Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're in beautiful San Francisco,
Speaker 1: California at the Castro Theater. Good, thank you, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Our biggest, our biggest show to date. Seriously today on
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon. Who San Francisco Sketch Fest. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're talking today everybody about a little something called
Speaker 1: the Mall. And I'm not joking. Yeah, that's what I have.
Speaker 1: So that's good. So we've been wanting to do something
Speaker 1: on the mall for years now and years and years,
Speaker 1: and we thought, well, what is San Francisco if not
Speaker 1: the Mall? Right, they're gonna love this one, and I
Speaker 1: guess we were wrong. Now, you guys will love it.
Speaker 1: I promise. It's just like, um, like the Grass episode.
Speaker 1: You may have been like, I'm not listening to that,
Speaker 1: and then you finally ran out of episodes. Listen to
Speaker 1: the Grass episode and you're like, that wasn't as bad
Speaker 1: as I thought it was gonna be. This will be
Speaker 1: similar to that experience, Okay, except the Grass episode is
Speaker 1: free I promise we will give it our all. I
Speaker 1: don't know why we're selling it. Like this is going
Speaker 1: downhill so fast, it's great, okay, so hill shall we
Speaker 1: get in the way back machine? Oh? Which is imaginary boo.
Speaker 1: So when you think of shopping mall, you think of
Speaker 1: the mall. Right, everybody knows what the mall is. If
Speaker 1: there's somebody who doesn't know what the mall is, raise
Speaker 1: your hand and whoever sitting next to that person, punch
Speaker 1: them in the arm. Really hard to be, like, come on,
Speaker 1: you know what the mall is. I assume San Francisco
Speaker 1: has malls somewhere. Oh yeah, they've got I've never seen one.
Speaker 1: They're probably out a bit. It's not like a mall
Speaker 1: in the middle of the mission, is there, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. Right, there's a few they pop up here there.
Speaker 1: You guys will know, because I'll be like, so if
Speaker 1: we're we're all on the way back machine and we're
Speaker 1: going all the way back backpack back to ancient Rome
Speaker 1: where the actual the first what you could consider a
Speaker 1: shopping center appears. It was called Trajan's Market, and Trajan's
Speaker 1: Market was built in something like one oh seven. I
Speaker 1: think that's early. I think it's anchor store was Trajan's Horse.
Speaker 1: That was okay, sorry, if I had a store back there,
Speaker 1: that would have totally called it Trajan's Horse. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's known as the world's oldest shopping center for
Speaker 1: good reason. Again, it was built in one oh seven
Speaker 1: and right now it's in ruins. There's some guy who
Speaker 1: sells um those little balls with the raccoon tails on
Speaker 1: the end of them on a tray, but he's technically
Speaker 1: outside of the mall, so it doesn't really count. So
Speaker 1: the mall is closed. It has been for several millennia now.
Speaker 1: But the oldest continually operated. Um what you would might
Speaker 1: call an outdoor market or mall is the Grand Bazaar
Speaker 1: with an A and three. A's actually two, No, there's three.
Speaker 1: You've been drinking, Yeah, just not together be a Z
Speaker 1: A R. Yeah, I guess if I'm not gonna checking
Speaker 1: his math checks out. That's a joke from Fletch. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, I don't like alright, deep cut the
Speaker 1: Grand Bizarre Istanbul between fourteen fifty five and fourteen sixty
Speaker 1: one and is when that was built, and it is
Speaker 1: still an operation today. About five thousand cupboard shops still
Speaker 1: gets about a quarter million visitors a day, so it's
Speaker 1: still rocking day. Yeah, yeah, a lot of folks. So
Speaker 1: you've got what medieval market towns kind of started to
Speaker 1: come later, um, seeports, all these things, these commercial districts
Speaker 1: where people went to shop. They all had to kind
Speaker 1: of be centered in an area together because people rode horses,
Speaker 1: or they walked, or they were chased by other people whatever.
Speaker 1: But you had to go and get all of your
Speaker 1: shopping done at one place, right, And that's just kind
Speaker 1: of a very ancient idea, and it's right, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: By the turn of the twentieth century here in the
Speaker 1: u US we had something we still do. It hasn't
Speaker 1: gone away. But pre mall, we had the department store.
Speaker 1: And um, I think I even mentioned this on another show.
Speaker 1: It didn't dawn on me, you know, like the simplest
Speaker 1: words dawn on you late in life, like what it
Speaker 1: really means. I just always said, Hey, a department store.
Speaker 1: It really just occourad to me a couple of years ago, like, oh,
Speaker 1: just store full of many departments. Never really thought about it.
Speaker 1: Do you ever have those? It's kind of nice department stores, uh,
Speaker 1: thirteen stories high in Chicago, the Marshall and Field Company, Marshall,
Speaker 1: Field and Company. And then in Detroit there was one
Speaker 1: called J. L. Hudson's that it was twenty five floors
Speaker 1: of department store floors of retail space. And this thing
Speaker 1: took up like a whole block. Yeah, and there's nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of stuff. It is a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. Uh. In eight though, if you back up
Speaker 1: a little bit, the first sort of enclosed shopping center
Speaker 1: that you might kind of consider a mall mall even
Speaker 1: though we really don't, as you'll see, because it didn't
Speaker 1: have an arcade, even though it is it's called the
Speaker 1: Westminster Arcade, ironically, I didn't have an arcade. And Providence,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island. Has anyone ever been to this place? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Have you really? Yes? I didn't know that you didn't
Speaker 1: type in here I've been there. Yeah, all right, I
Speaker 1: didn't know I needed to say that. Well, it was assumed. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool place. So if you look it
Speaker 1: up online, it doesn't look like the mall that you
Speaker 1: would consider the mall looks like sort of like a
Speaker 1: Greek revival building, and uh, it's like, yeah, it's really nice.
Speaker 1: It's got three it sort of looks like a train
Speaker 1: station three floors, and recently they were going to demolish it,
Speaker 1: but someone swooped in and built micro apartments. Now you
Speaker 1: can live in there and they're really kind of cool.
Speaker 1: And I was gonna explain again what a micro apartment was,
Speaker 1: but I forgot where I am. So you all know,
Speaker 1: isn't that like a dresser drawer? Yes, and you walk
Speaker 1: through the little thing that's like, I love living in
Speaker 1: thirty square feet and it's just some guy standing in
Speaker 1: a broom cloth. Pretty much. Uh, screw the sup herbs.
Speaker 1: Wait even well, even back further than this, Russia should
Speaker 1: get its due right, even even before the even before
Speaker 1: the the the Westminster Arcade, there is this thing called
Speaker 1: the ghost Veeded Voor. And I looked at the pronunciation,
Speaker 1: but I should qualify that I looked at the pronunciation
Speaker 1: on the same site that I looked up the pronunciation
Speaker 1: on Disha chain, which I called Dixia chain throughout the
Speaker 1: entire Underground City episode. So to take that for what
Speaker 1: it is, I was about to say, all our Asian friends,
Speaker 1: let us know that was wrong. But really, everyone of
Speaker 1: every race. Let us know that was wrong, Thank you dummies.
Speaker 1: After World War two, things really kind of evolved with
Speaker 1: the shopping center though, That's when things kind of started going.
Speaker 1: And um, in nineteen fifty Seattle's Northgate Center was Uh,
Speaker 1: but I feel like we say several times the first
Speaker 1: thing we think of them all. I guess it was
Speaker 1: just part of the evolution, right. South Dale was the
Speaker 1: first real mall. Alright, so Southdale we're gonna pick up
Speaker 1: with Southdale. Southdale was in Adena, Minnesota, and Dinah, thank
Speaker 1: you live corrections very nice. Where were you when I
Speaker 1: was saying Dixie a chance over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Well previous to that, boy, we're jumping all around. Uh.
