It’s honestly a whole worlds difference between the shopping culture in America vs the rest of the earth, and watching dead mall and abandoned building exploration videos have always been part of my own fascination for it all! Things just don’t seem to get abandoned as much here and if they are they’re torn down so quickly you don’t really get the chance to explore. It’s living vicariously through someone else but in a weirdly dystopian way lmao
About 10 years ago a whole bunch of restaurants began opening in my local shopping centre. One level has a cinema and mid to high end restaurants, as well as a laser tag place. Then the escalator goes straight down into the food court for the fast food.
@@dreamyjelliescongrats welcome to the crummy country with no freedoms 🎉
I am aware of the mall dying in this country but in my location I've always seen teens and young adults hanging out and the mall was really packed during the holidays
Where?
@@MirzaAhmed89 around phoenix some malls are doing good
@@MirzaAhmed89 same here. i live near the valley fair mall in santa clara (not the Wisconsin one, california haha.) and it’s constantly packed. as are the other malls near me.
yea same my mall is extremely popular, there's always a ton of people and whenever i go it's a struggle to find a good parking spot
@@personwitharat9039 i mean youre near a big city so that might be why, but at the same time i live in a decent sized city and the mall is doing fine so maybe it depends on the area
Malls are still alive and well where I am, probably because I live in Canada haha. I did stop going to the closest mall near to me right around when initial COVID lockdowns began, since the piano lessons I took there were paused indefinitely and a book store I frequented closed down.
There's really no experience like shopping in-store, especially in a mall! Dedicated stores not just for all sorts of clothes and accessories, but also "nerdier" places like stores selling books, games, physical music and movie releases, so on. And as a teen with only so much money, I very much appreciate being able to shop at these stores rather than have to order online and deal with shipping prices. I'm very much here just for the shopping aspect these days, not the social aspect nor most of the attractions within lol.
I’m also Canadian and I feel the same way. Shipping is so expensive (unless it’s Amazon, usually) so I prefer shopping in person. I’m also very impatient and don’t like to wait on my orders to come lol.
Also Canadian! Thinking about the malls in my area, many of them are constantly renovating and opening new stores, or rebuilding completely.The older malls I visit are usually for a specialty store but they are also quite busy, especially for food
@@AllycatlovesAG A lot of cool stores I personally like have closed down in the past like the Disney store and local hobby stores, replaced by clothing or vpe stores I don't really care about.
I'm especially sad about one local hobby store closing because I never got some cool figures from there based on characters like the Indoraptor or Spyro the Dragon. Still peeved about never getting an Indoraptor figure, now it's overpriced in the secondhand market... I just want the funny killing machine raptor hybrid.
@@bluetimesskyrii We have lots of vpe stores too but I never see them in malls
@@AllycatlovesAG A few of them popped up in my favorite mall for some reason. You can't get a glimpse of whatever is inside from outside the store, presumably for legal reasons, and I have no intention to find out anytime soon
my local mall is still very busy and most stores doing great and a lot of people i know go there to hangout and walk around and buy stuff (i’m a freshmen in hs) and my mall has been around since my mom was a kid (it’s changed a lot tho) and thought this was the norm, until when i stayed with my aunt who lives an 2 hours away telling me how her local mall was dead except for 2 stores and was actually bought out by a CHURCH and how malls all over are dying, i was so so shocked!! so sad to see this happen, i love my local mall!!
yea same my mall is extremely popular, there's always a ton of people and whenever i go it's a struggle to find a good parking spot
I hope malls can evolve so they can last a little bit longer. Great video as always.
It would really help to bring in essential stores ( Hence Target) Entertainment ( Theatres) family activities, good restaurants they can do really well revamping is key.
@@FitPassonyeah my local mall got an outdoor expansion 7 years ago that included actual restaurants, a Dave and busters, and a movie theater. It’s far from dead and actually made traffic awful this holiday season. Malls just need to evolve in order to survive.
