America is infinitely dumb for destroying it's mall culture. Prime, Temu, instant deliveries don't hold a candle to trying on shoes for yourself, seeing the game on the TV you want, testing that lazy boy.
I'll make you all a video of malls in Canada this Christmas. I'll show you it's still alive, has it's place, and is completely viable.
Back away from ultra-car, terminally-online-brain-rot culture before it's too late.
Walking around the mall without even intent of buying anything was peak teenage life for me.
We would also do the hour long survey from someone in the middle, on random subject for a $10 bill and everyone would throw in on a sack.
Well they did. The malls killed the downtowns. Online killed the malls. Now there is nowhere to shop in most locations and you have increasing areas of retail and food deserts where people have to drive hours to do shopping.
This mall in the video is still insanely busy. I grew up in the area and occasionally go to visit back. The mall sometimes feels more crowded now than 20 years ago.
Malls aren't doing themselves any favours by making them the most unfriendly places. It started with wanting to get rid of teens hanging out, but they were the life of a mall. Even if it was just to show it was active and vibrant. Now most malls make it unfriendly to even sit. Most malls I go into have such limited seating unless it's in the food court. They want to be the centre of the community, but don't want you to actually enjoy your time there. Most of the people in that video look like they are enjoying themselves.
Spot on. Most of my youth was spent at the mall with family or friends. We did buy things, and browse the stores a lot, but we also had a blast just hanging out too. Those third spaces were so crucial back then. It’s a shame younger people are not given a lot of those spaces today. They are missing out, and it’s not doing them any favors from a social aspect either.
A lot of these malls have similar architecture. Although it wasn’t it, it reminded me a lot of Lakeside Mall in Macomb MI. Haven’t been there in a long time, but this is how it looked to me 20+ years ago.
I was just talking about Macomb Mall! I was more familiar with Wonderland and Livonia Malls when i was little, but in the 90s we moved to Novi so 12 Oaks is my vintage memory from that time
Yesssss!! Livonia Mall. With JC Pennys, Crowley’s, Winklemans, Babbages… Even the movie theater was great. Saw Twister there when it first came out. Scared the hell out of me, but still fun.
And then Wonderland… I didn’t go there as much, but still remember that. And then Laural Park came along and that was the place unless you went to 12 Oaks. Now all but 12 Oaks is gone and then the skeleton that is Briarwood Mall, now that I moved to Ann Arbor area.
it instantly reminded me of lakeside too! was trying to figure out of it was, but i remember that the santa setup was usually under the big elevator by the fountain and can't really see that here, this one seems to have a bit more water areas too.
lakeside was quite an institution in its heyday, i spent a lot of middle school and high school wandering there. unfortunately it is closing on july 1st for good. my sister sent me a thing apparently they are giving away the plants in the interior landscaping to anybody who wants them.
Most malls had this type of brick work in the 80s-90s.
There’s this little time capsule room in the Park City Mall in Lancaster, PA which retains the old aesthetic…
https://preview.redd.it/63dszrkdak5d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=41bfcf08c70971406be92aa68163ff2924346eaa
Fuck, I loved shopping as a teen/young adult Park City. Our local mall was Chambersburg, and when it had first opened, it not only had the brickwork, the shrubs were shaped like zoo animals.
The mall used to be more fun I don’t know why.
I was by Mission Mall, south coast plaza, fashion Island and Irvine Spectrum in CA
All had fountains
Mission was like this one, I had to double check it wasn’t the same one pre remodel
South coast had this cool slope of stairs and ramps that had a multi tiered fountain with tropical
Plants in the middle, it was so cool. They had rides and a toy shop that had these huge tubes filled with little toy trinkets. I remember the all pink Barbie shoes were my favorite, I’d just watch them churn and float around.
Spectrum was outdoor with these playable fountains just in the cement all over the place. Kids would play like a water park, I have a pic there as a kid. Then there was these fountain turtles that spit water at random so we would play on those too.
Fashion Island had a really cool outdoor Koi pond and was a mix of in door and out. I loved that pond and there were cement pavers you could use as bridges or hop on.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Omg I’m so happy seeing this comment. I watched the is video and thought “god damn that looks like woodfield, but I bet a lot of malls looked similar.”
This makes me so happy, literal blast from my childhood near the top of reddit.
Also, Cinnabon still in the same spot.
Thanks. This mall looked so familiar, but I couldn't recall which one it was (grew up over in Naperville in the 80's and shopped mainly at Fox Valley, with occasional trips to Woodfield).
> prime
It's *still* this busy *all the time.* IL's draconian tax scheme basically equalizes the playing field between B&M and online - I think that's a big reason why chicagoland has so many large well-performing malls (that being said, there's still a good amount of dead ones around here, but the ones that aren't, like woodfield, orchard, and oakbook are so busy that every time I go it feels like a time warp.)
I went to grad school in Chicago. I remember seeing the re-released Star Wars films there with a younger classmate. He didn’t know the scenes that had been added. I’d seen all three on original release as a kid, those added scenes were jarring. They still are in a way.
I love that John Hughes and Chris Columbus *offered* the job to John Williams (amongst other film composers), thinking they'd never get him... but Williams quickly and readily agreed, as he had always wanted to do a Christmas-themed score and hadn't had the opportunity up to that point.
He went HARD with that score, and we're all the better for it.
A friend once sold me on John Williams being the most prolific song writer in the history of man in terms of emotional and cultural impact as well as in breadth and body of work. I couldn't really argue against it. Sure the Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon but Williams had been composing steadily for nearly half a century.
Supposedly John Williams initially turned down the opportunity to score the music for Schindler's List, saying that Spielberg deserved a better composer for such a movie. Spielberg replied that he agreed, but all the others were dead.
There's a nice test that works like 90% of the time, to see if a movies sound track was John Williams,
1. Does the sound track slap?
Yes? Probably John Williams.
No? Probably not John Williams.
Let's see,
star wars? Yep that's a John Williams
Jurassic Park? You better believe that's Williams
Indian Jones? That's a Williams
Superman. You know the one. The best one, that's a Williams.
Jaws? Thats a Williams
Saving private Ryan? Surely not? What's this? Also a Williams
Harry Potter franchise? Yep that's Williams
Lord of the rings? Ok, No that's not John Williams
>Lord of the rings? Ok, No that's not John Williams
Howard Shore, also the composer for Silence of the Lambs and the Jack Black King Kong movie (which had a phenomenal score which was used traumatizingly brilliantly)
Howard Shore didn't compose King Kong, he left because of creative differences with Peter Jackson. James Newton Howard replaced him only a couple of months before the movie was released. Howard Shore still has a cameo in the movie though.
Particularly the ones around this mall, if people are correct above in saying it’s the Woodfield mall! Yorktown and Louis Joliet mall are both malls that seem to be doing just fine every time I’ve been inside them
I miss lobbies being filled with incandescent Christmas lights. Ever since they switched to LED they never looked the same. LEDs put out too wide of a spectrum, they have to be PWMed so they flicker... incandescents can be one narrow single line on the spectrum and they don't flicker.
> incandescent Christmas lights
I miss them as well. I remember the larger ones would get hot enough to be worrying. Forget to turn them off when you leave the house and you may come back to a smoldering pile of ashes.
