Been A While

Something I haven't done very much of in some time is shopping at malls. When I was younger, the mall was indeed the center of social life away from the school. One spent time there eating, shopping and seeing movies. It was where one went to interact with peers even if one did not have any money to spend in order to have legitimate reason for being there. Since I've been out in LA, I don't know that I've been in a mall more than two or three times.

The malls I've spent a lot of time in are in Arizona, from which location I am writing this. I did happen to get to the mall the other day, and I insisted on walking around shortly before it closed in order to get a sense of what had changed. Since its heyday, the mall had fallen into decline, and had recently emerged to attempt a comeback. I was very curious to see how that had worked out, and there were certainly some surprises to greet me.

Years ago, the area's first very large movie theater forced the closure of the one which had occupied an anchor position in the mall. They were of the same chain, but evidently too close. For years, the mall went on without a theater, and I always keenly felt the absence. Well, a theater has returned, and it belongs to no major chain I have ever heard of. I thought it might be running old movies, which would be an unfortunate development for the mall's status. It runs current movies, which is nice.

Apart from that, actually relatively little has changed that I hadn't seen already. I suppose the changes mostly have been in me. Probably the mall always started closing down even before 9pm, but it wouldn't have occurred to me that this was an absurdly early hour to start closing down, but living in LA has given me the idea that I might expect to stay later than that. As a consequence of this, it was necessary to conclude my visit to the mall by walking halfway around its exterior to reach our car when it was no longer possible to go back out through the department store which had granted us ingress. I suppose I don't need to visit a mall again for a while.