Speaker 1: This designer and really, um, the man who were gonna
Speaker 1: either thank for the mall or blame for the mall,
Speaker 1: depending on how you feel about malls is a gentleman
Speaker 1: named Victor Gruin. Anyone want to correct me on that.
Speaker 1: He's an Austrian architect and uh he designed Northlands Center
Speaker 1: in Michigan. Is that correct? And it was? Northland Center
Speaker 1: is in Southland, Michigan. Now looks so confusing, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: It had a what was known in I said, anchor
Speaker 1: store earlier. And this is what malls have. They have
Speaker 1: these anchor stores which are still to this day mainly
Speaker 1: department stores. And that anchor store was Hudson's Department Store,
Speaker 1: but had about a hundred and ten other stores. But
Speaker 1: it still wasn't a real mall mall because it wasn't
Speaker 1: um as you'll see uh introverted correct, and it wasn't enclosed.
Speaker 1: It was open air. Yeah, like you know when you
Speaker 1: go to those outlet malls today where it's just all
Speaker 1: you're walking around outside like an idiot. You know. This
Speaker 1: is kind of like what what um Southfield was like
Speaker 1: in Michigan. And that's what all shopping malls were like
Speaker 1: up to that point. They weren't closed. It was ninety
Speaker 1: six in a Dina, Minnesota when the first enclosed mall
Speaker 1: like we think of it today came about. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I actually looked up the previous Northland They did close
Speaker 1: that in in the seventies and it finally shuddered for
Speaker 1: good a couple of years ago, and I found this
Speaker 1: website that said twelve weirdest things left behind in the
Speaker 1: Northland Center And it wasn't that exciting, but there was
Speaker 1: one the group to tension room, and I started thinking,
Speaker 1: holy crap, malls have jails. And I looked it up
Speaker 1: and someone said, uh. I went to Yahoo answers like
Speaker 1: where else do you go to get the real truth?
Speaker 1: And the number one voted up answer said, it's not
Speaker 1: a real cell. It's just a small dark room with
Speaker 1: no windows, in a chair and a camera in it
Speaker 1: that you that you're not allowed to leave. It's like
Speaker 1: and this one that's a department basically. This one had
Speaker 1: chains on this benches and I was like, no, that's
Speaker 1: a al cell. So I saw that too. There was
Speaker 1: like a target cart under a spotlight. I think. I
Speaker 1: thought that was beautiful. Yeah, it was very arty, haunting.
Speaker 1: I'm with you, lady, alright. So jumping back forward again
Speaker 1: to Minneapolis. Outside of Minneapolis, is it aDNA Southdale twenty
Speaker 1: million bucks? The anchor store was Donaldson's and Dayton's, right,
Speaker 1: who can forget Donaldson's? I did, okay, And Dayton's actually
Speaker 1: commissioned this mall to be built because they were building
Speaker 1: a new outpost in the suburbs of Minneapolis. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just by coincidence that Diana was ten miles away
Speaker 1: from downtown Minneapolis because again this is nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: so during the Cold War, and that's actually right outside
Speaker 1: the eight mile blast radius of atomic bomb were it
Speaker 1: to be dropped on Minneapolis, because of course that's what
Speaker 1: the Rooskys were thinking, We're going from Minneapolis first. But
Speaker 1: they've built a mall outside of the blast radius, so
Speaker 1: I guess we'll just give up. So the original idea
Speaker 1: for them all from Victor Gruen was to um, he
Speaker 1: wanted to kind you know how they have these mixed
Speaker 1: use centers. Now, he had this idea way back then
Speaker 1: and he wanted people to live there and uh kind
Speaker 1: of congregate there. And we'll get a little more to
Speaker 1: this later, but it sort of ended up just being
Speaker 1: a shopping mall, to his disappointment. But he modeled it
Speaker 1: on Northgate in Seattle and sort of the big idea
Speaker 1: was that you go to these department stores because that's
Speaker 1: what people were used to. But how do you get
Speaker 1: them to these other stores? Was the big question, Right,
Speaker 1: how do you get them shopping? Oh at the mall? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like ice, they're there because people went to department store.
Speaker 1: So if you put a department store out in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: they'll go to the department store. They're like, I thought
Speaker 1: I was supposed to take a left. Now I'm taking
Speaker 1: the right. I'm at the department store. Who cares. Right.
Speaker 1: The problem is is if you put Hunter and ten
Speaker 1: other stores coming off of that department store, they just
Speaker 1: go to the department store and leave. Not good, right
Speaker 1: if you're one of these other stores. So what Northgate
Speaker 1: figured out, and what is mind numbingly obvious but really works,
Speaker 1: is you just take this department store, put another department store,
Speaker 1: and then put the shops in between them, and then
Speaker 1: the people take a right, but they should take a left.
Speaker 1: But they're fine, we're going to the department store. Oh
Speaker 1: there's another department store. Well, i'll just walk past this.
Speaker 1: Maybe i'll buy that. We'll buy a little bit of this. Sure,
Speaker 1: i'll take a feather boa And then they walk into
Speaker 1: the other department store and and consumerism is saved. That's right.
Speaker 1: It was revolutionary at the time. So he built he
Speaker 1: was commissioned at least by Dayton's department store to build
Speaker 1: this uh kind of advanced shopping center. Didn't call them
Speaker 1: malls at the time. They called him advanced shopping centers
Speaker 1: and that's so high tech. He actually at its space
Speaker 1: for a competitor at the other end because he had
Speaker 1: this idea like how to keep people there? And I
Speaker 1: don't know how he talked Dayton's into it. Were like wait, wait, yeah,
Speaker 1: like hold on a second, no, no, we're paying you
Speaker 1: to do this, and you want to put a competitor's
Speaker 1: store in there. He's like, yeah, it'll work, trust me.
Speaker 1: So a few minutes ago I mentioned that it was introverted.
Speaker 1: My uncle's still texting me, um, still looking for parking,
Speaker 1: just circling the castro at this point. Uh so we
Speaker 1: mentioned introverted and extroverted malls previous to this. We're outdoor,
Speaker 1: and like we said, they were extroverted. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you walk the perimeter and the stores faced the outside
Speaker 1: and they had doors on them that you would walk
Speaker 1: into if you wanted to shop. So he had this
Speaker 1: idea like, wait, let's reverse all that. Let's turn it
Speaker 1: all inside. Where you walk into this huge building. You
Speaker 1: got these two stores on both ends, and there are
Speaker 1: no doors. They might have a gate they lower at night,
Speaker 1: but it's just open, like pool will just walk through
Speaker 1: this little concourse and all the stores are wide open
Speaker 1: for everyone's air conditioned. It's heated, not at the same time,
Speaker 1: at appropriate times, especially in a place like Minneapolis, it's
Speaker 1: probably a nice place to go in the wintertime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a big deal, and he introverted him. Is
Speaker 1: what they're called right where they look in on themselves
Speaker 1: and they're enclosed as well. So for the first time ever,
Speaker 1: you could just walk around this beautiful place with trees
Speaker 1: and he put like a twenty foot bird cage, and
Speaker 1: there were goldfish ponds and all this stuff. And it
Speaker 1: would be the middle of winter and you could walk
Speaker 1: around in short sleeves and be like, I live in
Speaker 1: a Dina, not a dina. Uh. The other thing he
Speaker 1: kind of nailed right out of the gate was um.