@@FitPasson This is essentially what malls are like here in Australia. They tend to have loads of people especially on weekends and at peak times for traffic, like afternoons after school, and the lunch time area in general. Even smaller malls will have the supermarket (either Woolworths, Coles, or both here), essential department store (Kmart, Target and/or Big W, yeah Australia has some weird department store trends as Target is the weakest of these 3), a theatre, and some great typically local restaurants and cafes with some chains as well.
@@FitPasson Here pretty much every big mall has that (aside from those with completely noname shops, but even there are exceptions).
Long live the mall!
As an Aussie, its always amazed me that your malls don't have supermarkets. Here a typical shopping centre/mall will have at least one supermarket, either Woolworths or Coles, maybe both, maybe even also an IGA or Aldi, as such you go because you have to get groceries, and while you're there you might also have lunch with friends, go to specialty shops, or see a movie.
From the UK here, we also have supermarkets in our malls/shopping centre's and its weird to me that that's not a thing in America, here malls are still pretty popular and its always my choice to buy things in public than to buy online along with the social element of meeting with others to browse.
Same thing in Mexico too!!
Very interesting! I wonder why that did not catch on here in America. It makes sense to have a supermarket in a mall!
Where I am I think people are too skeptical of shopping online, and tbh I agree. Malls, shopping centres and physical stores are still alive and well. I couldn't imagine for the life of me ordering clothes online, unless it is something I genuinely cannot find in a physical store. I only order online if I know exactly what I am getting (i.e. electronics from a trusted seller, or products I have used before).
I swear bro, your content fits that niche that I love so much. Can’t wait to see your channel blow up in the future, keep up the solid work.
It’s such a coincidence you uploaded this the day I went shopping at my local mall, I had a lot of fun actually and the mall closest to me seems to be doing pretty well. In fact, it was actually extremely packed when we were leaving (we always go early before the big rush). I also wanted to add, while this isn’t on topic, that you’re extremely underrated! I’m sure you get it a lot but I literally binged watched all your videos, turned on notifications immediately, and was shocked you didn’t have at least 100k subs. Your videos are so welcoming and give lots of interesting information. I’m 100% sure you’re going to make it big one day, and I can’t wait to brag that I’ve been a fan since the beginning once you do! :)
Not including the topic of the video
The way you organize, edit, and present your content feel so warm and nostalgic. With the help of the music in the background and timeline formation. Good Job
I live in Perth, Western Australia, which still has a pretty thriving shopping mall culture. It takes so long for deliveries to arrive and delivery fees cost so much, that in-person shopping is in most cases easier and cheaper than ordering online. Benefits of living in the most isolated city in the world I guess 😂
As someone who uses a lot of social media, I can tell you that those interactions are nowhere near as fulfilling as a real-life conversation. It doesn't come close to hanging out and wasting time with your friends at the mall.
I strongly agree, coming from someone who also uses a lot of social media
I have 2 indoor traditional malls within 15 minutes of my house. Both are doing just fine, always busy. If there's an empty store, the space is filled with a new store within a few weeks. Large parking lots were very full most of December, even on weekday mornings. They are busy year-round including many groups of teenagers hanging out, especially when it's cold or rainy outside.
Im happy my mall is still open and running, i was just at the mall today. Infact, even the nearby other suberbs and cities has malls.
It's interesting hearing about the downfall of American mall culture as an Australian. In Australia we don't have the greatest postal system and so postage costs are sky high, so Amazon and things like that are only really used for things that are more difficult to get at in person stores. Malls are still very much a thing over here (atleast where I live)
my once childhood mall is now being used like a community convention center which is nice its not just rotting away and i still find joy to go there
I remember the American Girl Doll catalogue and how absolutely iconic it was. I loved circling a few of the items for my Christmas list :)
I live nearly right next to the mall of america, so shopping at the mall has never been dead to me. I always never related to "dead malls" or such, cuz our mall is so huge just about anyone who is anybody still goes there. Going to any other mall than that one feels like seeing an evil dimension.
lucky, i wanna go to mall america so bad but i live down in the south, super far away from it
I also live by the MOA. Burnsville and Roseville malls are dead right now. I used to hate going to the MOA- but now if I need to go to the mall, it's the only one left with stores and people. Woodbury's outdoor mall is still hoppin' though, but when its -20 and snowing every day, outdoor malls suuuuuck
I'm in a similar boat. I'm by the MOA and it's still kicking. Smaller malls in MN, however, are either dying or dead
I would love to go back, i had 2 weeks of testing done when i was 15 at the mayo clinic so my parents managed to take me there two times for a day of fun. My dad not giving a crap about malls was however a amusement park person leading me into the magic of carnival rides since age 2.
