“Still punk as fuck,” I whisper to myself, as I slide new Orthotic insoles into my Converse. As long as I’m down there, I get them on my feet and tie them. I use this double loop thing my kid taught me when he was in middle school. I’m sure there’s an easier way to keep my shoes tied, but this way has never failed me. And it keeps me connected to my kid, every day.
I exhaled, and stood up with a sort of braying grunt that I have taken to calling My Old1.
“Still punk as fuck.”
Shoes on, laces tied, standing at my full height, I head out to take a walk. When I’m up around the corner and about halfway down the block, I realize that I can really — I mean really — feel everything under my feet. Almost immediately, I can feel a familiar discomfort in my left calf and then my right hip. For the rest of my abruptly abbreviated walk, I think about something on the Orthotic insole package about how the fancy Orthotic inserts can only do so much, so take good care of your shoes like a good consumer.
I’m sorry. I struggle to take care of myself, and you want me to take care of my shoes? How about you bring me a Pepsi instead?“
I scowl a lot more than I usually do, as a limp home.
“That was fast,” Anne says when I come into the house.
I tell her about how I hurt my Old2, and how I have been forced to accept that it’s time to buy new shoes. After I work out the cramp with my good friends the foam roller and the lacrosse ball, I spend the next quarter of an hour looking for the least worst way to get some new shoes. After a number of false starts online and a refusal to order from Amazon if there is any alternative, I conclude that the least worst way is to go to the mall. On Saturday. On purpose.
I ask Anne. “Hey, want to go to the mall?”
“On Saturday? On purpose?”
“It’s the least worst way for me to get new shoes.”
“But the mall? On Saturday? On purpose? You need new shoes that urgently?”
I fold my arms.”You ask a lotta questions. What are you, a cop? You have to tell me if you’re a cop.”
She smirks. “Okay. Come with me when I run some errands and we can go to the mall on the way home.”
“Awesome.”
Montage!
- The beauty supply.
- A red light.
- The bank.
- A red light.
- A busy street.
- A quiet, tree-lined street.
- Some asshole who makes us miss the goddamn left turn signal because they’re looking at their fucking phone.
- Another quiet street, bucolic beneath a canopy of sycamores. Kids do hopscotch on the sidewalk.
- The store.
- Me, carrying an hilarious amount of toilet paper to the car.
- Me, struggling to fit the hilarious amount of toiler paper into the car, giggling like an idiot.
- Blowing through a yellow light, we both do a mouth horn version of the General Lee’s horn.3
- The post office.
- The mall.
“I think I’m going to wait in the car while you go get your shoes,” Anne says in the tired voice we’ve both been using more often than not, lately.
“Yeah, that was a hell of a montage.”
“Seriously. Get off your goddamn phone, dude.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I’ll be right back. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I walk down the ramp, past the future pop-up Backrooms installation that was Sears for as long as I could remember, until it wasn’t, and finally into the mall.
I’m striding down an empty corridor and past the bathrooms, toward the main shopping spur, next to Macy’s. When was I last here? I try to do the math, but I’ve never been good at doing the math. I settle on: I haven’t been here in a long time. I’m not even sure I’ve been here this year. There’s been no reason to come here.
But back in the 20th century, this place was real close to a second home for me and a lot of my friends. We saw movies here, we had Mongolian Barbecue here, we spent hours in the quiet safety of the bookstore. I bought my first dishwasher at the Sears.
Sometime in the last two decades, the Burbank Town Center began its audition for a small but impactful role in the touring company of Abandoned Malls of America. It nearly succeeded. During the callbacks and producer sessions, it was home to two different Halloween stores. In a moment of desperation during early eliminations, it added a caviar vending machine on the second floor, suspiciously close to the Victoria’s Secret, around Valentine’s Day. The lower level spent several years as a race track for those weird fur-covered animal driving things. Remember them? They’re still around, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’m about halfway down the corridor when I notice the faint white noise of … it can’t be. No. This mall is dead.
…Isn’t it?
It is not. I know, before I turn the corner, that this mall is full of people. And holy shit is it full of people. Rumors of this mall’s death have been greatly exaggerated. No wonder it didn’t make the tour. I pat my pockets for my phone, so I can share this unexpected news with Anne. I find out that I left my phone in the car. Aw, shit.