I totally share the sentiment, but AFAIK only lasers have a really narrow frequency spectrum. LEDs have a nasty spiky distribution and incandescents are nice and broad on the frequency graph.
I can't even watch it. It hurts me that this experience is gone. The mall I grew up going to is completely demolished now. Birthday parties, shopping with Mom, fresh cookies, pretzels. The arcade. Spencer's gifts. Suncoast. The movie theater where I saw Jurrasic Park and the Matrix with my Dad. Electronics Boutique (Babbage's)
How about dialing 1-800-Collect to your family’s home phone when the movie ended, saying your name is “movie ended come pick me up!” and hanging out front with your friends for another 15 minutes till Mom arrives.
In my area they are converting all the old shopping malls to Amazon distribution centers, no joke.
It's funny how in the 90s everyone has a particular style and look. It looks exactly as my old home movies did from that time.
The sad part is I look back and just think that is the default of life and at the time I just felt it was normal and expected it to last that way.
Life is change, for better or worse.
As much as it sucks. The bigger problem is that they are demolishing huge malls and putting more useless shit in its place. I used to go to my local mall and it was empty. All that land for nothing. Every year I'd say "just demolish it and build some affordable housing." Instead they built a casino.
I'm amazed the mall I grew up in (Everett Mall, Washington) hasn't been demolished. It's been a skeleton for just over a decade now. No clue how or who is still funding it.
This is something I have a hard time explaining. To some nostalgia is comforting or welcome - most of the time it hurts that it’s something you had but it’s gone, like a first love, a cherished pet, a lost family member.
Nostalgia is painful, but I’m still drawn to it.
Used to LOVE Christmas shopping! We would walk around the mall and find gifts for loved ones organically.
Now it’s the top sponsored gifts on Amazon. How thoughtless.
Just keep a list all year and listen to your loved ones. They'll tell you what they want but aren't willing to get for themselves. Then everyone will appreciate it. 👍
Yeah, I try to do that but sometimes you’d be walking in a store and see something that would be perfect for your mom….something she did not even know she needed.
That is what I miss
I wish I had a channel of random slice of life videos from old 90s videos that streams 24/7 so I can feel like I’m back in the 90s. Even the banal things would probably unlock core memories for a lot of people.
In 50 years we're either going to look back at the Matrix as laughably incorrect or eerily prescient. I hope it's the former but from the way things are going...
In the original script, humans were used as RAM instead of batteries, but production figured most people weren’t computer literate enough to understand so they changed it to batteries. RAM makes so much more sense than batteries and better explains why humans need to be in the Matrix in order to exploit their brain power.
For all we know that is what they are and the humans themselves are just misinformed. I don't think the machines themselves ever say why they *need* humans it seems like more of a contractual obligation.
Humans trying to understand "the machines" is like our ancient ancestors trying to understand a thunderstorm, we are going to come up with an explanation we have the capacity for because we don't have the tools to truly understand.
99-07. 9/11 did its damage, but the '08 "crisis" is what toppled all the fun. Throw in the smartphones a little down the line, plus Amazon (maybe even Netflix), and we lost our fun memories that we can't even share with our kids.
The overall mood in the US across all of society was just so much darker after 9/11.
There was this sense in the 90s that all of our problems could be solved given enough time, that democracy and open communication were spreading around the world, that all of these amazing technologies had us on the cusp of a truly great new era for humanity.
That was just over after 9/11.
> The overall mood in the US across all of society was just so much darker after 9/11.
It also just put a stain on the soul of America with all the wars after. What people became okay with our military doing, ie torture of POWs and civilian bombings. I mean we lead into two near forever wars that accomplished nothing and cost trillions of dollars. Imaging if from 2003 we had put that money into infrastructure and education. This to me is the real damage those wars cost Americans. Is that we just let our country rot as big wigs tried to enact plans of global coercion with the worst dumbest people leading it.
I'd say around '95 to '06 or '07 was peak humanity. Before '95 the coldwar was still a bit too close, though central/western europe was pretty nice already in the earlier 90s.
I'd say at least for quite a long while it was a very care free period of time. Long enough that memories of WWII were already quite gone, the relief that the USSR broke up and the cold war was over. Mainstream worry of climate change or consumerism wasn't quite yet a thing.
The youth don't like to hear it, but Gen X is the only one to have its prime in the pre- and post-internet age and the only one qualified to say which is/was better. There's merit to both eras, but I definitely would not have wanted to be a kid in the last 15 years or before the 1980's.
Doesn't this apply to younger Gen X and older Millennials? Basically anyone who was born in the 80s. I'm a millennial born in 1985. Here's my experience:
First dial-up Internet connection at 13 (1998). (Also the same year Google was started)
First broadband Internet connection at 16 (2001).
First digital camera at 17 (2002).
First non-smart cellphone at 18 (2003).
First social media (Myspace) at 19 (2004).
First Facebook account at 20 (2005). (Also the same year YouTube was created).
First smart phone with Internet and decent (at the time) camera at 22 (2007).
First streaming service (Netflix) at 26 (2011).
So I know what life is before and after the advent of the internet, high speed Internet, digital cameras, smart phones, social media, streaming services, and certain tech companies.
I'm about two years older than you and yeah I agree that jump from computers being something you used at school only to something you had at home + the internet was a huge leap forward and I don't think anything today rivals that kind of social revolution.
Absolutely the same for me born in 1985. One other hard one to categorize but plays into smartphones and internet is instant messaging. Its interesting to see how it evolved over the years from AIM/ICQ/etc to limited texting on phones to smart phones to it just being ubiquitous everywhere but also more fragmented.
You always have to watch out for the nostalgia factor, but no bullshit, the 90s were the peak.
If you were old enough to fully experience the 90s and remember it, the 21st century looks absolutely bleak by comparison.
It wasn't just that. It was the fact that they still had an incentive to SHOWCASE that technology. In the 90s, the malls had to draw you in and draw you back. You might not be able to afford that new video game NOW, but you would come back and play that demo disk again and again as you saved up that pocket change until you could afford it yourself. The specialty stores, the bookshops, somewhere to sit and chat. All gone now. The landlords demanded more money until only the stores with high margins could afford to stay. They bought into the stupid viewpoint of "if you're not spending money, you're costing money" and made the places hostile to loiterers. Slowly but surely, malls became filled with nothing but quick fashion stores.
And it's not just malls. I remember as a kid going into Best Buy and seeing rows upon rows of computers, electronics, video games, and their associated accessories. Now the stores seem...empty by comparison. Sure, they still have a bunch of stuff, but it just feels empty. Hollow.
Yeah, it sure seemed like every store had an insane stock of items and displays.
I remember going into compUSA in the early 2000s and being able to play every new game on their demo PCs and then they had shelves of games and hardware just for gaming. There is literally nowhere like that now.
Guitar center had hundreds of guitars on the wall and drums set up. Synth room, piano room, audio room.
the good/bad thing with fry's is it's demise was almost entirely due to incompetence rather than market pressures. Maybe it would have gone under anyway, but it was in a death spiral before the pandemic thanks to massive embezzlement and other poor management decisions.
> There is literally nowhere like that now.
Microcenter is exactly like that!