Speaker 1: Previous to this, shopping malls were usually um or shopping
Speaker 1: centers are on one floor and they were spread out
Speaker 1: over this big, broad area and you had to enter
Speaker 1: from the outside and walk around the cold and it
Speaker 1: was all this one big, single level. And he said,
Speaker 1: how about this, how about we stack it, because this
Speaker 1: is a genius. Everyone put a store on one end,
Speaker 1: put a store on the other end. You stack him
Speaker 1: on top of each other. You put escalators on both sides.
Speaker 1: You park in this side, you go into your department store,
Speaker 1: you walk down on the first level to get to
Speaker 1: the other department store, you get down the escalator, and
Speaker 1: then you walk back on the other level to get
Speaker 1: to your car, and you've seen every store and it
Speaker 1: was genius. It was retailed genius, exactly pretty amazing. And
Speaker 1: again we take this for granted now, but at the
Speaker 1: time everyone's like, I never thought of that. Well, the
Speaker 1: point that we take this for granted, like all of
Speaker 1: this sounds brain dead. All of this came essentially from
Speaker 1: this one guy, this dude named Victor Grewitt, who was
Speaker 1: kind of like a high artsy Fartsia society type from
Speaker 1: Austria who fled the Nazis in and was a self
Speaker 1: taught architect right who just started designing them all. And
Speaker 1: he invented the mall, and he got basically everything right
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, actually amazing. The MSS has
Speaker 1: a really great quote about him, They say that, um,
Speaker 1: he it was as if Orville and Wilbur Wright invented
Speaker 1: not just manned flight but also tray tables and duty
Speaker 1: free service. Not bad. The other thing he got right
Speaker 1: right out of the gate was these uh low balconies.
Speaker 1: You know, if you ever go into them all, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're on that top floor, you can look down
Speaker 1: and say, I gotta go into Chess King and get
Speaker 1: some parachute pants. Or if you're down on the bottom floor,
Speaker 1: you can look up and you can see, I gotta
Speaker 1: go to Merry Go Around and check out the ladies.
Speaker 1: Merry Go Around. Man, that takes me back. There will
Speaker 1: be a bit of nostalgia peppered in here and there. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't even think I put Merry Go Around. I
Speaker 1: put Camelot music is what I have in my Camelot
Speaker 1: music everyone. And the joke I have was the Duran
Speaker 1: Duran Kiss single. Oh my God, the Kiss single. It's
Speaker 1: like I just ate a whole bud of member berries
Speaker 1: or something of what member berries. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: a yeah, well three other people love that joke. So
Speaker 1: more than seventy five thousand people. Seventy five thousand people
Speaker 1: turned out on the grand opening day of South Dale Mall,
Speaker 1: and not just local press, Life Magazine, Time Magazine, UH,
Speaker 1: New York Times, Business Week, Newsweek. They all came out
Speaker 1: and said things like it's the splashiest center in the
Speaker 1: US as a goldfish pond, birds art, ten acres of
Speaker 1: stores and all under one Minnesota roof. It's a pleasure
Speaker 1: dome with parking, said Time magazine. But one guy got
Speaker 1: it right. One guy said south Dale has become an
Speaker 1: integral part of the American Way, and this is the
Speaker 1: first mall. And some journalist points Witt and says, this
Speaker 1: is how things are from now on. And this is
Speaker 1: the page that is very hard for me to read because,
Speaker 1: as you can see, I crumpled it up. Well, hold on,
Speaker 1: so if we're going to release this, we should probably
Speaker 1: take an a break. Huh oh yeah, sure, Okay, you're ready,
Speaker 1: so we'll be right back. And we're back, all right.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you thought of that. You guys get to
Speaker 1: see how the sausage. So, as I was saying before
Speaker 1: the break, I don't know if you can see it there,
Speaker 1: but this is crumpled up and very hard to read.
Speaker 1: Because Josh sent a new version and I in the
Speaker 1: hotel room, I said, great, I printed it out. I
Speaker 1: crumpled up the wrong one, m through it away and
Speaker 1: right before I came, I was searching through the trash
Speaker 1: and uh, here it is. It's not the bad actually,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna entitle this next section the Golden Age
Speaker 1: of the mall. That it wouldn't be a live show
Speaker 1: if we didn't have a golden age of skyjacking, Golden
Speaker 1: age of pr golden age of grave robbing, and now
Speaker 1: the golden age of the mall. It was about to
Speaker 1: say golden Age of Brodney Dangerfield, but it was all
Speaker 1: golden age for that guy. So the mall had its
Speaker 1: golden age. Between nineteen fifty six and two thousand, five
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred malls America were built, possibly two thousand, possibly
Speaker 1: three thousand, what no one knows. They just stopped counting
Speaker 1: pretty much. They're like, forget it will stay seven thousand.
Speaker 1: Who cares? Million? A million malls were built between that
Speaker 1: time in the US. So there's a woman named Lisa
Speaker 1: Sharon who wrote a book called America The Mall Colon,
Speaker 1: because you book has to have a colon if you're smart.
Speaker 1: The cultural role of retail utopia. And she said, for
Speaker 1: the children's seventies, eighties, and nineties, the shopping mall was
Speaker 1: the place to be, space where we defined as our own.
Speaker 1: The mall taught us how to fit in, how to
Speaker 1: be a consumer ultimately, how to be an American? Uh So,
Speaker 1: who I mean, we don't You don't have to say
Speaker 1: how old you are. But if if you grew up
Speaker 1: in sort of the seventies and the eighties, you know
Speaker 1: that the mall and into the nineties, of course, the
Speaker 1: shopping mall was like it's different than it is today.
Speaker 1: Like families used to go to the mall for the day.
Speaker 1: You pick a Saturday, and you all pile in the car,
Speaker 1: you go to the mall. You maybe go see a movie,
Speaker 1: the kids would go to the arcade. Mom and dad
Speaker 1: would do some shopping, and you would literally spend like
Speaker 1: six and eight hours as a family outing at a mall. Right,
Speaker 1: pretty unbelievable to think about that. Now you gather around
Speaker 1: the laptop and go onto Amazon dot com. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'll sit around and stare at your phones and ignore it.
Speaker 1: You say, yes, I would like to get into for
Speaker 1: men to pickles. I could do some fermentation weights. Thanks
Speaker 1: for suggesting that Amazon. Interesting. You just changed my life.
Speaker 1: But it was a big deal. You would spend family
Speaker 1: day at the mall. And uh in the eighties, it
Speaker 1: was just it was a part of America as anything else. Um,
Speaker 1: there were uh restaurants in the food court at the
Speaker 1: mall that didn't exist outside of the mall. They were
Speaker 1: born in the mall, like Cinnabon. Someone gasped, that's it,
Speaker 1: we can go home now. We're ever working toward as
Speaker 1: a gasp from somebody. Orange Julius that was another one.
Speaker 1: And Express was only in malls for a long time.
Speaker 1: And apparently Sparrow. Everyone knows of Samorrow right. It was
Speaker 1: so tied to malls that when Sabarrow filed for bankruptcy
Speaker 1: in two fourteen, they cited unprecedented decline in mall traffic
Speaker 1: in their filing. There's like, no one likes the mall anymore.
Speaker 1: We're tomorrow, We're dead. Word good Chick fil A too.
Speaker 1: You guys don't have Chick fil A here, do you? Oh?