No! Wait! Hey, cool. I left my phone in the car, so now I can be, like, fully present here and take in all of this … life and business and activity and … mall-y goodness. Maybe I’ll write about it in my blog, like I did in the Before Times. When it felt like it mattered.
So I look around me and, yeah, there aren’t nearly as many stores as there used to be, but the stores I see are legit. They are not the Teemu version of a Wish.com version of a stall at an indoor swap meet, like last time I was here. I see lots of stores I recognize, and just tons of people.
“Hey! Hey! Mister! Hey! DUDE!”
I look back toward the source of this tiny voice, and see that I am between a kid who is riding one of those fur-covered animal driving things and his destination. I briefly wonder why he doesn’t just go around me, but there are so many shoppers, he can’t.
“Sorry, buddy,” I step back and feel bad for this kid, who was probably looking forward to a breakneck, 5 mile-per-hour tear around the mall, but has instead found himself in stop-and-go human-to-fur-covered-animal-driving-thing traffic. He creeps past me and I suppress a laugh when he gives me the stinkeye. I think but do not say, “Someday you’ll outgrow it, kid! Someday you’ll want to drive your fur-covered animal driving thing, and the teenager at the kiosk will tell you that you’re too tall. Or too old. Or maybe they got a crisp fiver from an old man with a grudge you foolishly gave the stinkeye in ought ’26. I don’t know what or when it will be, kid, but it’s coming for you. It comes for us all.”
There are two stores in the mall that might have the shoes I’m looking for. Against everything I believe in, I look at the mall directory to find out where they are located. I could do it my way, but Anne’s waiting for me and she doesn’t deserve that.
Through the food court, inhaling the melange of fryer oil, spices, frozen mysteries. The flip book of memories: frozen yogurt and hot dog on a stick and lemonade and so many bad choices. That glorious time when bad choices didn’t matter, time that ended as abruptly and unexpectedly as the last time you got to drive the fur-covered animal driving thing.
Up the escalator and past the movie theater.4 Past a trading card shop, the Bath and Body Works that must be whatever the retail incarnation of a lich is at this point, and into shoe store number one.
There is a person at the register, having an issue with the payment thing. I pick a spot at a distance that is respectful of their space while unmistakably saying I’m in line so don’t even motherfucker because I will cut you.
I don’t have my phone, and I love that. I love that I am deliberately and enthusiastically gulping and devouring every detail I possibly can, choosing to be present in that moment, in that place. I look around so I can paint the picture later (which is now) in a series of observations:
There are a lot of socks that you buy one or two pair at a time. I don’t see any whimsical nylon socks with dinosaurs and puns, but it looks like tubesocks with rings are making a comeback.
Checkered Vans never go out of style, and that gives me comfort.
I will never understand Crocs. I will never understand spending real money to carry a backpack that looks like a novelty-sized Croc, thus announcing to the world HEY EVERYONE I LOVE CROCS.
I look at the Doc Martens and cry out internally for the two dozen pair of vintage leather Docs I gave away twenty years ago. I hope, as I always do when encountering this painful memory, that they went to a good home. I like to imagine a baby punk grabbing them for ten bucks at a thrift shop, and not a bougie trust fund poser paying 500 for them at Buffalo Exchange.
The girl ahead of me completes her transaction and walks past me. I’m too lost in thought about my old Docs to capture a single detail of her existence. This will be weird to me when I write it down, later.
“Can I help you?” The woman at the registeris giving the quiet competence and existential exhaustion of Manager of this store in this mall in this year of 2026.
“Yeah, I’m looking for black Converse low tops, men’s size 10. Please.”
“Let me look.”
“Thank you.”
She taps a few keys, frowns. Taps a few more. I notice that the store soundtrack has begun playing Back to Life.
“Wow, I don’t think I’ve heard this since the 90s,” I say.
She does not look up. “I think this was the 80s.”
“Yeah, 1988, right?” I say5.
“Mmm-hmmmm.”
Before I can stop it, something taps the well of sadness I carry around these days. I mutter, “1988. That was such a good year. Damn. I am very old.”
At this, she looks up at me. For just a second, we stand there and look at each other in Generation X.
“I feel you,” she says. She goes back to the computer. “Yes. Let me get them for you.” She walks into the back.
