545
I actually really love department stores.
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2025
545 points (98.9% liked)
Microblog Memes
8888 readers
1936 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Dead malls must be a car-culture thing, right? Because the local malls where I live are always full of people whenever I'm there, not really dead at all
And yeah, it is nice to hang out with friends there and look at clothes or eat something or stuff like that!
Of our surviving malls, they all had to go through a big redesign, to try to steer into the 'hang out' sentiment. Lot's of more higher end dining, a park, apartments/hotels/office space, a few small performance venues for bands.
A mall that has all of that now was, before the renovation, was department stores and specialty shops connected as spartan and efficiently as possible, with a fast food court for convenience but nothing you'd really want to sit longer than you absolutely had to. To the extent it worked as a teen hangout it was because they could grab some cheap food, be inside under a generic roof outside any stores, they could giggle at the stuff in Spencer's Gifts.
Not exactly.
In the USA, a ton of malls got built in the 1950's to 1980's because of various tax incentives. These malls were anchored by department stores, providing a middle class place to buy goods.
Department stores tanked when dealing with big big box stores and online retail. Also, some mall specialty stores died off as well. Without that foot traffic, dead malls started to form.
Some malls are fighting back by increasing food and entertainment options, but the economics of malls are pretty rough.
A local hospital system largely took over one of the two malls near me. You’d almost not recognize the inside anymore as having been a popular mall in the 90s.
A country being car centuries, however, does mean that people vastly prefer buying things online than going there yourself. When it's far away, needs a trip, need to find parking, and can't just pop into a mall randomly when walking nearb
I mentioned big box retail as another reason for the decline in malls. Shopping at a Walmart or Target has the same car experience as shopping in a mall, but Walmart and Target were able to expand as malls slowly died.
Also, parking is never an issue in a dying mall. If the mall is dying, demand is likely very low, which means the best parking spaces are open.
Ours is quite lively. Not hating social interaction, but the crowding is a bit much. The other mall died, only got one now.
Being a teen in the 80s, Woodland Hills Mall was the bomb! Big enough to spend the afternoon, hang out, meet girls, hit the arcade, dodge the skins and rednecks who wanted to beat our punker asses. Good times!
We have a megamall in our region that a lot of people go to but our local suburban malls are all pretty much dead and in transition. The one closest to me is slated to be developed into a mixed used residential property with apartments/condos, shops, gym, other businesees, restaurants. This is mostly due to a large chip fab manufacturing project planned to be constructed in the next 2 years. There will be demand for housing and other services so the Town/County is interested in removing any barriers for that kind of development.
2 years ago, I went into that mall during Christmas season and it was very very sad looking.
We had one of our local malls torn down and replaced with one of those giant, multi-strip-mall complexes with parking lots that are nearly impossible to navigate through. It dawned on me that it's still basically a mall, just one that you can drive through to each store so you don't have to walk very much.
People despawn when you leave to save resources. It's dead when you're not around.