Dying Malls

Mr. Trend isn't a big mall fan, and hadn't stepped foot in Albuquerque's Winrock mall in quite sometime (outside of trips to Borders and Dillards, which don't require entering the mall proper). Today, I made the first such foray in at least two years.

It's stunning. In a regular-sized mall, it has fifteen - FIFTEEN - stores still in it, and two of those fifteen are Dillards and Borders. The former food "court" is now a food "pit stop" - only Sbarro's occupies the so-called "court." the other stores are scattered and sparse, and of those fifteen, one of them (Victoria's Secret) is apparently closing. You have no idea how a dying mall looks until you're there.

I must say, this leaves me with some ambivalence. I hate malls. I have hated them since I was in middle school, and we would be forced on eternal quests for a pair of 34-29 men's jeans (Mr. Trend grew tall before he grew out, and had quite the svelte frame for awhile). So in a way, the sight of a dying mall gives me a bit of pleasure.

On the other hand, I find it really depressing, too. For one reason, I can't imagine a good alternative that is replacing this dying mall. If it's just more strip malls, then you're really not gaining anything, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the death of this particular mall, and perhaps of any mall, does very little for local business. Additionally, a dying mall is remarkably desolate and depressing. If you've never seen such a dying mall, it's remarkable - it's the perfect setting for a film on existential crises and solitude of humanity in the twentieth and twenty-first century. You see a weird batch of people, all operating in their vacuum - the goth-teen couple who will grow out of it, the son pushing his elderly father in a wheelchair to get him out of the house a bit, the occasional person looking for a ghetto-fabulous nail job - all people with almost nothing to do with each other. Who knows? Maybe some of them come to the mall because of the isolation and solitude, which in itself is a rare feat (few people have such an option in the US as going to a mall for QUIET).

Anyhow, if you're in the Albuquerque area, or if you have a dying mall in your 'hood, I highly recommend the trip. One of the oddest and, in a way I still can't explain, saddest things you can see.