I think about the mall. There’s a feeling that I only get in a mall that I can’t quantify or describe but I know that other Olds will understand what “being in the mall” feels like. The smells and sounds of the water features and indoor plants. This is a time that is never coming back, even if every mall suddenly burst back into life. Because it’s not the stores or the band performances in the center court or the celebrity appearing this afternoon at J.C. Penny’s from 2-4pm. It’s about that moment in time when we were young and this place allowed us to be who we were, while we were all figuring out what that meant. It was a place to try out our ideas of being an adult, a place to be free of our parents and teachers, where we really were allowed to run free. I enjoy telling jokes about getting older, but to be totally honest, I really do think it’s great. I love my life and the people in it, even though it is all happening in this chamber of horrors none of us can escape. I’ve worked hard to earn this, and I’m working even harder to protect it. I guess, in a metaphorical way, this mall experience reflects some of that.
While all of this runs through my head, simultaneously nostalgic and solastalgic, I bop my head and quietly sing along. “however do you want me …. however do you need me…”
A pair of kids walk into the store and I try to become invisible.
Before I can find out if I am successful or not, she comes back with my shoes and I pay with my watch on the first try, for the first time ever6. I walk back through the mall and exit through Macy’s. I’m pretty sure at least some of the perfume and cologne cloud I swam through is still in my hair and my raccoon wounds.
Down the stairs and across the aisle, up the ramp … shit. I need to go down one level.
Down the ramp to the other stairs, down those stairs, wait for the Prius to back out hello, sir, I am a pedestrian standing right here and I thought you had a backup camera no worries let me step out of your way. Wouldn’t it be an hilarious callback if the kid from the fur-covered animal driving thing was in a car seat in the back, and I gave him the stinkeye this time? It wasn’t, but we could pretend it happened if we wanted to inject a little more humor and maybe pay off what seemed like maybe an unimportant encounter earlier in our story.
I hop into the car.
“Hey! You got your shoes?”
I hold up my bag. “Yep. Guess who paid with his watch on the first try, for the first time ever?”
She starts the car and puts it in reverse. “The guy ahead of you?”
“Ha. Actually, it was a girl and — AND — she was probably in her 30s (or maybe a teenager I don’t know everyone under 40 looks like they are a baby to me and why would I even ask in the first place like a creep) and she couldn’t get it to work at all. So.”
“Wow.”
“I know, right?”
I take my phone out of the cup holder where I left it. I turn it over and look at the Misfits sticker on the back, then flip it around and catch my reflection in the unlit screen. I hold that for a second, then put it into my pocket without waking it up.
“And I think … I think I may have found something to write. It isn’t really about anything, I don’t think, so it can’t be a story, but it can probably be a blog post.”
She turns on her left signal and pulls out of the garage. “Hey, that’s awesome!”
“Yeah,” I say, “It isn’t anything important, but I think it will be fun to write, and I think that’s a kind of self-care.”
“I’m really happy for you,” she says.
“Yeah. I’m happy for me, too.”
A postscript for the reader: I did have a lot of fun writing this. And it was self-care. I split it up over a couple of days, when I wasn’t working. I’m glad I made the time to do it. I’m glad I remembered, “write it badly or it won’t be written”, so I would keep going. Not that it’s bad writing (maybe it is, I don’t know), but I gave myself permission to write badly (in this case, not clearly about one thing, at least not on purpose), so that I could write, well, something.
I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts delivered to your email, here’s the thingy:
- Not to be confused with my Old, as in “ow, I hurt my Old”. ↩︎
- See? Different, but still applicable. ↩︎
- Yes, fuck the Confederacy-normalizing Dukes of Hazzard. Fuck it all forever. It is deeply problematic. It’s also a huge part of my childhood that I’m not willing to Eternal Sunshine out of my memories. ↩︎
- I’m still pretty sure my TV is bigger than their average screen, and I’m not saying that to brag about my TV. ↩︎
- Like, I know that it was released in 1988 but what I meant was, I’m pretty sure the last time I heard it was in the 90s but she doesn’t care and I can just be quiet. ↩︎
- I never feel as stupid, incompetent, and Old Man Wheaton as I do when I try to use my watch or my phone to pay for things. I swear to god, every point of sale is different, on purpose, to make me — yes, me specifically — feel dumb. ↩︎
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A great read, and for me to read it minutes after I finished my rewatch of Picard Season 2, which is to say I got to “see” Wil Wheaton twice in one hour! Timely I would say! I miss the Ready Room and your contributions.