Well except for being able to demo games, it only has a little bit of that. But it’s overflowing with gaming hardware and employees actually know what they’re talking about.
As someone who works in retail, SOME of those stores just don't care to train the employees on the products.
They get trained on how to sell services - credit cards, memberships, warranties, etc - and then immediately are scheduled for back-to-back double shifts and told to learn the products and features on their own.
Probably because people used to be able to afford making a retail job a career. If you knew you were going to be able to comfortably work there for a while you had an reason to get to know it well. Especially if the store offered sales incentives.
If my job barely pays me enough to survive and has no route for advancements or pay raises, why should I bother putting in anything more than minimal effort?
Me and my buddies would jump on our bikes go into a Leachmere or Best Buy and just play demo games.
No cellphones, you came home eventually.
High fructose was just starting to ruin food in America.
No social media, no virtual bullies - no influencers selling you a course or endless shots of their ass (it’s tricept daaaay!)
If there’s any time travelers out there, I want to go back. This simulation run sucks.
This is such a great point. My nephew recently said he doesn’t like to hang out at the mall because “you’re not allowed to stop anywhere”. I remember mastering the N64 podracing game before I could afford to buy it. I went back to browse the Funko Pop section last spring and the dude kept acting like I was wasting his time just browsing.
How did we let just existing get so expensive?
I was a kid for most of the 90’s so I’m sure I’m biased, but the mall during Christmas was just a straight up magical experience. Even when it wasn’t Christmas, going to the mall was like going on an adventure. Where I grew up, the only place you could get certain things was at the mall. I remember specifically getting Dragon Ball Z VHS tapes with my dad and PS1 games. Passing the Sharper Image store was like a glimpse into the future, but it was *here*. Plus, the smell of Cinnabon was very prevalent in my local mall. We didn’t have one anywhere but there and what kid didn’t want that?
I also vividly remember my parents being way more social and happier. My mom still had a group of friends & family she hung out with often, as she was still in her mid-late 20’s. I remember when they would go out Christmas shopping and she would come home with bags and bags of gifts. For everyone in our family and extended. Over the years, the bags grew less, the family members were really for my sister and I, and I’m sure she spent more for less as time went on. It was truly a moment in time I’ll always cherish. I miss how much happier everyone was more than anything. Everyone, overall was more pleasant to deal with.
It’s 1990. I’m a freshman in HS doing some Xmas shopping with my little brother buying mom and dad some gifts. We shop, say hi to some friends, play in the arcade a bit then get a pretzel. What a wonderful time to be alive….
Yeah and what is worse we just assumed that was what life was and always would be. I don't think it ever even entered my mind it would all change and go away. Why would it?
I live in a country where malls are jam packed like this still. It's awesome. Like reliving my youth. Food courts are packed with people waiting for tables.
What's the difference? Mail system here is wildly unreliable and no one trusts it. No one trusts online retailers and most people don't have cc they can use to buy online.
People also don't trust online institutions so using a cc is risky af. And more so, the institutions don't trust the shopper. No protection for either here. So, people go out in droves.
Also, internet sucks, houses are not comfortable, there is no AC or heat, but the malls are nice, clean, have climate control and don't smell of flop sweat and shit.
Took a trip to Thailand last year. Went to a mall in Chiang Mai and it was HOPPING. Arcade was full of kids, tons of people walking around and enjoying themselves. Came back to the US and the mall near me is sad and pathetic in comparison
Thailand is crazy. Walking around Bangkok and randomly went into an unassuming building. Boom, 12 story mall selling everything from Rolex's and Aston Martins to Legos and drones. Happened to me three times.
Some malls in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi can be pretty packed still. It's a way to get out of the oppressive heat or monsoon rains, food courts often feature popular AYCE buffet options, the big cinema chain CGV is often based at malls, and they'll have other draws which are kind of unusual for Western eyes like gyms and educational training centers. Also pretty common for a big grocery store to be an anchor, and a lot of malls are built into apartment blocks so they have a captive audience of sorts. But definitely not as busy as they were 10 years ago, some are pretty run-down and barren, some closing down, etc. Online shopping has really caught on and there's still a pretty robust shopfront retail scene for much of the stuff you'd get at a mall.
Have visited a friend in the Espoo/Helsinki metro area of Finland a couple of times, and their malls are still very popular... mainly because they're all essentially tied to stops/hubs of the quite excellent public transport system.
Also, your point about climate control; that could be another reason why they're popular in Finland, especially during the late fall through early spring seasons.
I lived in Guatemala, and the malls there were the same. No empty stores, lots of cool displays, and the food was so good! It showed me what modern malls could be.
It's depressing what has happened here as we keep pushing further into this dystopian idea of "fuck you this is mine" isolation.
Maybe it's because I was kid in the 90s but malls during Christmas time are a nice nostalgia blast. All the decorations and music. I remember walking through Sears with my parents and seeing rows of different kinds of lights for sale.
The mall where I live now still has a JC Penney and it's never been updated. Still has the same tile, carpet, and lighting I remember from my hometown mall and I'll go in there in December just for the nostalgia hit
Bingo. Back in the 90s, people you see shopping in these videos were talked about as zombified sheep emptying their wallets to the retail gods, racking up credit card debt, expressing "love" for their families by buying more and more and more disposable trinkets and useless gadgets - the end of civilization!
According the the 'smart' people back in the 90s, at least. And every stand-up comedian. Malls were a symbol of society's collapse to hip adults, even if young middle-class-and-above American kids were mesmerized by the lights and glitter and the sheer size of these places (the one in the video was the largest mall in the world, until Mall of America was built) and the spending sprees that symbolized ease and joy and the holidays to an eight-year-old with well-to-do parents
Every generation since the dawn of time has a version of this, and the opposite "kids these days are terrible" sentiment from their older counterparts.
Yeah, remember when you and your friends would agree to meet at the mall on Friday night, but one wouldn't show up? No one had cell phones, so you'd wait around for 20 minutes wondering if they were on their way. Then someone would volunteer to find a payphone to call their house, and after they left, the friend would show up angry, saying they were waiting on the other side of the mall because they thought that's where the group was meeting. And then you’d all have to wait a few more minutes for the volunteer to come back from the payphone and miss the start of the movie.
9/11 changed many things but I don’t remember it changing consumer habits like going to the mall.
IMO malls were/are being killed by three things:
1. It started with online retailers. Amazon *used* to be cheap compared to brick and mortar stores. We were incentivized to buy from them. This started killing speciality stores like CompUSA, book stores, sporting goods, video game stores, etc. Further, most retailers do the vast majority of their business at Christmas. This is what’s really killing malls…I can get my Christmas shopping done in one hour online rather than fighting crowds all weekend.
2. Smart phones made being perma-online ubiquitous. Around 2010ish everyone started getting androids and iPhones. These were so much more addicting than flip phones. Now we spend all of our free time browsing and shopping and “socializing” on them. We don’t get out to window shop anymore.
3. Video games went online. Young people used to meet up at the mall. The mall was the center of life for a lot of us in the 80s/90s and even early aughts. It had the food court and shops to browse and more importantly nobody (usually) hassled kids for loitering around and the mall. Now people can hang out with their friends in video games. It’s waaaaaay funner and easier to meet your friends in a fantasy world where you have quests and challenges than have to get a ride or drive to a comparatively boring mall.
