One other mall I remember was when we would go on vacation to Grand Forks, ND, and we would usually hit up the Columbia Mall, which had such exotic (to me) stores as Target and Suncoast Video. There was also the novelty of how different the music cassettes were from their Canadian counterparts (different manufacturers, often different templates for the J-Cards, especially on the older albums).
So much I love in your essay. This stood out in particular:
“Music retail pretty much collapsed in the last 15 years; there’s one mall chain here in Canada, but most of the time I get my physical media from independent stores or online. I just go to the malls and the big box stores when I need things they sell, not so much because I want to.”
My grandparents took my brother and me to the mall, but it was rare. We lived in a small town, so the mall was an hour drive away, and a big deal. I hung out at the arcade (there's an essay on video games in my last book, and I talk about the arcade, the greasy joysticks because there was a pizza place a few doors down, the constant bleeps and bloops and rings from the machines). I still went to the same mall occasionally in my late teens and early 20s--used to hit Waldenbooks and Hastings for books and music, then eat at a restaurant where a cute girl I knew worked. Good times.
I wrote a little about the malls I went to when growing up here: https://baldalienbabe.substack.com/p/malls-and-cities
One other mall I remember was when we would go on vacation to Grand Forks, ND, and we would usually hit up the Columbia Mall, which had such exotic (to me) stores as Target and Suncoast Video. There was also the novelty of how different the music cassettes were from their Canadian counterparts (different manufacturers, often different templates for the J-Cards, especially on the older albums).
So much I love in your essay. This stood out in particular:
“Music retail pretty much collapsed in the last 15 years; there’s one mall chain here in Canada, but most of the time I get my physical media from independent stores or online. I just go to the malls and the big box stores when I need things they sell, not so much because I want to.”
My grandparents took my brother and me to the mall, but it was rare. We lived in a small town, so the mall was an hour drive away, and a big deal. I hung out at the arcade (there's an essay on video games in my last book, and I talk about the arcade, the greasy joysticks because there was a pizza place a few doors down, the constant bleeps and bloops and rings from the machines). I still went to the same mall occasionally in my late teens and early 20s--used to hit Waldenbooks and Hastings for books and music, then eat at a restaurant where a cute girl I knew worked. Good times.
Also yeah, mall crushes were a whole thing. This makes me think of Fast Times at Ridgemont High which is a whole other amazing mall•related artifact.
Hi Paul! Love the detail of the greasy joysticks from the pizza place! Oh I gotta read that video games essay!