I'm in the Chicago area so the closest to the MOA would be our Gurnee Mills, the 5 mile mall conveniently located across from 6 flags Great America, which makes for a nifty weekend. Or did in my teens.
I still have the brochure from my trip to the mall of America 1995 which is pretty epic as I can only imagine how much has changed!
I am moving to Eagan from TX. Is MOA the best place to shop?
Payless have started closing at malls here in Australia
It’s interesting. While you have too many malls we don’t really have enough. Shopping online has made life so much better for Australians. But this is what happens when you live in the middle of nowhere. Malls are still flourishing here due to the global supply chain issues. We tend to search for what we need which means malls are still very much needed here. Most of our consumer needs are met by countries such as Japan and the uk who supply a lot of our clothing now. We do have Australian brands. But we still need that extra source is supply
This dying mall dynamic is only happening in the USA. So Sad!
I recently visited Mexico City and i have never seen such amazing shopping centers thriving with all the luxury stores that one can possibly imagine. Recently they even opened more shopping centers. One called Mitikah. Artz Pedregal is beautiful too.🤩
The busy mall footage that you used throughout this video is actually from a mall not too far away from me. It's the Del Amo Fashion Center, another Simon Mall. About 7 or 8 years ago, the mall underwent a huge transformation and changed a lot! Two new parking structures were added too. However, what this video doesn't show you is that not too far away from the hustle and bustle of the new North End of the mall, the Southern section of the mall is much slower, quieter, doesn't have as much renovation done. It ends in an empty closed department store space that used to be Sears, the Northern Anchor store. Del Amo is simultaneously a thriving and dead mall, it's kinda bizarre.
The 80s and 90s were the heyday of malls and there’s so much I’ll always miss ❤ video arcades, music and book stores, nice yet affordable restaurants, the Nature Company shops especially were so beautiful - I’d love to go back in time, had so much fun then and it wasn’t even that long ago! It’s crazy how fast things have changed 😜
It’s a whole different story in South America, maybe because the mall got really late to South America countries, like on 1979 or 80s, but also the culture, kids in the 80s or teens in the 80s tend to go to parties or outside at downtown of the city or town instead of the mall because it was seen as an expensive place, with time this idea changed now recently in this years since 2018 I guess teens can be seen in the malls but in big groups, they buy, eat or enjoy a movie, maybe it will have the same result as here in the states overtime they will get bored and the new gen might not like to visit malls since online shopping or liking other places.
Only time will tell
i saw one of my childhood malls go dead once. luckily, the community college i attend bought it years ago, and repurposed it as its main and biggest campus. it's so gorgeous and not only is it so atmospheric and stunning for a community college, but i get glimpses of my childhood just going through the campus. it's sad that lots of malls are on the brink of closing or getting to that point, but there are still lots of malls in my opinion that are MORE than active so long as the right stores and attractions and restaurant chains are there to sell, as well as where the mall is located. with that said, i don't think malls in general will soon come to an end, but any smaller/local ones may be at risk. with that said, still going to mall no matter what!!!! it's just fun!!!
You talking about Highland Mall in Austin? It was for the best that mall died. There was a lot of crazy stuff always going on lol there. At least since it closed ACC was able to renovate it and somewhat build up that area. Still pretty hood over in that area though
@@homedeezyfasheezy5662 yeah it's highland! and i agree, it had to pass on as a mall but i'm glad it got repurpoused at least. also yeah it's a mix, it's a hotspot for shopping and eating since lots of asian places like kura sushi and kinokuniya are there but also yeah it is very hood, it all just depends on what part from my experience.