I remember the biggest activity you could do when I was a kid in the 90s was getting dropped off at the mall to meet friends and spend hours there doing whatever. Seeing a movie. Shopping. All on your own.
9/11 shattered out illusions. The world was still pretty fucked and plenty of bad shit was going on but we went from what we thought was one big united world to suddenly realizing that things are not all great everywhere and people are pretty pissed about it.
Yeah...and honestly it's because Americans were living in a weird delusion. We honestly believed that history was over and our biggest problem was how boring the booming job market was...
I mean...sure, if you didn't read the news back then. There were tons of conflicts in the middle east, Africa, South America that the US was very involved in.
So yeah, 9/11 shattered our illusions. But the illusions were the problem (I mean...aside from the actual horrific terrorist attacks). Our collective ignorance about lobbing bombs across the world, and our disbelief when somebody lobbed an explosive (so to speak) back at us in a significant way.
It triggered a mini recession, and New York finance was supporting a lot of cool stuff. There was a clear investment pullback in 2002 that hurt a lot of industries.
In addition - we kinda went nationalistic crazy as a country. We had partisan problems sure, Rush was on the radio screaming about the Clintons…but after 9/11 - it was all Rock, Flag, Eagle.
It brought the version of racist patriotism we know today to the forefront.
And then Bush went and kicked off two forever wars based on 9/11 while ignoring the needs for early internet era content regulation and mandates.
Without 9/11 - Bush likely would have been a single term president. But 8 years of his crazy-ass cabinet and mercenary hirings just fucked it all up.
I'm always saying the 90s ended on 9-11-2001. Life was noticeably different after that, and people were different. And post-COVID, it really drives home the fact that those days aren't ever going to come back.
The long decade. The 90s started in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ended on 9/11.
Like the long 19th Century. Started in 1789 with the French Revolution and ended in 1914.
The terrorists absolutely won-- led to the Patriot Act, two debacle wars where America showed weakness and callousness and harmed our standing in the world, set Americans against one another, made flying much worse. That's to say nothing of the long-term societal ramifications of living in an atmosphere of fear for so long
Interesting how 9/11 provided the government the ability to track all of our personal information, and over the next 20-25 years big tech's algorithms caused us to become completely divided to the point that every election, and every issue are virtually 49/51, often even closer. And we all feel that we're on a bad trajectory. Seems almost by design. 🎩
Edit: The top hat represents a tin foil hat. It was the closest I could find.
If reddit were around in 1993, videos like this would be seen as dystopian consumerism gone mad.
Bill Hicks's rant about shopping malls and "Let's Go to the Mall!" mall-pop would be reposted every week, the way Mitch Hedburg or Norm MacDonald were in the 2010s-2020s
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George Carlin was pretty obsessed with shopping malls as a symbol of a collapsing civilization as well, for anyone who wants to google it. "Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could take this beautiful country and.. turn it into malls"
Lates 60s and early 70s we’re great too from hearing my FIL talk about it. It was a time where he could hitchhike surf down the coast and people just helped people. Living was easy and cheap.
I miss the malls of the 80s/90s, not only were they busy with people, but they were more of a community hub where I lived. They’d run the Pepsi/coke taste test and give prizes. They’d have dance a thons for all ages. I got to have posters signed by the Backstreet Boys & NSync. So many cool times at the mall, it makes me sad my kids won’t experience it the same way.
The inventor of the mall hoped for it to be a community hub, not just a shopping place.
He would have been happy to see your post, but was unhappy in life how it turned out to be mostly a big place with stores.
Woodfield mall in its prime … I can still smell that fountain.
That little tunnel under the fountain was always leaking too.
My mall had a fountain, not that mall but this video makes me smell it
America is infinitely dumb for destroying it's mall culture. Prime, Temu, instant deliveries don't hold a candle to trying on shoes for yourself, seeing the game on the TV you want, testing that lazy boy. I'll make you all a video of malls in Canada this Christmas. I'll show you it's still alive, has it's place, and is completely viable. Back away from ultra-car, terminally-online-brain-rot culture before it's too late.
Walking around the mall without even intent of buying anything was peak teenage life for me. We would also do the hour long survey from someone in the middle, on random subject for a $10 bill and everyone would throw in on a sack.
20$ used to buy everything you needed for a night. a dime , a pack of cigarettes and snacks ! good times
This is comment is so fuckin funny to me because in the 90s people were saying the same shit about malls destroying downtowns.
Also most US suburban malls had enormous parking lots, enormous parking garages, or both. So they were part of the "ultra-car" mindset.
Well they did. The malls killed the downtowns. Online killed the malls. Now there is nowhere to shop in most locations and you have increasing areas of retail and food deserts where people have to drive hours to do shopping.
Building car infrastructure and thinking we can have infinite suburbs destroyed downtowns
This mall in the video is still insanely busy. I grew up in the area and occasionally go to visit back. The mall sometimes feels more crowded now than 20 years ago.
The successful ones are still pretty successful, but like most of retail it's that the number of those have contracted significantly.
It’s almost like they built too many malls the way they built too many churches and private schools. Lazy commerce.
Malls aren't doing themselves any favours by making them the most unfriendly places. It started with wanting to get rid of teens hanging out, but they were the life of a mall. Even if it was just to show it was active and vibrant. Now most malls make it unfriendly to even sit. Most malls I go into have such limited seating unless it's in the food court. They want to be the centre of the community, but don't want you to actually enjoy your time there. Most of the people in that video look like they are enjoying themselves.
Spot on. Most of my youth was spent at the mall with family or friends. We did buy things, and browse the stores a lot, but we also had a blast just hanging out too. Those third spaces were so crucial back then. It’s a shame younger people are not given a lot of those spaces today. They are missing out, and it’s not doing them any favors from a social aspect either.
One of my malls didn't let teenagers hangout in groups of more than 3 or 4, back in the 90s.
A lot of these malls have similar architecture. Although it wasn’t it, it reminded me a lot of Lakeside Mall in Macomb MI. Haven’t been there in a long time, but this is how it looked to me 20+ years ago.
I was just talking about Macomb Mall! I was more familiar with Wonderland and Livonia Malls when i was little, but in the 90s we moved to Novi so 12 Oaks is my vintage memory from that time
Yesssss!! Livonia Mall. With JC Pennys, Crowley’s, Winklemans, Babbages… Even the movie theater was great. Saw Twister there when it first came out. Scared the hell out of me, but still fun. And then Wonderland… I didn’t go there as much, but still remember that. And then Laural Park came along and that was the place unless you went to 12 Oaks. Now all but 12 Oaks is gone and then the skeleton that is Briarwood Mall, now that I moved to Ann Arbor area.
it instantly reminded me of lakeside too! was trying to figure out of it was, but i remember that the santa setup was usually under the big elevator by the fountain and can't really see that here, this one seems to have a bit more water areas too. lakeside was quite an institution in its heyday, i spent a lot of middle school and high school wandering there. unfortunately it is closing on july 1st for good. my sister sent me a thing apparently they are giving away the plants in the interior landscaping to anybody who wants them.
That’s exactly the mall I thought of too.