Speaker 1: You do? Long before we knew the chicken. This is
Speaker 1: back when everyone just thought it was delicious and juicy
Speaker 1: and crispy, not filled with homophobia. But no, no, they've
Speaker 1: they've since walked it back. So it's all fine. We're
Speaker 1: just not open on Sundays. Uh Chick fil A would
Speaker 1: used to only be in the mall. I think there
Speaker 1: was one original chick fil A store in Georgia. I
Speaker 1: think that's where it was born. But aside from that,
Speaker 1: it was only in the mall. And I remember, uh
Speaker 1: going to the mall. Remember when malls used and they
Speaker 1: may still do this. I don't go to malls. There's
Speaker 1: on Amazon dot com. Um. Malls used to have events
Speaker 1: like a world record Sunday, I Scream Sunday or something
Speaker 1: to get people there. I went to Chick fil A
Speaker 1: when I was about ten at North Lake Mall, which
Speaker 1: was my mall, because they had the world's largest cup
Speaker 1: of lemonade on a Saturday afternoon. My mom took me
Speaker 1: and I drank from that spigot among the thousands of
Speaker 1: other people, and it was not even that impressive, Like
Speaker 1: I thought it was giant, but now that I'm adult,
Speaker 1: it was probably like eight ft high. Right now it
Speaker 1: was sixty four ounces. But they were just the first
Speaker 1: ones to try, so whatever they did was the world's
Speaker 1: biggest cup of lemon eight. That was a mall event
Speaker 1: that I went to. What was your mall? I had
Speaker 1: to because we moved a very formative time in my life.
Speaker 1: I had Southwick Mall, Untiledo Noah, and then I had
Speaker 1: a town Center Mall in Atlanta. No, okay, you guys
Speaker 1: haven't been to Town Center Mall. Believe me, I would
Speaker 1: recognize you. No, no, not necessarily. No, I would not
Speaker 1: call myself a mall rat because I wasn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: like sell or consume drugs at the mall, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't a mall rat. I was like, they're legitimately like
Speaker 1: I was there to visit the Led Zeppelin box set
Speaker 1: on cassette that I was saving up to buy, just
Speaker 1: it was still there, you know, Or like I would
Speaker 1: go to Spencer's and like put my hand on the
Speaker 1: plasma ball. Let's be like, yeah, Spencer Gifts. Well I
Speaker 1: say that like you're from here. I know that like
Speaker 1: eight people are from San Francisco in this room, you know,
Speaker 1: Spencer Gifts. Okay, very titilating place for a young Bathos
Speaker 1: because because there's the one section, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, plus the posters too. Yeah, it's funny now
Speaker 1: as an adult, the one section, I just thought it
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, and then there are some children
Speaker 1: here just you don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe she's used pick I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: It was but for a young Baptist kid, I was
Speaker 1: just like I would I would. I would walk by
Speaker 1: it and I would pretend like I'm looking at other
Speaker 1: things and just look in that section to see what
Speaker 1: was in it. I remember, and now it's just so
Speaker 1: dumb the stuff that was in that section. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a stud collar. It's like who cares. By the time,
Speaker 1: you're like, I got it checking me out yesterday was
Speaker 1: wearing one and nothing else. Maybe a condom with bells,
Speaker 1: and that's it so silly. I remember walking past Victoria's
Speaker 1: Secret like I was not doing that on purpose, but
Speaker 1: just kind of like like I could. Actually I trained
Speaker 1: my right eye to go like I took a lot
Speaker 1: of exercise, a lot of work, a lot of muscle relaxers,
Speaker 1: but I got a town path. Oh that's good. And
Speaker 1: that was pretty cell phone when you couldn't fake like
Speaker 1: you were doing something else. Good work. That's very impressive.
Speaker 1: You trained it back and everything I did now I
Speaker 1: can't do it anymore or else I show you guys.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I was. I got so side
Speaker 1: tracked my North Lake mall. Oh and the gold mine
Speaker 1: was my arcade at the mall wonderful. You get like
Speaker 1: twenty tokens for a dollar on a Wednesday, and now
Speaker 1: games cost like a dollar fifty to play one game.
Speaker 1: Ah progress, That's what else did they have back in
Speaker 1: those days? You made a list Chess King, of course,
Speaker 1: Marry go Around. I mentioned contempo casuals. Ladies knew this
Speaker 1: section was all into that county seat remember county seat.
Speaker 1: That is a deep cut. Or you could go get
Speaker 1: gene blue. It was like when the gap used to
Speaker 1: be like sweatshirts and blue jeans before they rebranded. You
Speaker 1: should go back to that. Merry go Around. Can't want music?
Speaker 1: What else? Oh? Well, bookstores? You could just say bookstore
Speaker 1: and that would be novel. Be Dalton Books. I think
Speaker 1: I consumed every single volume of truly tasteless jokes and
Speaker 1: those without buying a single one. Man, I remember those, God,
Speaker 1: those are great. Pet Doctor the cruelest, cutest store of
Speaker 1: all time, Remember like the Mall Pet Store. It was
Speaker 1: like this, hamps are so cute and then it died
Speaker 1: like an hour later from Neglay. It just shuffle it
Speaker 1: out and put a new one in. There's a trap door. Nice.
Speaker 1: John Hodgeman to hate this show. Dripping with nostalgia. He's
Speaker 1: here in this town. He refused to come because he knew,
Speaker 1: you kidding, he'd already be up here. Like the nostalgia's toxic.
Speaker 1: The mall became a prominent fixture in movies of the day,
Speaker 1: of course, the Sherman Oaks Galleria and California, which is
Speaker 1: where we are, yea California here. That was the mall
Speaker 1: in Fast Times a Ridgemont High one of the great
Speaker 1: mall movies, and full mall movie, but it's short. It
Speaker 1: also appeared prominently in Commando, where on a sports nigger
Speaker 1: beats up like a ton of guys at the mall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: same mall. Uh. And I of the comment you mentioned, anyone.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing that as a kid and thinking, because
Speaker 1: you know that here if you haven't seen the movie,
Speaker 1: this comment comes and destroys like everyone at night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and everyone has these comment parties to watch the comment,
Speaker 1: but it kills everybody except for the two really hot
Speaker 1: teenage girls that didn't watch the comment, and then a
Speaker 1: few other people. And what do they do. They go
Speaker 1: to the mall shop because it's abandoned. And I remember
Speaker 1: being a kid thinking that would be the dopest thing
Speaker 1: ever to just go in an empty mall and it's
Speaker 1: all yours order order to live at Restoration Hardware, to
Speaker 1: run into Spencer Gifts into that section. Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: pass out from pleasure. That's what a way did you
Speaker 1: and you missed your chance? You could be walking around
Speaker 1: the castro right right kind of look out and there's
Speaker 1: a creepy guy with a wandering eye staring at me
Speaker 1: and who knew? Who knew? Uh? What else? The Blues
Speaker 1: Brothers had a very famous mall scene. Yeah, they went
Speaker 1: through the Dixie Square Mall, sorry the Square mall that
Speaker 1: where they were like, this place has got everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: and maybe one of the most famous mall parking lots
Speaker 1: of all time the Twin Pines Mall from Back to
Speaker 1: the Future, which was actually the Quinte Heels mall. Heels
Speaker 1: that was possibly appropriate maybe, which I don't even know
Speaker 1: where that is. I mean, it's in l A obviously,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure it's a It's in City of Industry,
Speaker 1: which is name for a town everybody you know, it's
Speaker 1: outside of l A. I looked it up. And of
Speaker 1: course mall rats, which we don't need to talk about
Speaker 1: too much. Because it was a little really that was
Speaker 1: Kevin Smith. Here's a really high voice. N Smith. You
Speaker 1: can't leave out moon Unit Zappa dude, Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. Valley Girl. Yeah, she had a hit single,
Speaker 1: Valley Girl, and her father, Frank Zappa hated the Valley
Speaker 1: Girls right, and while it kind of blew up in
Speaker 1: his face when he released a song with his daughter
Speaker 1: about how stupid Valley Girls were, that it actually popularized
Speaker 1: Valley Girls and made him cool in America. So eat that,
Speaker 1: Frank Zappa. Uh, he's past. That's eat that. In Musical Heaven,
Speaker 1: so um, alls started to really grow um, not only
Speaker 1: in popularity but in size, to the point, as Josh says,
Speaker 1: of sheer absurdity. Uh in Canada, because they have malls too,
Speaker 1: I should say, uh yeah, yeah, we have some Canadians here,
Speaker 1: and yet no one from Toledo. The West Edmonton mall
Speaker 1: really all right opened and no one from Toledo, anyone
Speaker 1: from Elm Street in Edmonton. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 1: It was open. Two had an ice skating rink, It
Speaker 1: had sea lions in a pool boo, and an indoor
Speaker 1: bungee jump. It's a tempt fate for shoppers right over
Speaker 1: the Sea Lions. It's just scared than terrible. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Sea Lions hate being jumped over, and the developers knew
Speaker 1: it too. And of course the Mall of America, perhaps
Speaker 1: the most famous mall in Minnesota. Uh, they were gonna
Speaker 1: build a roller coaster there when they decided to build
Speaker 1: three roller coasters there. I've never been there. Have you
Speaker 1: been there in Mall of America? Anyone been there? Oh? Wow?