I grew up in Burbank, so I knew the old “Beautiful Downtown Burbank” and the Golden Mall with Thrifty’s 5 cent single scoop ice cream cone. But I was just at the new mall (it will always be the new mall to me – guess I’m Old too) a little over a month ago… what is the universe trying to tell me??!
Thanks for writing these totally relatable musings.
Do you remember when San Fernando was a pedestrian mall? I really want the city to bring that back.
man you cant dunk on crocs like that after talking about old person pains originating from your feet. i was like you once. but just try them. put on the ugly foam clogs, and you’ll understand!!
Never! I will die on this hill.
I recently went to my childhood Mall with my nearly 18-year-old daughter. There was absolutely nothing at all in that mall that I remembered, even the overall shape of it all seemed to have changed in some fundamental way. There was exactly one store that I remember having been there when I was younger and that was Mrs. Fields cookies. I bought one even though I was kinda full from much. There was a certain amount of comfort in that.
Just commenting to say, thank you for sharing. I didn’t grow up in the USA (UK here) and although we have our own malls (Shopping Centres), I didn’t hang out in them as a kid (probably missed out). But reading your blog post brought back the nostalgia of the 80’s/90’s American films, where many scenes were based in malls.
Warm and fuzzy feeling I reckon. I could picture myself in your shoes (both old and new Converse!). Thanks Will, for sharing.
Man I feel this. Old man Wheaton indeed. Not that I would go by Wheaton because that would be creepy and weird right? Right? Anyway checkered Vans will never go out of style! I actually have a couple dozen pairs of slip-ons in various colors and patterns. I admit I have a bit of a problem, but I no longer drink or smoke, so I buy sneakers. Thanks for sharing Wil, you always paint quite the picture 🙏
I felt that, I’m a year & 13 days older than you & I felt every step!!
You’re good at this ❤️
We didn’t have many malls in the UK back then, but yeah by the late 80s they were appearing – small ones anyway.
I went back to my home city a few weeks ago, and did the BIG department store as it was still there – deserted & only half of the floors in use. I left, heartbroken
Thank you for this fantastic bit of writing. You have perfectly captured exactly what it was like to be at the mall in the ’80s and I really appreciate hearing about the Burbank Mall surviving the cast pick for the dead malls of America 🙏🏼 I may never find my way back to the United States or to LA but it’s still brings me joy that the mall has not kicked off 🙏🏼 And I feel the exact same way about trying to pay with my phone…. I finally gave up and just use my touch enabled card now 😂🤷🏼
And there are so many days where my body just feels the old I’m carrying.
Everything about this post was totally relatable. Reading it was a gift of connection and feeling seen and heard and not alone in the universe.
Thank you for that 🌈
I wish I could write like this, great post
Aww, love this. Two things, I’m in the UK but I think you just walked me around a mall I actually know, and I used to be a security officer in a UK mall…those were fun days (that job was money for old rope. We used to close on Sunday, there was no Sunday trading in the UK. One summer Sunday a condom machine had been broken into in the gents, which led to 6 hours of “water balloon” fights, and fire extinguishers fights. 😹) Oh and just to add, I always wanted to ride one of those fur covered animal thingies, and I’m also a Grn x Converse wearer (I kept my DMs though) I need an Anne version of this now, tales from the car!
Thanks for sharing your story. I throughly enjoyed it
Thanks for sharing this vivid experience. Awesome. 👍👍👍👍
I loved this so much.
This is a lovely post. I can really relate to what you’re saying, even though my own youth was only a little over ten years ago. As a teenager, you’re desperate to grow up, but as an adult, you long so much for that innocent, simple time. Ah, nostalgia…
I love your blog; I don’t know how many international “friends” you have who love and read it, but here’s one waving at you. Hi, greetings from Germany. I hope you’re doing well. I’m currently reading through your blog posts from the last 25 years—I’ve just reached 2016. This is my first comment, so I just have to say it: I love Stand by Me, and I love you in it, Gordie. Even though you’ve probably heard that a thousand times. I am so sorry for everything you’ve been through. On the other hand, you are such a wonderful role model for so many people—including me, even though we don’t share the same story. Let’s be honest: Stand by Me wouldn’t be the same without you.
I hope Google Translate did a decent job; my English isn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t trust it for a longer text like this.
Hi Sarah. I’m so grateful and happy that you’re here. I hope you enjoy the rest of the archives.