It's interesting to hear the girl's perspective on the mall being some movie-like place. As a guy, I've always just seen it as a cluster of stores. Hanging out at the mall was only a thing when my friends and people I knew would all be meeting there
I used to hang out at the mall in the early to mid 2000s, and I'd run into so many other kids from our high school in the food court or at Spencer's. It was popular even for those of us who were alternative kids. Our local mall only survived because it was turned into a strip mall instead. It's been sad to see the changes in the last 5 years, but it's better than not having the mall.
Props for bringing up the downward class migration as a cause of shopping decline. Since the price of food has doubled or more in the past 2 years, more people than ever are having difficulty keeping food on the table.
there was this one mall in my city i remember going to as a kid that around the time was becoming dead. later on they turned it to a community college and a few years later i ended up attending that college. i thought it was neat how they were able to make some sort of use of the building and going back there as an adult felt a bit nostalgic
As a kid, we went to our local town mall sometimes and in fact I had one bday party at Claire's but sadly due to the lack of people going it the mall shut down but we moved away 1-2 years ago and we have a mall in our new place and I love to go in there when I can because shopping in the mall has a special feeling about it to me
Great video. As a guy the movies I remember reinforcing the Mall Experience would be Weird Science, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and of course Mallrats. "That kid is back on the escalator!"
Pausing at the start to make guesses :
1) Amazon and other delivery sites, and 2) The VAST majority of malls were poorly managed, and built as tax breaks, and 3) Malls failed to comprehend they were not so prestigious a place when things really started to fall, and kept trying to charge the same sky high places for shop rental they did when they still got floods of consumer traffic.
I love malls. Growing up in the 80s & 90s I'd get so excited whenever my mom would shout from the other room "get dressed, we're going to the mall!" Many weekend nights were spent at the mall with my friends, and even now my husband and I love going to the mall and just browsing around. I could rant for ages about how much I hate online shopping, it will never replace going to the store and holding an item in my hands to make sure it's worth buying. Online shopping is not only killing off malls and B&M stores, it's creating a disposable society too. We used to shop intentionally, individual items might have cost a bit more but we bought fewer and kept them much longer. Now you can go on Shein and $100 gets you 10 items of clothing that are cheaply made and fall apart after a few washes. We're also getting addicted to the dopamine hits from unwrapping a bunch of new cheap items instead of being happy with a few quality items purchased over time.
Amazon and the other big players should open up stores in dying malls so people can buy the products in person that they would normally order online. I'd probably be in the mall every week browsing an Amazon store and I know I wouldn't be the only one either. It would cut down on returns and pollution from shipping, and revitalize the malls.
i used to shop at the mall and though my social anxiety often made me nervous, social media doesn't give you social skills, if anything it makes you less equipped to handle real people, but i get why malls closed it really does come down to the prices and how convenient online shopping is
You made a great video. Thank you. I grew up and lived in malls in my teens and 20s in the 80s and 90s. I was lucky I think and think of those memories as good warm and fun memories of life that I loved so much.
Watching this, I came to realize that my family was lower class. We never went to Sears, and my mother would say that JC Penny was just “too rich for our blood” 🙄. Back to school shopping was always at Kmart or Family Dollar.
Going to the mall with my friends after school was my favourite thing to do as a tween/teen. We had an arcade in our mall and we would spend so much time there, and we would try on expensive clothes we never planned to buy and just hang and talked. I missed these simpler days, when you could hang out with people without having to buy stuff. Now if you want to hang outside of your home you have to go to a cafe, bar or restaurant and it gets expensive.
for me personally, shopping online will never be able to beat shopping in a mall. i live near tyson’s corner mall and it is huge and booming with barely any empty stores
This was weird to hear, because my local mall is still absolutely thriving, and I go there every time my parents give me and my brother money to spend. The mall is such a wonderful place, I adore going there!