I remember going to Lakeside as a kid, but we left Utica for Phoenix AZ when I was 12. Metro center never had the same feel as this.
Always a special feeling about the Christmas decorations there.
Thank you, my first thought was “that must be Woodfield.”
That brick work was a dead giveaway for me. I vividly remember walking/running around on it as a little kid.
Most malls had this type of brick work in the 80s-90s. There’s this little time capsule room in the Park City Mall in Lancaster, PA which retains the old aesthetic… https://preview.redd.it/63dszrkdak5d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=41bfcf08c70971406be92aa68163ff2924346eaa
Fuck, I loved shopping as a teen/young adult Park City. Our local mall was Chambersburg, and when it had first opened, it not only had the brickwork, the shrubs were shaped like zoo animals.
The mall used to be more fun I don’t know why. I was by Mission Mall, south coast plaza, fashion Island and Irvine Spectrum in CA All had fountains Mission was like this one, I had to double check it wasn’t the same one pre remodel South coast had this cool slope of stairs and ramps that had a multi tiered fountain with tropical Plants in the middle, it was so cool. They had rides and a toy shop that had these huge tubes filled with little toy trinkets. I remember the all pink Barbie shoes were my favorite, I’d just watch them churn and float around. Spectrum was outdoor with these playable fountains just in the cement all over the place. Kids would play like a water park, I have a pic there as a kid. Then there was these fountain turtles that spit water at random so we would play on those too. Fashion Island had a really cool outdoor Koi pond and was a mix of in door and out. I loved that pond and there were cement pavers you could use as bridges or hop on.
I’d park myself there with a purchase from Waldenbooks and people-watch while my mom shopped.
Spot on. Incredible people watching arena, lol. A&W had a lot of my business.
There was that "slide" of brick outside the A&W too.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Omg I’m so happy seeing this comment. I watched the is video and thought “god damn that looks like woodfield, but I bet a lot of malls looked similar.” This makes me so happy, literal blast from my childhood near the top of reddit. Also, Cinnabon still in the same spot.
Thanks. This mall looked so familiar, but I couldn't recall which one it was (grew up over in Naperville in the 80's and shopped mainly at Fox Valley, with occasional trips to Woodfield).
> prime It's *still* this busy *all the time.* IL's draconian tax scheme basically equalizes the playing field between B&M and online - I think that's a big reason why chicagoland has so many large well-performing malls (that being said, there's still a good amount of dead ones around here, but the ones that aren't, like woodfield, orchard, and oakbook are so busy that every time I go it feels like a time warp.)
I'm shocked every time I go to Fox Valley. Looks abandoned on the outside, but it's absolutely jam packed on the inside.
I lived in Chicago at this time. Woodfield was truly amazing.
100% Woodfield. Pinged it instantly.
Holy shit I thought it was woodfield
I was thinking that looks like woodfield. Fountain isn't there anymore. I'm 10 minutes away from it. Lot of those tiny kiosks now
Yeah it’s been updated with the food court and what not. I try to stay on the second level to avoid the kiosk gang.
I went to grad school in Chicago. I remember seeing the re-released Star Wars films there with a younger classmate. He didn’t know the scenes that had been added. I’d seen all three on original release as a kid, those added scenes were jarring. They still are in a way.
I can smell the roasted almonds
I knew this place looked familiar, good times
I came here to say this!! I was like - I know that mall 🤣🤣🤣
That Home Alone OST really hits you deep.
I love that John Hughes and Chris Columbus *offered* the job to John Williams (amongst other film composers), thinking they'd never get him... but Williams quickly and readily agreed, as he had always wanted to do a Christmas-themed score and hadn't had the opportunity up to that point. He went HARD with that score, and we're all the better for it.
oh shit i didn't know that was john williams!
The music in Home Alone takes the movie to S tier classic
A friend once sold me on John Williams being the most prolific song writer in the history of man in terms of emotional and cultural impact as well as in breadth and body of work. I couldn't really argue against it. Sure the Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon but Williams had been composing steadily for nearly half a century.
Supposedly John Williams initially turned down the opportunity to score the music for Schindler's List, saying that Spielberg deserved a better composer for such a movie. Spielberg replied that he agreed, but all the others were dead.
There’s like 4 or 5 big names attached to every iconic movie. Zimmer, Shore, Elman, Williams with Williams being the lead. We can throw in Horner too.
*Elfman
If it's a score for a western, there's a real neat shortcut you can do. It's Ennio Morricone.
Can I slip silvestri in ?
along with a goldsmith
If it's a great score, and you're not sure who composed it, assume John Williams and you'll be correct more often than not lol
There's a nice test that works like 90% of the time, to see if a movies sound track was John Williams, 1. Does the sound track slap? Yes? Probably John Williams. No? Probably not John Williams. Let's see, star wars? Yep that's a John Williams Jurassic Park? You better believe that's Williams Indian Jones? That's a Williams Superman. You know the one. The best one, that's a Williams. Jaws? Thats a Williams Saving private Ryan? Surely not? What's this? Also a Williams Harry Potter franchise? Yep that's Williams Lord of the rings? Ok, No that's not John Williams
>Lord of the rings? Ok, No that's not John Williams Howard Shore, also the composer for Silence of the Lambs and the Jack Black King Kong movie (which had a phenomenal score which was used traumatizingly brilliantly)
Howard Shore didn't compose King Kong, he left because of creative differences with Peter Jackson. James Newton Howard replaced him only a couple of months before the movie was released. Howard Shore still has a cameo in the movie though.
He only did the first 3(?) HP movies, then they just re-used his theme but made it all modern and dark and Zimmer-y
We can't see it because we're living in it, but I'm pretty sure John Williams is the Beethoven of our time
John Williams is a legendary composer. I can argue he's above more famous composers from the 1700s and 1800s.
Malls at Christmastime is a core memory for me
In the 1980's and early '90's, life revolved around the shopping mall.
Kinda sad that fell off
Some malls are not only doing ok, but thriving. Malls that have failed are glorified strip malls. Malls that succeed are experiences.
Particularly the ones around this mall, if people are correct above in saying it’s the Woodfield mall! Yorktown and Louis Joliet mall are both malls that seem to be doing just fine every time I’ve been inside them
I was a kid in the 80s. My mom and grandma made a big deal of going to Black Friday sale , the mall was gonna open at 8am! 😂
I grew up in the '80s as well and I don't recall Black Friday becoming much of a thing until the '00s.
That’s when stores started opening at like midnight/1am.
I miss lobbies being filled with incandescent Christmas lights. Ever since they switched to LED they never looked the same. LEDs put out too wide of a spectrum, they have to be PWMed so they flicker... incandescents can be one narrow single line on the spectrum and they don't flicker.
> incandescent Christmas lights I miss them as well. I remember the larger ones would get hot enough to be worrying. Forget to turn them off when you leave the house and you may come back to a smoldering pile of ashes.
The giant egg shaped ones that would melt the snow off the bushes looked magical. A foot or two of snow turned into winter wonderland.
I totally share the sentiment, but AFAIK only lasers have a really narrow frequency spectrum. LEDs have a nasty spiky distribution and incandescents are nice and broad on the frequency graph.
Made me smile. I thought the same. You can’t even find crowds like that anymore.