Speaker 1: All right? Huge? Right it's outside of a Dina, so
Speaker 1: actually no, really, it's like seven miles from a Dina.
Speaker 1: Should we go to the mall Walkers? Yea. This may
Speaker 1: be one of my favorite sections of any show we've
Speaker 1: ever done, because I love Mall Walkers. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it existed until I worked at them all I worked,
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned on the show. I worked at
Speaker 1: the Gap for a month in college over Christmas break
Speaker 1: and I was a champion folder and I still have
Speaker 1: those skills today. Were you really? You know? I actually
Speaker 1: quit working in the Gap is because they got mad
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't recommend socks and belts as they checked out,
Speaker 1: and I said, I think if they wanted socks and belts,
Speaker 1: they would get socks and belts. And my manager said,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if the gap is right
Speaker 1: for you, and I think you might be right. I
Speaker 1: took off my little pen and I handed it to him,
Speaker 1: and me and my mock turtleneck strolled right on that
Speaker 1: and that was it. That's the only retail job I've
Speaker 1: ever I did. But anyway, a long way of getting
Speaker 1: to mall walkers. I remember showing up for work one
Speaker 1: morning to open and there were these old people walking
Speaker 1: around and I thought, does anyone know that they're in
Speaker 1: here because the mall is not open yet? And someone said, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they live in uh and Merry go round and
Speaker 1: come out at night from the giant pants they just
Speaker 1: screwed out of the legs. But they explained to me
Speaker 1: what a mall walker was, and even at a young age,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's wonderful. It warmed my heart and
Speaker 1: it became a legit, real American thing. It did. Apparently
Speaker 1: the CDC did a report on this, because if you
Speaker 1: can't study gun violence, might as well study mall walking.
Speaker 1: And in two thousand and fifteen they said, uh, malls
Speaker 1: are right behind neighborhoods for popularity of walking they just
Speaker 1: went to bed after that, but they did a little
Speaker 1: more digging and they said the reason people of malls
Speaker 1: is because there's restrooms, water fountains, benches, and level surfaces.
Speaker 1: And this is one of my favorite quotes from any
Speaker 1: CDC report ever. They said that quote, the latest fashionable
Speaker 1: workout attire is not a requisite for mall walking, And
Speaker 1: no truer words have ever been spoken. You won't find
Speaker 1: any yoga pants on the mall walkers. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, I would imagine you would be ostracized if
Speaker 1: you did just kind of gussy, if like you're putting
Speaker 1: on airs or something. You know, they don't play that
Speaker 1: in a dina. Yeah. Actually, you know what mall walker's
Speaker 1: where those uh those workout pants that that look like
Speaker 1: lotted up paper. You know what I'm talking about. It's
Speaker 1: like this wrinkly, weird material. I don't even know what
Speaker 1: it's made of. Fish skin? What? Yes, all right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about all right, we'll talk about it later.
Speaker 1: Let's hang on to this page to remind us to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Well, that's fish skin, but you mean
Speaker 1: clothing that's totally weird, but it makes sense in a way.
Speaker 1: Uh So, these these generally elderly folks are walking around malls.
Speaker 1: And at the Mall of America, they have a PR
Speaker 1: coordinator there named Tara Neebling, and she says, we love
Speaker 1: our wall uh wall markers, mall walkers. They're very special
Speaker 1: to us, and they even have a program. They're so adorable.
Speaker 1: But they give them little swipe cards. It keeps track.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a fitbit, but they can't wear
Speaker 1: a fitbit, I guess because I don't even know why.
Speaker 1: They can't figure it out or something that's very agist
Speaker 1: and is going to be against the wall for that
Speaker 1: joke later on. But they've given these little swipe cards
Speaker 1: that lets them track how much they're walking and how
Speaker 1: much exercise they're getting. They have monthly breakfast meetings where
Speaker 1: they have health experts come in and talk about we
Speaker 1: should all go there right now. And all this is
Speaker 1: in exchange for a fifteen dollar annual fee if you
Speaker 1: want to officially be a member. But don't feel bad, sir,
Speaker 1: because like I was, like, what a rip? He said.
Speaker 1: They welcome unofficial mall walkers a k a. The old
Speaker 1: dudes who refused to pay the fifteen dollars a k
Speaker 1: a society's leeches. That would be me. I'm not paying
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. That's mean about ten or fifteen years. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it's adorable. Uh. And the whole thing about
Speaker 1: mall walkers is they it was a problem at first
Speaker 1: because they didn't used to open malls to allow this.
Speaker 1: They just came to the mall when it was open
Speaker 1: and they would walk around. And they said that there
Speaker 1: was a quote in here they said they thought it
Speaker 1: would upset the regular shoppers to have them just exercising
Speaker 1: among them. And they're like, you know, what do we do?
Speaker 1: We can't kill them. They got our they have our
Speaker 1: arms behind our backs, like they really have us over
Speaker 1: a barrel. You can't kill them, can we? We could
Speaker 1: wait for them to die. And I guess this is
Speaker 1: that they're really healthy. Owners gets together once a year,
Speaker 1: capes red satin inside black on, you know. So they
Speaker 1: decided to open them all just for them to walk
Speaker 1: around before the store is open, which is just adorable,
Speaker 1: I think. And speaking of the Mall of America, Douglas Copeland,
Speaker 1: I don't know if any of you have read Generation X.
Speaker 1: It's a really great book, but he basically coined the name.
Speaker 1: Apparently no one's read it. Douglas Copeland, Um, wow, this
Speaker 1: really would work so much better if you guys knew
Speaker 1: what what Generation X was. Yeah, we wrote it. So
Speaker 1: he wrote the book literally Generation X, and like just
Speaker 1: set the tone for the whole thing. And he was
Speaker 1: actually at the opening of Mall of America on August
Speaker 1: and he was up there on stage with the local
Speaker 1: radio affiliate, and he said that everybody was walking by
Speaker 1: with what he called country fair face, where they were
Speaker 1: like google eyed and eating ice cream, couldn't believe this mall.
Speaker 1: It was the most amazing thing they've ever seen. And
Speaker 1: he said that the interviewer just assumed he was going
Speaker 1: to be like a lacquer ironic wise ass and said,
Speaker 1: you know, I bet you think this whole mall is
Speaker 1: very hokey and trashy. And Douglas Copeland said, actually not
Speaker 1: at all, Chuck, where should I start here? Oh? Oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: I can finish my part. And then the radio guy
Speaker 1: was like, what, Chuck, and he said, quote, I mean
Speaker 1: that I feel like I'm in another era that we
Speaker 1: thought had vanished, but it really hasn't, not yet. I
Speaker 1: think we might one day look back on photos of
Speaker 1: today and think to ourselves. You know, those people were
Speaker 1: living in golden times and they didn't even know it.