I loved this post. Great writing! A fellow Gen X, I took my teenage son to the mall yesterday after a doctor’s appointment, forgetting it was a PD Day. The mall was crazy! So maybe they aren’t dying. I always tell him about what it was to go to the mall in the 80s. But we had a great day exploring, and Thrifty’s is back…which is maybe just a Canadian thing but it made me smile.
Dude
Dude.
And I am more old than you are. Sigh.
I’m so grateful we still have at least one good mall here. My son and his friends love to get together and roam the mall. Very reminiscent of my early teenage days. And I’m grateful this mall is better than the one I grew up with because it does have a really nice bookstore you can hide away in.
For what it’s worth: when I got to the appropriate part, I opened another window to have “Back to Life” playing as the soundtrack to the rest of the story.
Oh, this brought back so many memories of going to the mall
as a teenager. A mall us was demolished a couple years ago and I never realized I missed it until I read this. Fantastic piece
Fantastic nostalgia piece, Wil. Having worked in malls since 1985, I could almost smell the Hot Dog on a Stick I worked next to then. Rather than be sad those times are gone, this left me with a smile and a couple good laughs. Thanks 🙂
You were very brave to venture into The Mall Wil. This was wonderful.
This post had me thinking about the last time I was in a mall. It was just a couple of months ago and even though it was a Saturday (what were we thinking?), it wasn’t as people filled as it could have been. It also wasn’t as sadly empty as it could have been.
Love this post!
Thanks for this unexpected journey! Every sentence resonated with me. Here’s to our fifties and still punk as fuck 🤘
1 – thanks for the earworm – that’ll be with me all day!
2. I still enjoy the mall – shopping+exercise which you can ruin the effects of by getting a big pretzel? Yes, please!
3. I definitely look at people in Gen X. We get it. And I’m sad when Ken on Jeopardy makes a Gen X comment and the contestants don’t get it. I’m here for you, Ken!
4. I get the feeling of Old. But then, I have to deal with the 80-something parents and in-laws and suddenly I’m young and spry!
Fellow Old here. Thank you for this! You give a good slice of life.
Wow! We just went to our local mall over Memorial Day weekend and it was horrific. It was the BEST mall and one that has been around since I was 7. The mall will have been open 50 years next year … if it makes it. We also have a Macy’s and a JCPenney but then it goes waaaaay down after that.
At one moment, I took some time to visualize what it was like here when I was a kid, a teenager, a younger adult and I wonder if the mall is just a study of my life: Fun and vibrant as a kid, busy and crazy as a teen, calm but still bustling as a younger adult but now as I slow down, so does the Mall. Both make me incredibly sad.
I miss the mall, I miss younger me. I miss KB Toys where I would buy a Breyer model horse for my birthday. I miss the pet store where you could go in a room and play with the puppies (of course we didn’t know at the time how terrible pet stores were but I try to keep the happy memories of it).
I also remember the one store that had no name on it but it had a resort looking front porch for it’s opening and I never went in for years because I didn’t know what was in it and I was scared to find out. Then one year as an older adult, I went in. It was Hollister and I was right to be scared!! Who could wear these tiny wisps of material and who could afford those prices!!?? Certainly not me but that store is long gone now and a version of a church may take over the resort looking store front next. A church? Life is weird.
Well I had intended to start with telling you how happy I was that you wrote this post and how much I loved it and I am still doing that but you also inspired me to write 4 paragraphs first with my memories of The Mall. So I thank you for that too.
Keep sharing your life, your thoughts, your ideas, it is all inspirational and therapeutic to those of us of the same age. I am glad you got your shoes and I hope they help give you solid footing in this crazy world.
The smell that comes out of Hollister, which is similar to but distinctly different from the smell they pump into Abercrombie. Man, I haven’t thought of that in a decade or longer.
Nope, it’s not bad writing. Not at all I found myself thinking, “Damn. Wil’s leveled up!” And I’ve always loved your writing.
Um, does it annoy you that autocorrupt consistently thinks your name is spelled wrong? Like, duck.
My mall is dead. Like, razed to the ground dead, like my daughter lives in the sleek, modern apartments across the street from the Alamo where she works that were built on its grave dead.
Oh, we have a mall, but it’s not my mall, y’know?
Anyway. This piece made me viscerally miss my mall and simultaneously made me want to go to a mall. So…
Well done, sir. Well done.