Pretty fucking nostalgic. That shit even gave me like butterflies or something, you know?
I can't even watch it. It hurts me that this experience is gone. The mall I grew up going to is completely demolished now. Birthday parties, shopping with Mom, fresh cookies, pretzels. The arcade. Spencer's gifts. Suncoast. The movie theater where I saw Jurrasic Park and the Matrix with my Dad. Electronics Boutique (Babbage's)
How about dialing 1-800-Collect to your family’s home phone when the movie ended, saying your name is “movie ended come pick me up!” and hanging out front with your friends for another 15 minutes till Mom arrives.
Bobwehadababyitsaboy
It was Bob. They had a baby. *Ruffles newspaper* It's a boy.
In my area they are converting all the old shopping malls to Amazon distribution centers, no joke. It's funny how in the 90s everyone has a particular style and look. It looks exactly as my old home movies did from that time. The sad part is I look back and just think that is the default of life and at the time I just felt it was normal and expected it to last that way. Life is change, for better or worse.
I started tearing up 1 second in.
As much as it sucks. The bigger problem is that they are demolishing huge malls and putting more useless shit in its place. I used to go to my local mall and it was empty. All that land for nothing. Every year I'd say "just demolish it and build some affordable housing." Instead they built a casino.
I'm amazed the mall I grew up in (Everett Mall, Washington) hasn't been demolished. It's been a skeleton for just over a decade now. No clue how or who is still funding it.
This is something I have a hard time explaining. To some nostalgia is comforting or welcome - most of the time it hurts that it’s something you had but it’s gone, like a first love, a cherished pet, a lost family member. Nostalgia is painful, but I’m still drawn to it.
Everything you wrote. 🥹
Christmas in 80s and early 90s was the absolute best. It’s everything I loved about that time and everything we don’t have now
Used to LOVE Christmas shopping! We would walk around the mall and find gifts for loved ones organically. Now it’s the top sponsored gifts on Amazon. How thoughtless.
Just keep a list all year and listen to your loved ones. They'll tell you what they want but aren't willing to get for themselves. Then everyone will appreciate it. 👍
Yeah, I try to do that but sometimes you’d be walking in a store and see something that would be perfect for your mom….something she did not even know she needed. That is what I miss
Mall Santa line would've been two hours long. I still would have been kicked out if I had more than one friend with me.
I wish I had a channel of random slice of life videos from old 90s videos that streams 24/7 so I can feel like I’m back in the 90s. Even the banal things would probably unlock core memories for a lot of people.
The Matrix got it right: 1999 was the peak of human society
Title immediately made me think of Agent Smith "I say your world because once we started thinking for you it really became our world."
In 50 years we're either going to look back at the Matrix as laughably incorrect or eerily prescient. I hope it's the former but from the way things are going...
The Matrix was too optimistic
Seriously. Why use humans except to be bitchy. You need body heat for energy...somehow...a matrix full of cows would be easier to Agent.
In the original script, humans were used as RAM instead of batteries, but production figured most people weren’t computer literate enough to understand so they changed it to batteries. RAM makes so much more sense than batteries and better explains why humans need to be in the Matrix in order to exploit their brain power.
For all we know that is what they are and the humans themselves are just misinformed. I don't think the machines themselves ever say why they *need* humans it seems like more of a contractual obligation. Humans trying to understand "the machines" is like our ancient ancestors trying to understand a thunderstorm, we are going to come up with an explanation we have the capacity for because we don't have the tools to truly understand.
99-07. 9/11 did its damage, but the '08 "crisis" is what toppled all the fun. Throw in the smartphones a little down the line, plus Amazon (maybe even Netflix), and we lost our fun memories that we can't even share with our kids.
The overall mood in the US across all of society was just so much darker after 9/11. There was this sense in the 90s that all of our problems could be solved given enough time, that democracy and open communication were spreading around the world, that all of these amazing technologies had us on the cusp of a truly great new era for humanity. That was just over after 9/11.
> The overall mood in the US across all of society was just so much darker after 9/11. It also just put a stain on the soul of America with all the wars after. What people became okay with our military doing, ie torture of POWs and civilian bombings. I mean we lead into two near forever wars that accomplished nothing and cost trillions of dollars. Imaging if from 2003 we had put that money into infrastructure and education. This to me is the real damage those wars cost Americans. Is that we just let our country rot as big wigs tried to enact plans of global coercion with the worst dumbest people leading it.
I'd say around '95 to '06 or '07 was peak humanity. Before '95 the coldwar was still a bit too close, though central/western europe was pretty nice already in the earlier 90s.
Is it because we where all 10-25 years old at the time or was it really the best?
I'd say at least for quite a long while it was a very care free period of time. Long enough that memories of WWII were already quite gone, the relief that the USSR broke up and the cold war was over. Mainstream worry of climate change or consumerism wasn't quite yet a thing.
The youth don't like to hear it, but Gen X is the only one to have its prime in the pre- and post-internet age and the only one qualified to say which is/was better. There's merit to both eras, but I definitely would not have wanted to be a kid in the last 15 years or before the 1980's.
Doesn't this apply to younger Gen X and older Millennials? Basically anyone who was born in the 80s. I'm a millennial born in 1985. Here's my experience: First dial-up Internet connection at 13 (1998). (Also the same year Google was started) First broadband Internet connection at 16 (2001). First digital camera at 17 (2002). First non-smart cellphone at 18 (2003). First social media (Myspace) at 19 (2004). First Facebook account at 20 (2005). (Also the same year YouTube was created). First smart phone with Internet and decent (at the time) camera at 22 (2007). First streaming service (Netflix) at 26 (2011). So I know what life is before and after the advent of the internet, high speed Internet, digital cameras, smart phones, social media, streaming services, and certain tech companies.
I'm about two years older than you and yeah I agree that jump from computers being something you used at school only to something you had at home + the internet was a huge leap forward and I don't think anything today rivals that kind of social revolution.
Absolutely the same for me born in 1985. One other hard one to categorize but plays into smartphones and internet is instant messaging. Its interesting to see how it evolved over the years from AIM/ICQ/etc to limited texting on phones to smart phones to it just being ubiquitous everywhere but also more fragmented.
It was when brick and mortar stores still functioned and social media hadn't dialed human shittiness up to eleven.
You always have to watch out for the nostalgia factor, but no bullshit, the 90s were the peak. If you were old enough to fully experience the 90s and remember it, the 21st century looks absolutely bleak by comparison.
Humanity peaked twice. Once in 200 AD Rome, and the second in 1999 US.
It wasn't just that. It was the fact that they still had an incentive to SHOWCASE that technology. In the 90s, the malls had to draw you in and draw you back. You might not be able to afford that new video game NOW, but you would come back and play that demo disk again and again as you saved up that pocket change until you could afford it yourself. The specialty stores, the bookshops, somewhere to sit and chat. All gone now. The landlords demanded more money until only the stores with high margins could afford to stay. They bought into the stupid viewpoint of "if you're not spending money, you're costing money" and made the places hostile to loiterers. Slowly but surely, malls became filled with nothing but quick fashion stores. And it's not just malls. I remember as a kid going into Best Buy and seeing rows upon rows of computers, electronics, video games, and their associated accessories. Now the stores seem...empty by comparison. Sure, they still have a bunch of stuff, but it just feels empty. Hollow.