Speaker 1: Communism was dead, the economy was good, and the future
Speaker 1: with all of its accompanying technologies, hadn't crush society's mojo
Speaker 1: like a bug and drop the mic. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: that's really not good for the mic, and we're please anymore.
Speaker 1: And he goes on to say it's true. He says
Speaker 1: that technology hadn't hallowed up the middle class and turned
Speaker 1: us all into like laptop click junk. He's he didn't
Speaker 1: say that there were no He said there were no
Speaker 1: new boogeymen hiding in the closet. He said, we may
Speaker 1: look at the nineties as the last good decade. And
Speaker 1: all of this came to him at the mall, so
Speaker 1: they didn't get their snarky quote after all, which is
Speaker 1: kind of ironic in a way. You know, he really
Speaker 1: did zing him. But it was a medazine. So if
Speaker 1: you want to talk to the psychology of malls, we
Speaker 1: need to go back to Victor Gruen and um he
Speaker 1: has a quote where he said shoppers will be so
Speaker 1: bedazzled by the store surroundings they will be drawn unconsciously
Speaker 1: continually to shop, and um, this kind of goes against
Speaker 1: his ethos. He he wasn't some big He wasn't like
Speaker 1: the pr guy. I can't I think of his name.
Speaker 1: We did that like twelve times. He wasn't like Ed Burney's.
Speaker 1: He didn't have this thing where he was like, yes,
Speaker 1: we need to get people to shop. But he was
Speaker 1: commissioned to do so, and he did a good job.
Speaker 1: He thought the mall would be a little bit more
Speaker 1: like a sort of like they had in Europe, like
Speaker 1: a public meeting space, and that's why he built these
Speaker 1: atriums in the middle, the skylights in the fountain, and
Speaker 1: he thought people would go there and hang out and
Speaker 1: talk politics and maybe even uh stand up and like
Speaker 1: speak about things publicly to people, because that's what happens
Speaker 1: at the mall. Right, instead of the developers are like,
Speaker 1: you go over there, you're done, you did your damage, right,
Speaker 1: We're actually gonna go so far as to name a
Speaker 1: psychological effect after you, something called the grew In transfer,
Speaker 1: which is where you walk into the mall and you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to buy a Hello, Kitty pen and that
Speaker 1: is it, and you get through the mall and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there's a water fountain, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's old people walking around. There's this amazing stuff going
Speaker 1: on here at the mall. I forgot what I was
Speaker 1: going to get, and now I have a compulsion to
Speaker 1: get an orange Julius with drugs in it. And you
Speaker 1: forget what you're doing, and all of a sudden you're
Speaker 1: shopping in general rather than purposefully shopping. That is called
Speaker 1: the grew In transfer or the grew In effect, And
Speaker 1: and Victor grew probably would not be very happy to
Speaker 1: know that that was the case. No, And as we'll
Speaker 1: see later, he in fact was not happy about that.
Speaker 1: Uh So Malcolm Gladwell, Josh's mortal enemy. He did an
Speaker 1: interview with a Alfred Tubman and he said it's called
Speaker 1: threshold resistance. He said, people assume that we enclosed his
Speaker 1: face because of air conditioning and climate control. He said,
Speaker 1: what it really did was allow us to open the
Speaker 1: store to the customer. Just what we talked about, that
Speaker 1: introverted thing. All of a sudden, you're in this huge
Speaker 1: retail utopia. All the doors are open at all time,
Speaker 1: and you're just strolling through the mall and you walk
Speaker 1: by Nike Town, and they have like looks like a
Speaker 1: nightclub in there, so you're just sort of unconsciously drawn
Speaker 1: inside there, like I'd like to make some new friends, truly,
Speaker 1: I can't Nike Town. Uh. Back in the day in
Speaker 1: shopping centers, they used to have live bands, and that
Speaker 1: was replaced, of course, with music later on, which is
Speaker 1: you know, you take like a normal song like Bread's
Speaker 1: I Want to Make with You, and then you remove
Speaker 1: the lyrics, the percussion, replace it all with strings, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, people are just walking around. Like
Speaker 1: by most by it works really well, so much so
Speaker 1: that the people at malls who are typically in charge
Speaker 1: of the music were the same people who were in
Speaker 1: charge of the heat and the lighting, the facilities manager.
Speaker 1: That's how much music meant to It was like part
Speaker 1: of the building. But at the same time, you can't
Speaker 1: really call it music, you know. In fact, you probably
Speaker 1: call something weird like music. Yeah, you think about the
Speaker 1: coolest DJ. I'm not hip on that scene. Uh, Steve Ioki, Okay,
Speaker 1: the facilities manager is the opposite of Steve Ioki. But
Speaker 1: they're sitting in their room and and they're controlling the
Speaker 1: music and the the lights and the sounds of the
Speaker 1: mall all in that little room dead mouse. Oh, I
Speaker 1: know what that is. But the s is a number five?
Speaker 1: Right yeah? So hip, so hip. I'm not old. I
Speaker 1: know that guy too. So we talked a little bit
Speaker 1: earlier about the the cycle of the mall, the two
Speaker 1: story layout. And while you can go to malls where
Speaker 1: there are three stories, um, most of the malls I've
Speaker 1: been to that have a third story. It's not the
Speaker 1: entire mall. There'll be like a section with a third story.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they built it on or what,
Speaker 1: but generally you see a two story mall because you
Speaker 1: had that cycle the across down, across, up, back to
Speaker 1: your car and you've seen all the stores. Right, But
Speaker 1: if you have a third level, you go across, down, across.
Speaker 1: My car should be here. But now I have a
Speaker 1: third level and I'm stuck. I'm just gonna wander around
Speaker 1: this corner until some people come get me. And as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, Valco mall had three levels. Look
Speaker 1: what happened to it? What mall? It's the local mall.
Speaker 1: Oh and the fourteen people from San Francisco applied right, yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's in San Jose it's like the same place. Come on,
Speaker 1: I think you could default to Bay Area and you
Speaker 1: do yourself a lot of favors. You're hearing this from
Speaker 1: like the guy who took off an infinity scarf right
Speaker 1: before he came on stage because he was told like,
Speaker 1: it's not cool anymore. I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: So you're burn does not work? No, No, I was
Speaker 1: talking about myself burning you, buddy. I wasn't burning you,
Speaker 1: all right, burn? Yeah, any scarf, it's a stupid what
Speaker 1: else did they figure anyone where? You're fine? Lady? Your
Speaker 1: infinity scarf is fine? Is that an infinity? That's lovely?
Speaker 1: Can you come up here and show everyone when an
Speaker 1: infinity scar I'm kidding? No, everyone stopped now. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: we thought about adding runway modeling to our shows. That
Speaker 1: would be a great time. Sorry about the infancy scarf joke.
Speaker 1: Now I feel terrible. Is anyone drinking nothing but soilent
Speaker 1: right now? I should have made that joke instead. I'm
Speaker 1: looking over my glasses for more clothes I can make
Speaker 1: fun of Tyler Murphy. That beard is something else. He
Speaker 1: died of blue. Everybody, all right, this is another part
Speaker 1: that's gonna be edited out later, so Tyler say whatever
Speaker 1: you want. So the other thing they figured out with
Speaker 1: keeping people in the mall, which is a big goal,
Speaker 1: is that that people like to shop with other people.
