An Ode to the Mall of Yesterday
Reflecting on the Heyday of Malls and Our Longing to Wander, Together
On May 15, 2022 it became official: Tri-County Mall in Cincinnati, OH closed its doors. After years of floundering, the indoor mall of my childhood and teenage years went the way of so many indoor malls around the country.
It’s been a good fifteen years since I last set foot in that space, so I went to check out the Google Reviews to read some of the more recent commentary.
There were the thorough, honest ones mixed with a dose of hope-springs-eternal Midwestern optimism:
There were the minimalist zingers that let photos do the talking. Also, honest:
There were the ‘told you so’s’ from a few years back who proved to be right but still…
There were some that read like tributes on a funeral home site where people are too overwhelmed with emotion to say everything on their heart. Instead, they offer their grief in an understatement that still says everything:
And actually, if there was one descriptive word repeated more than any other word in the Google reviews it was this: sad.
Genuine grief expressed over and over for a brick-and-mortar behemoth that sold us a few things we needed and a whole lot of stuff we didn’t. Of course, the mall at its best has always been about something far more than easy access to diverse goods.
Nothing brought this home more clearly than a recent review that began this way:
An “ode” a mall!?
And yet, I get it. 100%.
In fact, here’s mine.
As a child, I regularly went with my mom to Tri-County Mall and begged her to let us go into the K.B. Toy Store so that maybe, just maybe, she could be convinced to buy us a Hot Wheels or GI Joe.
One time, I could no longer stand the string of ‘no’s,’ and I decided that in order to get my way I would turn to a life of crime.
I pocketed four GI Joe figures into my winter coat pockets and walked out like the cool, calm, and innocent first grader I was. I got home and immediately threw the GI Joes under the couch. Ten minutes later when I noticed mom was in living the room and would then be present to acknowledge -unwittingly - the truth of my ruse, I made my move.
I pulled the Joes out from under the couch, conjured great astonishment upon my face, and proclaimed loudly, “Oh wow! Look…some of my lost GI Joes!”
Tricky, right?
Within 25 minutes mom had me standing in K.B. Toys with the GI Joes placed on the cashier’s table, a sinner’s repentance pouring off my lips (“I am sorry that I stole these”), and a mixture of shame and freedom heretofore unexperienced shivering through my body.
Or, I remember The Imaginarium on the second floor of Tri-County. It largely sold educational toys, but it also sold POGs when those were all the rage. Even the most high-minded company could not resist the margin-expanding urge to sell cardboard circles about the size of a quarter and mark them up 2000%.
”Mom, they have the Lion King POGs!” My sixth grade self cried out in disbelief.
As any legitimate middle school POG collector knew, Lion King POGs were going to be worth thousands of dollars. Who knew where the rumor started and the degree to which our imaginations were shaped by the market value of 60s-era cardboard rectangles with baseball player photos on them, but we were confident of one thing: investing in Lion King POGs was basically like betting on Coke in 1920.
I pulled forth $12 and procured my first retirement investment by way of twenty-four cardboard circles.1
(Purchased for $12 in the mid-90s. Currently going for an inflation-adjusted $10 on multiple sites.)
Or, again, I remember mom dropping my friends and I at Tri-County weekend after weekend so that we could… shop? Sort of.
I mean, yes, the Dylan McKay-inspired went into American Eagle and maybe purchased another hemp necklace (or the Greatest Shirt in the World, as I once wrote about) . The Brandon Walsh and Fresh Prince type took the escalator and maybe bought a breezy silk option from Structure.
But mainly, we wandered.
(Where we wandered)
We wandered into Sam Goody to see what CDs we could preview through the foam pad headphones. Puff Daddy. Jewel. Blackstreet. Alanis. Hanson (Nobody would ever admit to donning headphones for MMMBop, but don’t be fooled. Those long-haired Oklahoma boys did not make millions without a whole lot of us listening. A lot.)
In the later teenage years, we wandered to the front of the mall to check out a slick, new, urban purveyor of coffee concoctions hailing all the way from Seattle.
Starbucks was the name, and they explained with a straight face that we should say ‘tall’ when ordering a ‘small.’ My anxiety went through the roof. Could the rules of life and language really change so nonsensically - just like that!?
My first Frapaccino immediately alleviated all concern. If it’s this good, honestly, call it what you want.
Again, though, most of the time we simply wandered. This way. Or that way. Or sometimes both and then up to the second floor for the same.
But always, We.
Because at it’s best, the mall provided not stuff, but a container in which community unfolded. “Stuff” was the excuse, friendship was the goal.
In our highly individualized, remote-working, siloed reality, I think a good many “ode” malls come from that place within all of us that longs for community. Longs for spaces that invite the possibility of another we.
And not just “we,” but places where we wander.
The other gift of the places like Tri-County Mall is that they are among the very last spaces we can remember roaming and exploring without a phone.
Sure, the storefront advertisements did their own ‘attention-grabbing’ - and they do so even to this day. But that’s hardly compares to the gravitational pull of phones.
I think many of the “ode” malls are aches to know again a way of navigating life that is far less digital and far more personal. A way of life flexible and open to going this way. Or that way. Or exploring both, returning, and then trying another floor.
What do you think? What is Mallstalgia all about? To what mall would you write your ode?
And perhaps more importantly, where do you find an answer to the ache we all share for belonging? And phone-free wandering?
—
Eventually, the responsible among our crew would check his velcro-banded Casio and let us know we needed to get moving for our 5pm pick-up.
We would then shuffle along the waxed tile floors, past islands of plastic greenery, and under the easy sunlight coming through the sky windows above. Eventually, we stepped back outside and awaited a parent’s wood-paneled Dodge Caravan for our ride back to reality.
(The front of Tri-County Mall, many years after its heyday)
For as much as Tri-County Mall was created to profit off our voracious appetite for things we didn’t need, there is also no denying: a kind of light did descend and something very real was known.
And formed.
And is missed.
But I am mindful that same Sun still shines. In what surprising spaces does the Light now refract? Where are we wandering today?
(If you are willing, share your thoughts in the comment section! If nothing else, I’d love to hear the about the mall to which you’d write your ode).
I still have have all twenty-four POGs wrapped in their original packaging awaiting the day when national auctions notice 90s-era POGs outpacing Tom Brady rookie cards and signed jerseys from Steph Curry. At which point I will come forward, claim my retirement check, and hopefully have enough wisdom to spend it on things that involve “we” and “wandering.”
EastLand Mall in Bloomington, Illinois. What is bizarre is that I remember when it first opened - in the late 60's. It was totally a new concept - to Christmas shop without being in the cold, ice, and snow!
The "group of teens wandering the mall" movement took awhile to develop but I'm sure it did. I remember shopping downtown Bloomington with the individual stores: Sears & Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, SS Kresse, Woolworths, the mom & pop pet store with the live monkey in the window. Tramping between stores with rubber boots and mittens and hats and coats. To this day, when I go to Bloomington, I go downtown looking for those stores. Remembering the exciting tube system at Montgomery Wards - much like a drive up bank, when a purchase was made, the money was sent via tube up which was visable the entire length to the office for change to be made.
University Mall in Chapel Hill- now a shell of it’s former self. One of the last Department stores in the Chapel Hill area was there. I always enjoyed buying cheap jewelry for my Mom or girlfriend from there.