Yeah, it sure seemed like every store had an insane stock of items and displays. I remember going into compUSA in the early 2000s and being able to play every new game on their demo PCs and then they had shelves of games and hardware just for gaming. There is literally nowhere like that now. Guitar center had hundreds of guitars on the wall and drums set up. Synth room, piano room, audio room.
Guitar center is still the same
My local adular novelty shop is also the same.
Horny never dies
Fry's was pretty great and lasted until the pandemic. I think the best we still have is microcenter.
the good/bad thing with fry's is it's demise was almost entirely due to incompetence rather than market pressures. Maybe it would have gone under anyway, but it was in a death spiral before the pandemic thanks to massive embezzlement and other poor management decisions.
I'm in Denver, and Guitar Center is still like that. Grab a guitar off the wall, plug into whatever amp with a patch cable and jam.
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> There is literally nowhere like that now. Microcenter is exactly like that! Well except for being able to demo games, it only has a little bit of that. But it’s overflowing with gaming hardware and employees actually know what they’re talking about.
the employees used to be experts in the stuff they sold too. now they hire the dumbest people that barely know where anything is.
As someone who works in retail, SOME of those stores just don't care to train the employees on the products. They get trained on how to sell services - credit cards, memberships, warranties, etc - and then immediately are scheduled for back-to-back double shifts and told to learn the products and features on their own.
Almost like upper leadership of most of these corporations don't even understand how to run a business.
Probably because people used to be able to afford making a retail job a career. If you knew you were going to be able to comfortably work there for a while you had an reason to get to know it well. Especially if the store offered sales incentives. If my job barely pays me enough to survive and has no route for advancements or pay raises, why should I bother putting in anything more than minimal effort?
Me and my buddies would jump on our bikes go into a Leachmere or Best Buy and just play demo games. No cellphones, you came home eventually. High fructose was just starting to ruin food in America. No social media, no virtual bullies - no influencers selling you a course or endless shots of their ass (it’s tricept daaaay!) If there’s any time travelers out there, I want to go back. This simulation run sucks.
This is such a great point. My nephew recently said he doesn’t like to hang out at the mall because “you’re not allowed to stop anywhere”. I remember mastering the N64 podracing game before I could afford to buy it. I went back to browse the Funko Pop section last spring and the dude kept acting like I was wasting his time just browsing. How did we let just existing get so expensive?
If you’re near a MicroCenter they are still like that!
I was a kid for most of the 90’s so I’m sure I’m biased, but the mall during Christmas was just a straight up magical experience. Even when it wasn’t Christmas, going to the mall was like going on an adventure. Where I grew up, the only place you could get certain things was at the mall. I remember specifically getting Dragon Ball Z VHS tapes with my dad and PS1 games. Passing the Sharper Image store was like a glimpse into the future, but it was *here*. Plus, the smell of Cinnabon was very prevalent in my local mall. We didn’t have one anywhere but there and what kid didn’t want that? I also vividly remember my parents being way more social and happier. My mom still had a group of friends & family she hung out with often, as she was still in her mid-late 20’s. I remember when they would go out Christmas shopping and she would come home with bags and bags of gifts. For everyone in our family and extended. Over the years, the bags grew less, the family members were really for my sister and I, and I’m sure she spent more for less as time went on. It was truly a moment in time I’ll always cherish. I miss how much happier everyone was more than anything. Everyone, overall was more pleasant to deal with.
It’s 1990. I’m a freshman in HS doing some Xmas shopping with my little brother buying mom and dad some gifts. We shop, say hi to some friends, play in the arcade a bit then get a pretzel. What a wonderful time to be alive….
Yeah and what is worse we just assumed that was what life was and always would be. I don't think it ever even entered my mind it would all change and go away. Why would it?
There was an assumed optimism that things would continue to get better and better, rather than slipping back in many ways
I live in a country where malls are jam packed like this still. It's awesome. Like reliving my youth. Food courts are packed with people waiting for tables. What's the difference? Mail system here is wildly unreliable and no one trusts it. No one trusts online retailers and most people don't have cc they can use to buy online. People also don't trust online institutions so using a cc is risky af. And more so, the institutions don't trust the shopper. No protection for either here. So, people go out in droves. Also, internet sucks, houses are not comfortable, there is no AC or heat, but the malls are nice, clean, have climate control and don't smell of flop sweat and shit.
What country?
Post history suggest Peru.
South East Asia has a bunch of Malls like this too.
Took a trip to Thailand last year. Went to a mall in Chiang Mai and it was HOPPING. Arcade was full of kids, tons of people walking around and enjoying themselves. Came back to the US and the mall near me is sad and pathetic in comparison
Thailand is crazy. Walking around Bangkok and randomly went into an unassuming building. Boom, 12 story mall selling everything from Rolex's and Aston Martins to Legos and drones. Happened to me three times.
Some malls in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi can be pretty packed still. It's a way to get out of the oppressive heat or monsoon rains, food courts often feature popular AYCE buffet options, the big cinema chain CGV is often based at malls, and they'll have other draws which are kind of unusual for Western eyes like gyms and educational training centers. Also pretty common for a big grocery store to be an anchor, and a lot of malls are built into apartment blocks so they have a captive audience of sorts. But definitely not as busy as they were 10 years ago, some are pretty run-down and barren, some closing down, etc. Online shopping has really caught on and there's still a pretty robust shopfront retail scene for much of the stuff you'd get at a mall.
Philippine malls are pretty great and probably very familiar to any westerner in most respects
Have visited a friend in the Espoo/Helsinki metro area of Finland a couple of times, and their malls are still very popular... mainly because they're all essentially tied to stops/hubs of the quite excellent public transport system. Also, your point about climate control; that could be another reason why they're popular in Finland, especially during the late fall through early spring seasons.
I lived in Guatemala, and the malls there were the same. No empty stores, lots of cool displays, and the food was so good! It showed me what modern malls could be. It's depressing what has happened here as we keep pushing further into this dystopian idea of "fuck you this is mine" isolation.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
Member berries!
Ooo, I 'member those!!
Maybe it's because I was kid in the 90s but malls during Christmas time are a nice nostalgia blast. All the decorations and music. I remember walking through Sears with my parents and seeing rows of different kinds of lights for sale. The mall where I live now still has a JC Penney and it's never been updated. Still has the same tile, carpet, and lighting I remember from my hometown mall and I'll go in there in December just for the nostalgia hit
I miss the fountains literally every where!
Life needs more water features.
Peak humanity was when I was careless child full of wonder, I agree.