I live outside a big city, but the community college in that city bought the dead mall to be used as a campus. I wasnt able to see the mall before it died and was bought, so walking the school hallways and looking at the architecture has always been a fun activity to do when I'm on campus.
i discovered your channel today and have already watched all your videos and was honestly surprised to see that you don’t have at least 10k already
I've been watching a ton of content on this since I started researching in depth after looking into the mall that the Blues Brothers car chase was filmed in. Crazy that was already a dead mall the year I was born, and was being used by education, a frequently cited reuse case, but it didn't last and still took like 40 years to be finally torn down. How ironic they re-created a living mall from a dead one, as they were in their prime, just to smash the entire thing to bits.
At large this is probably the best overall video I've yet seen on the total. Intellectually as someone invested in urban theory and anthropology, I can't help but think this is a good thing in the end, but watching the videos of dead malls, and then having that smash up, knowledge notwithstanding, against _just how many_ memories I have from being a teenager growing up in one... The emotions are there. I'm glad you pointed out the 3rd space.
Third space is a great description of what Malls were in the 80's and 90s. In the 80's before streaming, mall theaters where the best place to see movies. Rudementary game systems meant the Arcade was king back then, and like you mentioned, before social dating online, the food court, the book stores, and the record/CD stores were the hang out spots for teens. It really was a great time. I feel like we never replaced these as third spaces.
When I went to the U.s over the summer, I was surprised how most malls I visited or saw had lots of empty stores and were slowly becoming a dead mall. And even one that I visited their big anchor tenants had walled off their stores from the mall. It's crazy to see because here in my city of Calgary Alberta, canadamalls are a commun thing, and I visit them every few weeks. And almost every mall has only a 5% vacancy. I have only seen one mall out of the about 10 in my city close, and that one is being refurbished into an outdoor shopping area. And to be honest, it's sad to see all these malls in the U.S.A. closing because I prefer shopping in person rather than online.
My local malls are super busy, while the other one near the university I used to go to is pretty much dying. It always looks hella empty. The one I used to always go to is downtown so a ton of tourists go there plus they have lots of events.
Holy shit that dead mall clip 13:18 is from my hometown. You talking about dead malls and thinking of it then having footage of it slap me in the face lmao
It was an awful mall. It was recently torn down
I live in a small town, so I never really got to hang out at a mall, the nearest mall was about an hour drive away and by the time I could drive it was basically dead, but I grew up loving the cartoon 6teen on Cartoon Network and wished I could hang out at a mall like the characters always did
A fun fact is that my grandfather used to work for a company that built malls, he always talks about malls all around the country that he helped design.
so cool!!!!
Nice. Rich guy
Fun fact, the mall shown around the 14:09 mark is my childhood mall! Located in Staunton, Virginia. That particular part of the mall had the children's play area, and ice cream shop, a miscellaneous sports store, and a radio shack. There was all a JcPenny, Claires, Hallmark, and more. The two stores left were the Belk shown in the video and a Bath and Body Works, and there was a small theater that had reopened. The mall was recently torn down, however, the Belk remains. Belk itself owns their portion of the building, but I'm told by a former employee that the store was supposed to close several times.
I gasped when I recognized the little carousel ride by the sports shop!
Love the video! It’s sad that most malls are dying, but it’s nice in a suburb of NYC to see my local mall doing so well. It’s like always so packed but it’s also the only thing to do around here to if you don’t go to the city LOL
which suburb is it?
@@caitlingill in Long Island, the mall is Roosevelt field, it’s also HUGE lol
i don't think malls are going away for good. The amount of open malls is going down but I think having some malls is important. I still really enjoy shopping in person because it is a great way to do something that's not scrolling around on my phone in bed. Also trying on clothes is important to me as a consumer because clothes of the same size don't always fit the same in different stores or even in the same store. Not to mention returning items in person is so much easier and immediate that returning items through shipping.
Definitely one of my favorite channels lately
my local mall is still doing pretty well, i feel like local smaller town malls are where things are taking the biggest dip.
I'm glad this didn't just boil down to "people shop online" and addressed other factors.