Speaker 1: But sometimes the people that you bring to shop with you,
Speaker 1: namely husbands, don't like to be at the mall. So
Speaker 1: they said, well, let's put comfy areas in the mall,
Speaker 1: like chairs. And in fact, there was a quote that
Speaker 1: said a chair says we care a famous mall designer.
Speaker 1: What it really means is a chair says we can
Speaker 1: keep your wife here longer than you like to be here. Right.
Speaker 1: The husband's like, oh, I just want to lay down
Speaker 1: and die on my floor at home. Can I just
Speaker 1: go home? Like you can lay down and die here, sir? Right,
Speaker 1: lay there? Shut up. So the ironies are growing, we
Speaker 1: said earlier. I don't think we specifically said he was
Speaker 1: a socialist. Now it's really weird for a socialist to
Speaker 1: be the father of the shopping mall, wouldn't you think.
Speaker 1: And his original idea was that people could go there
Speaker 1: and espouse their views, and that maybe happen once in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, until the Supreme Court came in and
Speaker 1: said in the case of hud Hudgens versus Natural Relations
Speaker 1: Labor Relations Board. Basically, these union dudes wanted to pick
Speaker 1: it inside the mall and they did so they got
Speaker 1: kicked out. They sued, and the Supreme Court said, actually,
Speaker 1: his private property, and you can't bring your picket signs
Speaker 1: in here. And and the picketers were like, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: the all is the new heart, the new civic center
Speaker 1: of American life. In the Supreme Court, don't be an
Speaker 1: idiot place of shot dummy and everyone. When I didn't
Speaker 1: hear what you just said, We're gonna just keep pretending
Speaker 1: like the mall is the hardest civic life. So it
Speaker 1: was a big problem for Grew And actually he um
Speaker 1: he also hated cars. He was big into walking. He
Speaker 1: was in favor of pedestrianism. And yet you have to
Speaker 1: drive a car to get to the mall. And not
Speaker 1: only that, you have to park, like some of his
Speaker 1: creations want. I think Southdale had like two point eight
Speaker 1: million square feet of parking, and he called these things
Speaker 1: like land wasting seas of of parking lots. So as
Speaker 1: he's as he's designing these things, he's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: very happy about this, and they would go do it anyway,
Speaker 1: even the stuff he scratched out. They're like, no, this
Speaker 1: is a good idea. We're gonna go with this. And
Speaker 1: he had like, no, say whatsoever. After a while now
Speaker 1: and he got pretty disgusted, and he left the United
Speaker 1: States forever. In the nineteen sixties, went back to Europe
Speaker 1: and said. Uh. In nineteen seventy eight, a couple of
Speaker 1: years before his death, he gave a speech in London
Speaker 1: and said, I am often called the father of the
Speaker 1: shopping mall. I would like to take this opportunity to
Speaker 1: disclaim paternity once and for all. I refused to pay
Speaker 1: alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed our cities. And
Speaker 1: they said, sir, we have the paternity tests and you
Speaker 1: are the father, right He said, no, I'm not, No,
Speaker 1: you really are. Yeah. We used lumen all in everything. Uh.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should take another ad break. Yeah, let's take
Speaker 1: another ad break. We'll be back right after this, and
Speaker 1: we're back. We should, I guess move on to the
Speaker 1: death of the mall. Yeah, because I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys know this or not, but malls are not
Speaker 1: doing very well these days. I know, but you'll probably
Speaker 1: like the rest of this episode. The mall actually peaked
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety at sixteen million square feet of new
Speaker 1: space opened in that year, and it's been tapering off
Speaker 1: ever since. And here's a little staggering statistic for you.
Speaker 1: Since the nineteen fifties, when the first mall was built,
Speaker 1: there was at least one mall built every single year
Speaker 1: until two thousand seven, usually many, many mall, well up
Speaker 1: to a million from what I hear. I mean that's
Speaker 1: an estimate, but yeah, yeah, so two thousand seven marked
Speaker 1: the first year that a new mall wasn't built, and
Speaker 1: I think there were no new malls built until two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve in the United States. Uh, two thousand eight. Recession,
Speaker 1: the Great Recession had a really big impact on retail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's there's like a bunch of different reasons people put
Speaker 1: for what killed the mall. Right, the mall has long
Speaker 1: been known for killing the American downtown. Right, the mall
Speaker 1: moved out to the suburbs in the downtown just kind
Speaker 1: of went away. Right, So reason number one is that
Speaker 1: the Great Recession killed them mall. And this is true
Speaker 1: to a pretty large extent actually, like from World War
Speaker 1: Two until I think two thousand nine, Every single year
Speaker 1: Americans spent more money than they had the year before,
Speaker 1: which is nuts. Right. Then two thousand nine comes and
Speaker 1: we stopped, and not only did we stop, we actually
Speaker 1: declined tremendously. We stopped spending by something like ten percent.
Speaker 1: And then the money that we did spend, we started
Speaker 1: spending at Target and Walmart, not at the mall or
Speaker 1: at places like j. C. Pennies or Sears who tried
Speaker 1: to keep these malls propped up, and who mall is
Speaker 1: depended on. Because again, remember, if you go to a mall,
Speaker 1: the whole reason the mall exists is for the department
Speaker 1: stores to spread their traffic out to the smaller stores.
Speaker 1: And if the department stores are hurting, which they were,
Speaker 1: then the smaller stores heard as well. So as these big,
Speaker 1: large anchor stores started to go under, the malls did
Speaker 1: as well. But people said the Great Recession was pretty bad.
Speaker 1: It's probably not the only reason that the mall is dying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we mentioned Amazon dot Com earlier, and they're not the
Speaker 1: only online retailer, of course, and you can tell we're
Speaker 1: not from the area because we say dot com after it.
Speaker 1: We just want to make sure you guys know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. We're trying to communicate with you. I
Speaker 1: can't believe I said that. How nerdy we would both
Speaker 1: of us have said it like five or six times. Stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know. Dot com Well, there's dot orgs and
Speaker 1: dot nets and dot yeah, not Amazon, dot e d US,
Speaker 1: dot UK specificity is a soul of narrative. Oh good one,
Speaker 1: thank you. Take that, everybody, thank you. Uh. In two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, traditional retailers, for the very first time, generated
Speaker 1: about half their sales from the web. Um, but you can't,
Speaker 1: like I do all my shopping online now, I literally
Speaker 1: haven't been. I think I went to the mall last
Speaker 1: year for something and asked my wife, she's out there.
Speaker 1: I was miserable. I hated it, but we had to
Speaker 1: go for some reason or another. I can't remember, probably
Speaker 1: staying the line for a stupid phone. I'm just kidding
Speaker 1: out and do that either. But I almost stood in
Speaker 1: line for breakfast this morning right here in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing. Jeez. But online retailing isn't that
Speaker 1: big of a thing yet. Uh, even if it hits
Speaker 1: the fifteen percent annual growth over the next three years
Speaker 1: that they project by two thousand nineteen, it'll still only
Speaker 1: be about two point four I'm sorry, twelve point four
Speaker 1: percent of retail, which is not enough to kill them all,
Speaker 1: but it's a factor no. And plus you can kind
Speaker 1: of find this weird confidence in the idea that malls
Speaker 1: may continue limping along if you're into that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: by the fact that Amazon dot Com open a brick
Speaker 1: and mortar store a bookstore to help boost their online sales,
Speaker 1: which is mind boggling, but they did it in Seattle.
Speaker 1: But more than anything, perhaps the reason the malls died,
Speaker 1: it's because they were never meant to live forever. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this next part is about the economics of malls,
Speaker 1: and specifically it sounds so boring tax loopholes concerning malls.