Nope, it’s not bad writing. Not at all I found myself thinking, “Damn. Wil’s leveled up!” And I’ve always loved your writing.
Um, does it annoy you that autocorrupt consistently thinks your name is spelled wrong? Like, duck.
My mall is dead. Like, razed to the ground dead, like my daughter lives in the sleek, modern apartments across the street from the Alamo where she works that were built on its grave dead.
Oh, we have a mall, but it’s not my mall, y’know?
Anyway. This piece made me viscerally miss my mall and simultaneously made me want to go to a mall. So…
Well done, sir. Well done.
It VEXES me, Val. It V E X E S me.
Hey Wil! Thanks for writing this. If you’re an Old I’m an Old + 5, but it sounds like The Mall means similar things to each of us. In my case that’s NJ malls rather than California, though. A couple friends and I used to disappear from our neighborhood by riding our bikes several miles to one of a couple local malls. I think both of those are still doing OK.
When I was old enough to drive, we started going to a newly-opened mall a little farther away because it had two good computer game stores. That one ended up closing after being the site of a notorious local gang fight and is now an amazon warehouse or something.
After I was married (1990), my wife and I moved to upstate NY for a few years and had a couple of local malls there that we still frequented in our early 20s. When we moved back to a different part of NJ and bought a house, we adopted a new local mall. I think that all of those malls from upstate NY and northwestern NJ feature in the touring company of Abandoned Malls of America. I’ve seen at least one of them on a disturbing youtube video.
It has now been a long time since we’ve gone to a mall. On Saturday. On purpose.
This was awesome. Thank you for writing it up (not badly, btw)!
First time catching up with your posts in a while. I’m so glad it was this one! Perfectly captures the end-to-end experience of grief, loss, celebration, and fond recall of the invulnerability and easy passion of youth. Nicely contrasted with the Old, yet grateful for that just the same.
Also, how could you give away THAT MANY pairs of Docs? What are you, insane?
I know. I know. Believe me, I know.
Thanks for sharing this fun post as it rekindled the same type of memories for me. I’m in Canada, so some slightly different stores, but 100% same nostalgia. (Someone else’s Orange Julius comment got me. I remember that had a time when you could get a raw egg in it!)
This is my favorite thing that you’ve written in a long time. (Not that the other things were at all bad, just that this one really hit home. Thank you.)
(Buying shoes from a mall, bringing his wrist down to use his watch to pay for them)
“Still punk as fuck,” he says. 😉
I had a very similar experience recently (minus the weird animal fur covered driving things, maybe that’s just a local phenomenon, I’ve never heard of them). It was a hot day, and my mom and I wanted to get in a walk, so we went to the only place we knew we could walk for a while with air conditioning: the local indoor mall. To my bewilderment, it was PACKED! It made my heart happy to see people, but especially teenagers, just hanging out at the mall!
Hey Wil, is there a word for nostalgia for something you didn’t have?
I’m elder GenX and never lived close enough to a mall to be a regular. It was more like 3-4 times a year. And as much as there were things I didn’t love about malls, it makes me sad for the current crop of kids not to have even that. Apparently that’s what the tween takeover of Sephora last year was about, wanting to have a place to try out there new identities and be themselves away from their parents.
Anyway, I love this post. In the general hellscape we’re all living through, it took me on a trip I really enjoyed. Thank you.
Longing, maybe?
This was great and really hit home to me – all of it. I am a bit older than you (okay, more than a bit) but I loved the heyday of the malls, personally. First as the kid, then as the Mom. I still miss them, personally.
This was just a great read. I felt it all.
Thank you.
I really enjoyed this! Thank you!
– A fellow “old”
Gosh but I do love a footnote – you rock them, double dubs! (I did not have positive mall memories – the vast majority of the time, the 80s mall just reminded me, and reinforced, often cruelly, how much money we didn’t have, and how alienated and depressed it would make me feel to see all the cool shit in Spencer Gifts or Sam Goody that I could never, ever have – and even worse when I was with a friend – I had just the single one – and they gleefully spent actual money on things, and I just had to stand there looking like a broke loser, my heart leaping out of my chest towards racks of black clothes at Express, not daring to even touch the fabrics. And then of course other kids at the mall would call me freak or fatty. No, not good mall memories. But memories, oh yes, vivid and copious. I never did actually have a Hot Dog on a Stick – no money, remember – but I was fascinated by their branding.) I would love to get together with you and Patton Oswalt to remember those days!