This was an awesome video. You hit a lot of points real nicely, staying focused and real but also hopeful about the situation. I've been interested in this dead mall topic for a while now. Something about the melancholy of it is fascinating.
I love your video style so much! This type of commentary is the best. I look forward to binging your videos at work
A nice walk down memory lane. I miss malls and still go when I have the chance. (Don't live near one right now)
There’s a couple big, thriving malls near my area but nothing could ever beat the mall that was right in my town as a kid. So many fun memories. They lost almost all their stores in the recession and ended up transforming into a sports center :(
There is a kinda high-end mall that is really popular in my hometown. It was built relatively recently. My childhood mall is dead. The “new” mall is doing great though. It is always busy and they do all kinds of events in the mall and at the other shopping areas that surround it. They are even building an expansion nearby that would include a movie theater!
Here in Brazil, shopping malls are still very alive and thriving, even after the popularization of online shopping. There's a sense of security and comfort when shopping or eating something on a mall that no place outside could even dream of replicating this feeling.
I remember in the 80s people would leave the mall with lots of bags. By the 2000s, I hardly saw anyone leave with a bag in hand.
my local mall is still pretty popular, especially for people my age. i'm about to be a sophomore in high school and i just recently went there with one of my friends. honestly i prefer to shop in person compared to online because it's honestly easier to tell if stuff will fit or not whereas online it's a gamble of the size you think you are not being right. just going to a mall and walking around alone is still pretty fun and i'm glad that my mall is still flourishing for the most part.
I live in Danbury, CT and our Danbury Fair mall is still going strong. When Sears went bankrupt somewhere around 2014-15 a Primark opened up in its vacant 2nd floor. There's a Target moving in to take up the rest of Sears' vacant space sometime in 2023 or 2024 too. It'll be interesting to have a mall with a grocery section in it as well. There's also a vacant Lord & Taylor that went out in 2020.
I'm kinda proud that we've been able to keep our mall alive through the decades especially when I see all the dead mall exploration videos on youtube. Hopefully ours won't suffer the same fate anytime soon. Easily one of my favorite places to go to growing up in the 2000s and also where I got my first job!
I graduated high school in 08. My local mall was a huge part of my youth and teen years, and into my early 20s. Once or twice a month, a group of us would walk around the mall, buy a shirt or a cd, grab some food, and make the 40 minute drive home.
It’s now a half dead mall. It’s very quiet during the week, but gets some good traffic on the weekend. There’s some new mom and pop shops that seem to be doing well. The mall ninja store is still thriving, holding MTG tournaments weekly and video game tournaments as well.
The mall ninjas will outlive the mall imo.
I graduated in 2009, and this is really similar to my experience. 😀
9:32 Oh my gosh that food court is at the mall I go to all the time. Since being able to drive, there are two malls I like to hang out at because they're close by. The mall featured has an anime store which is pretty neat. It's split into 4 hallways from the middle and one hall is just completely empty, it's pretty sad to see since I remember the old bustling days. But the mall gets a decent amount of traffic regardless.
Fun fact: 3 malls in the Cleveland Metro Randall Park, Euclid Square, and Rolling Acres were all demolished around 2018 for Amazon Distribution centers. Kinda sad
I love the mall even to this day, it’s so fun to shop there and see what there is! Or in other words
“Hanging at the mall, is so much fun! Hanging with my besties in front of everyone!”-Flower bfb 27
Being a teenager between 1980 and 1990 I spent countless hours at our local mall, Century III in West Mifflin PA, with my friends. It really was our "3rd space" outside of home and school. It was a very special place to many of us, with memories all around. It is, as I type this, being demolished. 😢💔
I honestly like shopping for clothes in person rather than online as most of the time the size charts are inaccurate and inconsistent from brand to brand. It's already hard enough find clothes that fit right as a short plus size person but doing it online is even more miserable
I remember when I was little, my grandma would give me these catalogs of toys to circle what I wanted for Christmas.