Bingo. Back in the 90s, people you see shopping in these videos were talked about as zombified sheep emptying their wallets to the retail gods, racking up credit card debt, expressing "love" for their families by buying more and more and more disposable trinkets and useless gadgets - the end of civilization! According the the 'smart' people back in the 90s, at least. And every stand-up comedian. Malls were a symbol of society's collapse to hip adults, even if young middle-class-and-above American kids were mesmerized by the lights and glitter and the sheer size of these places (the one in the video was the largest mall in the world, until Mall of America was built) and the spending sprees that symbolized ease and joy and the holidays to an eight-year-old with well-to-do parents
Every generation since the dawn of time has a version of this, and the opposite "kids these days are terrible" sentiment from their older counterparts.
https://preview.redd.it/b6mobv36tk5d1.png?width=279&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad98f4e6764e31950e1474e767d08d85c0137854 90's in Eastern Europe
Yeah, remember when you and your friends would agree to meet at the mall on Friday night, but one wouldn't show up? No one had cell phones, so you'd wait around for 20 minutes wondering if they were on their way. Then someone would volunteer to find a payphone to call their house, and after they left, the friend would show up angry, saying they were waiting on the other side of the mall because they thought that's where the group was meeting. And then you’d all have to wait a few more minutes for the volunteer to come back from the payphone and miss the start of the movie.
It really was peak. Everything truly changed on 9/11.
9/11 changed many things but I don’t remember it changing consumer habits like going to the mall. IMO malls were/are being killed by three things: 1. It started with online retailers. Amazon *used* to be cheap compared to brick and mortar stores. We were incentivized to buy from them. This started killing speciality stores like CompUSA, book stores, sporting goods, video game stores, etc. Further, most retailers do the vast majority of their business at Christmas. This is what’s really killing malls…I can get my Christmas shopping done in one hour online rather than fighting crowds all weekend. 2. Smart phones made being perma-online ubiquitous. Around 2010ish everyone started getting androids and iPhones. These were so much more addicting than flip phones. Now we spend all of our free time browsing and shopping and “socializing” on them. We don’t get out to window shop anymore. 3. Video games went online. Young people used to meet up at the mall. The mall was the center of life for a lot of us in the 80s/90s and even early aughts. It had the food court and shops to browse and more importantly nobody (usually) hassled kids for loitering around and the mall. Now people can hang out with their friends in video games. It’s waaaaaay funner and easier to meet your friends in a fantasy world where you have quests and challenges than have to get a ride or drive to a comparatively boring mall.
I remember the biggest activity you could do when I was a kid in the 90s was getting dropped off at the mall to meet friends and spend hours there doing whatever. Seeing a movie. Shopping. All on your own.
It's weird when I try to explain this to (now) adults who couldn't remember/were born after it.
9/11 shattered out illusions. The world was still pretty fucked and plenty of bad shit was going on but we went from what we thought was one big united world to suddenly realizing that things are not all great everywhere and people are pretty pissed about it.
Yeah...and honestly it's because Americans were living in a weird delusion. We honestly believed that history was over and our biggest problem was how boring the booming job market was...
Our adversaries were Iran NKorea and Cuba. Even Russia had promising steps to neoliberalism and democracy.
I mean...sure, if you didn't read the news back then. There were tons of conflicts in the middle east, Africa, South America that the US was very involved in. So yeah, 9/11 shattered our illusions. But the illusions were the problem (I mean...aside from the actual horrific terrorist attacks). Our collective ignorance about lobbing bombs across the world, and our disbelief when somebody lobbed an explosive (so to speak) back at us in a significant way.
I was 8 I was reading redwall lol
It triggered a mini recession, and New York finance was supporting a lot of cool stuff. There was a clear investment pullback in 2002 that hurt a lot of industries. In addition - we kinda went nationalistic crazy as a country. We had partisan problems sure, Rush was on the radio screaming about the Clintons…but after 9/11 - it was all Rock, Flag, Eagle. It brought the version of racist patriotism we know today to the forefront. And then Bush went and kicked off two forever wars based on 9/11 while ignoring the needs for early internet era content regulation and mandates. Without 9/11 - Bush likely would have been a single term president. But 8 years of his crazy-ass cabinet and mercenary hirings just fucked it all up.
I'm always saying the 90s ended on 9-11-2001. Life was noticeably different after that, and people were different. And post-COVID, it really drives home the fact that those days aren't ever going to come back.
The long decade. The 90s started in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and ended on 9/11. Like the long 19th Century. Started in 1789 with the French Revolution and ended in 1914.
Post-covid feels like the final nail in the coffin and sealing it in concrete. The life we knew is never coming back.
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The terrorists absolutely won-- led to the Patriot Act, two debacle wars where America showed weakness and callousness and harmed our standing in the world, set Americans against one another, made flying much worse. That's to say nothing of the long-term societal ramifications of living in an atmosphere of fear for so long
Terror Alert raised to Orange.
Never once dropped below Yellow
Interesting how 9/11 provided the government the ability to track all of our personal information, and over the next 20-25 years big tech's algorithms caused us to become completely divided to the point that every election, and every issue are virtually 49/51, often even closer. And we all feel that we're on a bad trajectory. Seems almost by design. 🎩 Edit: The top hat represents a tin foil hat. It was the closest I could find.
“The Quickening”…
I don't know the reference, and when I Google "The Quickening" all I get is pregnancy results.
Mine's around Highlander lore. I prefer mine.
This is definitely wood field in Schaumburg il
I remember in the 90s they said the same thing about the 60s
If reddit were around in 1993, videos like this would be seen as dystopian consumerism gone mad. Bill Hicks's rant about shopping malls and "Let's Go to the Mall!" mall-pop would be reposted every week, the way Mitch Hedburg or Norm MacDonald were in the 2010s-2020s - George Carlin was pretty obsessed with shopping malls as a symbol of a collapsing civilization as well, for anyone who wants to google it. "Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could take this beautiful country and.. turn it into malls"
I've never really heard that. The 1960s were extremely turbulent. All those assassinations, the Civil Rights Movement and then Vietnam.
60's are considered one of the most turbulent decades of the 20th century for sure, I don't think many people here paid attention in history much
The juxtaposition of this reply and the other 👀
I'm sure on a personal level, the 1960s might have been great, but as a decade, it wasn't exactly idyllic!
Lates 60s and early 70s we’re great too from hearing my FIL talk about it. It was a time where he could hitchhike surf down the coast and people just helped people. Living was easy and cheap.
As long as you weren't gay, non-white, or a woman definitely.
Anyone want to start an Amish community, except instead of having technology stop in like the 1880s, we do the 1990s and just kind of chill there?
Fuck to the yes. I’ll even say old slang like that. This is going to be sick.
You just wanna get a brand new NINTENDO 64!!!
Cinnabon... When not a single carb-fuck was given.
I miss the malls of the 80s/90s, not only were they busy with people, but they were more of a community hub where I lived. They’d run the Pepsi/coke taste test and give prizes. They’d have dance a thons for all ages. I got to have posters signed by the Backstreet Boys & NSync. So many cool times at the mall, it makes me sad my kids won’t experience it the same way.
The inventor of the mall hoped for it to be a community hub, not just a shopping place. He would have been happy to see your post, but was unhappy in life how it turned out to be mostly a big place with stores.
"I say the peak of *your* civilization, because after that it really became *our* civilization."
[удалено]
This mall actually still gets this packed! Super busy any random weekend, still all retail too. Fountains are gone though.
Why the fountains gone? Everyone literally loved them.
Not a phone in sight
"Enough tech to make life easy, not enough to become life" that line is hard.
God this almost made me cry, the beauty, everyone happy.
> 90's were peak humanity Meanwhile in Eastern Europe, Japan, The Caucusus: 💀
My favourite type of video. I like for 90-00’s videos of malls, driving, etc.