Wow! This one is perfection, bittersweet and wryly sweet and very, very real. Thank you, Wil.
I’m going through a tough time right now and enjoyed reading this.
re footnote 5, I knew exactly what you meant, and I would have been tempted to “explain.”
I got rid of some Docs and Birks about 20 years ago and think of it sometimes, mostly because I gave them away for free when I could have gotten some money!
I think you should try some walking or running shoes. I really like the Brooks brand, and they let you try them for a year, I think, with the ability to return them if they don’t work out (at least if you buy straight from them). I am not a runner at all but love them. Running stores usually employ people who can look at your pronation needs and who knows what else. They can be more helpful than your average shoe store employee.
Malls make me very uncomfortable, as though at any given moment, the shoppers will turn into Dawn of the Dead, voracious zombies 🧟🧟♀️. But you did quite well it seems, Wil, making your way through the throngs, not getting locked in a stairwell and finding your shoes 🛍️ at the FIRST shoe store. I like open air malls like the one I used to go to in San Diego. Not claustrophobic or needing a possible escape plan! Did all that other shopping first and didn’t poop out until you got your hands on what you needed. Perseverance with a capital P! You and Anne give yourselves Props. Thanks for that fun read!
Thanks, this was a really great read!
You made me look up “solastalgic”, and it turn out that as a young adult attending college in the the 80, that’s a frequent state of mind with me, barely subconscious.
You were on a spaceship and I used to think “that kid is going places, but the bald captain will be forgotten” I was 50-50 right haha
I don’t have a single mall I remember directly (several moves across states were involved) but these days it hits me so weird that those were the places the cool people, and occasionally the uncool like me, would exist.
Generation Jones reporting. Enjoy those Converse, for soon the need for New Balance will be upon you. I won’t share what’s going to happen to that bad hip…
IKR? I’m on my second set of New Balance sneakers, and just threw out some antique NB flip flops. Gen X would be lost without us Joneses.
I love the mall, maybe I am wierd. Love going into my favorite stores. Also loved reading this. I am old too 42 old.
Oh, yes. The mall. I never went much, but it’s still a staple of growing up X. My local mall is small but still doing ok, I think. I haven’t been in a while, but I drive by often and it’s not a ghost town, so here’s hoping it hangs on. I should pop by sometime. I’m glad you had this experience and wrote about it. It was a fun read. And something just popped into my head. When I was a kid, my dad drove my sister an hour into Cleveland to go to the mall (grew up rather rural – but did the mall thing later when I was older because we moved) because he heard there was a store with women’s basketball shoes… only peripherally related, but yeah. I’ve asked my dad if that’s a true memory and he’s confirmed it. Ten years later, we had the WNBA. Crazy.
Sun Valley Mall. Northern California. 70s. School shopping with grandma and having to get “Husky” Toughskins jeans and trying to hide the label at school. Grabbing an Orange Julius and getting to ride the super hard plastic airplane for 10 cents.
80s. The best. Hanging out with friends. Buying exactly the same thing as each other. Going into the forbidden world of Spencer’s Gifts but secretly still wanting to go into KB Toys. Then, learning from each other how to “pick up girls”. (Obviously, that was a phase.) Buying my first tie for Homecoming Dance. (Obviously black and extremely skinny.) Applying for my first job in every cool store. (Ended up being a 31 Flavors/Baskin-Robbins in a nearby strip mall.) My first time driving my car with my friends? Straight to the mall.
Jesus. And you thought you were an Old. Move over.
Thank you for writing this, Wil. I have to say I found it relatable on way too many levels. From being a Sunday afternoon, catching up on my email inbox, to having recently discovered I needed to replace my sneakers after inserting custom orthotics and putting them on after 9 weeks of post surgery (Okay, this might be different, just slightly,) and finally getting on my feet, only to discover the old sneakers were trying to re-traumatize the repaired ankle injury, to the Gen X references, the interactions with people…well, except for the kid in the mall. (I don’t think we have those here in Michigan, the scooter, thing, not the mall, we do have those…) It felt like a relatable conversation with an old friend. Your posts often feel that way, though this is probably the first, maybe second i went so far as to comment on. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to write it out, and share it with us. I often find myself writing such things in my head, while on the move, and later forgetting about them before I can put it to (virtual) paper.) You inspire me to do better. Now if there was just another hour or two in a day…