I went into a mall today and realized a large problem of the malls is those really obnoxious “hey, you, misssssssss let me show you this”, etc. those kiosk employees are ravenous and so annoying to have to keep telling “no thank you” to over and over again.
Where I live, malls are still mobbed. The largest malls, the ones that were always the most popular in the 80s and 90s, still are. I can't find parking on a Saturday, etc. etc. The smaller, less adequate malls not doing so well. But I would argue it depends on where you are in the U.S.
People always say malls died because of online shopping, which just never made sense to me. Other countries malls’ are still booming with people.
I found your channel yesterday, and already I have watched almost all your videos only to find I have missed this one and I am pleasantly surprised! Please don’t stop making content this is feeds my obscure nostalgia needs thank you 🙏
I love malls and just physically stores in general. I have 3 local malls and all of them are frequently very crowded, especially around the holidays. My friends and I love going on the weekends, catching a movie or going bowling, browsing stores, and hitting up the food court and arcade. I hate that people are shifting to online shopping, it’s so boring
im a middle schooler and the mall is the best place to go hang out, like everytime I go to the school I see people from every school in the district. its insane and always so much fun.
Here in my country , in eastern europe, mall culture is still booming , malls are still very very popular and main hangout spots and are always packed. I cant imagine what its like walking thro a ''dead mall'' , yk i suppose being a still developing nation isnt always so bad. I really hope malls here dont become like malls in America , i think that experience of being able to go to the mall with your friends alone for the first time or just hanging out at the mall and being stupid kids is a very big part of growing up these days , it would suck big time if gen alpha dont get to experience that.
i'm personally so thankful my mall is generally still doing pretty well. they're opening a large asian grocery store in there soon too, so hopefully it will stay relevant to the area for a while!
Trust me on this your gonna blow up your content is so rich in goodness and it’s truly surprising that you only have 3k subs
Remember me when Your famous
So many malls in my area are dying or are almost completely empty. It’s heartbreaking because I always loved the shopping experience. Smelling perfumes, trying clothes on, accidentally running into other kids from school and messing around in the food court. So fun 🥹
I went to my local mall yesterday to look for graphic/casual long sleeves. I usually can end up finding something I like even if it's not an item I intended on finding. I left with nothing and was there for only a little over an hour. All the good stores are gone but even the stores I like such as Forever 21 and H&M had nothing good. I bought some Starbucks just so I wouldn't feel like my trip was a waste.
I live in an area of the US with a very high concentration of malls and shopping centers and I’ve seen some die while others pop up and thrive in their place. The malls that are still always packed are the ones that create an entire day-long luxury experience. People don’t go to shopping centers just to do errands; they can get basic stuff online. They go to have fun, buy high end products, eat at trendy restaurants or snack shops, see a movie, do yoga, ect. People go to the malls that feel fancy, where they feel like they can treat themselves. Your mall has to avoid looking or feeling dated or it will die hard.
For me it’s completely different I think where you are may also play a big part in how popular malls are and how many people are in them. If you’re in a city it’s probably more likely that malls are packed and still really busy. Also I feel after 2020 people wanted to go out more just because they couldn’t. In my area malls have been really popular and even if you don’t buy anything you still go just to meet friends or get out the house.
God I miss those catalogs. Especially the Christmas ones. They added to the exciting build up of the season, rummaging through all the pages of goodies was just excitement in itself. Good memories.😢
I love looking at catalogs with my Mawmaw! She still uses mail in catalogs🥰
Here in england, malls (We call them shopping centers here.) are doing great. In my local mall; at around 6pm, the Primark will have a huge line to the tills on both floors. Same with the food court at lunchtime, I'ts always packed. Makes me happy. I'm only 13, but I can get that experiance nowadays :)
Excellent analysis. Good work. New and trendsetter malls are actually building condos and residential areas around then. A base of future customers.
Malls are very big in the Metro Vancouver area. It's always packed. The few times I went to the States, various parts like Washington and so forth. Yeah the malls are nearly empty.
As someone in Vancouver, I can confirm.
There’s a mall in literally every city/town in the lower mainland and they’re always very very busy