The Big Generation X Nostalgia Thread

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The mall I spent time at during my youth got torn down in 2003. It was open for 30 years. It was busy about half that time. In the mid 80s it started to take a hit. By the mid 90s it was in trouble. It had these cool water fountains when it was new that they eventually took out.

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Scottsdale Mall (Erskine Village); South Bend, Indiana - Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Located in north central Indiana about 90 miles east of Chicago, South Bend, Indiana is home to the legendary Notre Dame University and for almost a hundred years was also the home of the Studebaker auto empire. In addition, South Bend is the anchor of the entire Michiana region, a 7-county...
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Bunch said:
My family's first VCR had a corded remote. Just put that in your mind. A like 15' corded remote.
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my family's first VCR was a betamax, and we didn't switch to VHS until the 90s
 
TristramEvans said:
my family's first VCR was a betamax, and we didn't switch to VHS until the 90s
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In college one of my roommates brought a friggin ancient color tube tv that had a wireless remote. The coolest feature was the zoom button.
 
TristramEvans said:
our TV was a piece of furniture...

View attachment 19209
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I love those old pieces. I aquired an old stand up radio and turned it into a bar. Put a little Echo Dot in where the old station select was for music. I used to have it hooked up to an old Creative Labs speaker setup but now it controls a Bluetooth speaker.
 
Nobby-W said:
Don't worry. Malls are alive and well in Indonesia. Most of Asia, in fact.
So many shopping malls ...
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That...uh...doesn't help me much


Sadly, though, even were the malls as I knew them from my youth to survive, I have out grown them, a fact that was made starkly and painfully clear when I happened upon a Hot Topic in the area, a store I'd not set foot in since the turn of the century. Venturing inside, I was there not a full minute before, surrounded by Funko pops, fashions that were alien to me, and little to no trace of the contents of my memories, I realized quite clearly that I was too old to be there, and I departed forevermore.
 
When B. Dalton and Waldenbooks vanished I pretty much lost any incentive to venture into malls. Without a bookstore what's even the point of setting foot inside a mall? Brookstone is still nice but it's a shop you only really visit two or three times a year if at all. The last time I was inside a mall I was surprised to find that the food court was all boarded up and there were only a few clothing accessory stores and a couple of kiosks selling cellular phones. The food court was particularly disappointing since I think I wandered into the mall looking for something quick for lunch...
 
Large indoor shopping malls are still chugging along in some parts of Orange County. Judging from a handful visits over the past 10 years it appears the customers are largely immigrants and the elderly..
Nobby-W said:
Don't worry. Malls are alive and well in Indonesia. Most of Asia, in fact.
So many shopping malls ...
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Small indoor malls catering to ethnic communities (primarily Asian) are definitely a thing in Orange County.
 
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Brock Savage said:
Large indoor shopping malls are still chugging along in some parts of Orange County. Judging from a handful visits over the past 10 years it appears the customers are largely immigrants and the elderly.. Small indoor malls catering to ethnic communities (primarily Asian) are definitely a thing in Orange County.
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Indonesian malls are anything but small. They like to build them at scale. I'm not sure why they have such a fetish for them but going down to the mall is definitely a thing there.
 
Nobby-W said:
I'm not sure why they have such a fetish for them but going down to the mall is definitely a thing there.
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Probably for the same reasons Americans went to the mall in the 80's- to see and be seen by others while shopping. It's a modern day agora.
 
Nobby-W said:
Indonesian malls are anything but small. They like to build them at scale. I'm not sure why they have such a fetish for them but going down to the mall is definitely a thing there.
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At least in the capital, Mexicans who can (barely) afford it seem to love visiting malls.
 
I loved malls back when I was younger but I don’t really like them much any more. There’s a mall about 15 minutes from me that’s struggling and I’m counting down the days until they tear it down and put one of those outlet places in. I think when the economy tanked in 2008 it took an unrecoverable hit because a ton of quality stores closed and were replaced by these fly-by-night shops.
 
I was never into malls for anything but shopping. What I miss are the old school department stores, The Emporium, Capwells, City of Paris, the big (pre-mall) multi-story Sears. I think malls led to their demise.

The Emporium in San Francisco used to put carnival rides on the roof at Christmas. Nothing quite like riding a Ferris wheel on top of a 4 story building, it overhung the edge of the building so you were quite a way up. :heart:


Séadna said:
A question, what were malls replaced by?
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Strip malls and Amazon / online shopping.
 
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