Speaker 1: Josh is gonna explain it. Okay, So if you build
Speaker 1: a building somewhere, and I should say hats off to
Speaker 1: Gladwell for explaining this too. This comes largely from him.
Speaker 1: But if you build a building somewhere and say, like
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty, um, the government said, you know what, your
Speaker 1: building is not going to hold up forever, so you
Speaker 1: can deduct a certain percentage of your building's value every
Speaker 1: year and put it aside tax free to replace that
Speaker 1: building eventually. And at the time when shopping malls first
Speaker 1: started to come about in the early fifties, the the
Speaker 1: deduction for this wear and tear was one. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: you had a forty years to deduct this value of
Speaker 1: your your building. This is not going well, No, that's
Speaker 1: perfect so far. I'm checking in for accuracy. Okay, Right,
Speaker 1: I feel like like my fingernails are bleeding. So every year, right,
Speaker 1: if you went and built a shopping mall, you could
Speaker 1: deduct one of the value of the shopping mall. Not
Speaker 1: a huge deduction, but it was something. It's the problem
Speaker 1: is is this depreciation deduction was It was something, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough. If you built a shopping mall in
Speaker 1: the early fifties, you were really asking for trouble because
Speaker 1: they were hugely expensive. They cost like twenty million or
Speaker 1: thirty million, which are on par to a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty or two hundred million dollars today, right, and you
Speaker 1: were going to make your money back very very slowly.
Speaker 1: But then and I think nineteen the US government said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we really want to kind of get
Speaker 1: things going on building and construction. Uh, we want to
Speaker 1: make sure Josh and Chuck have something interesting to talk
Speaker 1: about at the end of their Malls episode years from now.
Speaker 1: So we're going to change the tax code, and they did,
Speaker 1: and they created or allowed for something called accelerated depreciation,
Speaker 1: and this changed everything, Chuck. So I'm gonna go back
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty one. The Wall Street Journal wrote a
Speaker 1: little article trying to describe this financial situation for real
Speaker 1: estate company name Cratur Corp. Sounds totally made up. I
Speaker 1: can eave villains business that you would run or std
Speaker 1: I abbreviated, what does that stand for? It won't go away, Doc,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna I'm gonna million to one, I tell you.
Speaker 1: So this is the sixty young and around the numbers
Speaker 1: just to make it easier. So let's say Crowder Corp.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty made about ten million bucks overall. Is
Speaker 1: everyone writing this down as we're saying that, So deductions
Speaker 1: from operating expenses and mortgage interests is about five million bucks.
Speaker 1: So they still make about five million bucks. Not a
Speaker 1: bad income, but not good enough. Then came the depreciation,
Speaker 1: accelerated depreciation to the tune about seven million dollars. So
Speaker 1: all of a sudden crowder, instead of having a profit
Speaker 1: of five million dollars on the books, has a loss
Speaker 1: of a couple of million dollars on the books. And
Speaker 1: everyone has these huge tax write offs. And now you
Speaker 1: fully understand, if you didn't before, why our next president
Speaker 1: doesn't pay income tax. Right. It's basically this accelerated depreciation
Speaker 1: on real estate that allows you to write off these
Speaker 1: massive amounts of money to show big losses where you're
Speaker 1: in fact making gains. Right. And the big change of
Speaker 1: the tax code was to the I R s. They're
Speaker 1: still getting the same amount of taxes over the life
Speaker 1: of the building. They just said, if you want to
Speaker 1: deduct this depreciation at the beginning of the life of
Speaker 1: the building, that's fine with us. It's it's all the
Speaker 1: same to us. Well, if you were a developer, you
Speaker 1: would build this building, deduct as much as you could
Speaker 1: over say three four five years, maybe even break even
Speaker 1: just from the tax deductions, and then sell that mall
Speaker 1: for pure profit of fifty or a hundred or a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million dollars and walk away laughing and
Speaker 1: laughing and laugh and exactly, we're in your cape. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. They wouldn't like put that money back
Speaker 1: into the mall to make it better. They would sell
Speaker 1: it off like you said, and just go build a
Speaker 1: bigger mall further out. And now we'll call these ex serbs.
Speaker 1: They're not even suburbs. Because they were all about going
Speaker 1: where the land was cheapest. The mall stopped being a
Speaker 1: place to actually service people. They would just build malls
Speaker 1: where they could get the best deals on land and
Speaker 1: found that people would drive to them and sometimes even
Speaker 1: build entire towns around them. Right, yeah, let's move to
Speaker 1: the mall. And it's true. And so under this view,
Speaker 1: when you really understand why there were two thousand or
Speaker 1: three thousand or a million malls built in the United States, huge,
Speaker 1: huge mall. Some cities had multiple malls, when you realize
Speaker 1: that they were built for text breaks and not to
Speaker 1: fulfill some consumer demand, then of course they were destined
Speaker 1: to shrivel and die because they were part of an
Speaker 1: artificial supply. And once that him exposed and the text
Speaker 1: bricks went away, malls started going down. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: sad in a way. When a mall goes under. People
Speaker 1: have associations of memories with the mall, you know, like
Speaker 1: you you think about all the mall walkers you've seen
Speaker 1: and loved walking around the mall, and when it dies,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's sad. But even more than that, it
Speaker 1: can actually, depending on the town, can take an entire
Speaker 1: city down with it. Yeah, there was a place north Randall, Ohio. No,
Speaker 1: I'm satisfied. What do you mean really, I mean it's
Speaker 1: outside of Cleveland. I figured half of Cleveland probably tried
Speaker 1: to move to some Even Emily didn't cheer for that one.
Speaker 1: I know she's from Ohio. So they had the Randall
Speaker 1: Park mall and uh, it costs about a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five million bucks to build in and get this.
Speaker 1: The grand opening, five thousand guests had champagne, twelve hundred
Speaker 1: pounds of fresh shrimp, crab, cold roast, turkey, hot corn,
Speaker 1: beef and ham, um, melon and cheese, small crapes filled
Speaker 1: with chicken and spinach, coffee and dessert. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: like a Roman orgy basically. And disguise of the opening
Speaker 1: of them all you got you got the world's largest
Speaker 1: cup of lemonade. Yeah, it wasn't too bad. I just
Speaker 1: hate that I put my mouth on that thing along
Speaker 1: with other people. He should have at least had smaller
Speaker 1: cups or maybe not professional swimmers inside the cup. No,
Speaker 1: there were seahorses, but no, no no, no, those are fine.
Speaker 1: You just they passed right through your digestive tip. You
Speaker 1: don't metabolize this. So gross. Uh. Tommy Dorsey showed up
Speaker 1: at the grand opening of this mall with this orchestra
Speaker 1: to play. It was a big event. But Randall Mall
Speaker 1: has since fallen on hard times and those two point
Speaker 1: two million square feet of retail space have been shuttered
Speaker 1: and um almost along with it. Uh North Randall, Ohio
Speaker 1: as a whole, That whole town is sort of on
Speaker 1: life support basically because of closing of the shopping mall.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, but there are some malls that are still
Speaker 1: doing well. Outlet malls are thriving. High end malls, in
Speaker 1: case you're wondering how they're really wealthy, are doing pretty good.
Speaker 1: High end malls are thriving like you would not believe.
Speaker 1: They're up by fourteen point six percent since the economic crisis.
Speaker 1: And there's this dude, his name's Rick Caruso. He pretended
Speaker 1: the uh, the death of the mall. Malls are dead,
Speaker 1: They're gone unless they reinvent themselves, and it just so
Speaker 1: happens that I build the type of mall that malls
Speaker 1: should reinvent themselves into. So he basically is trying to
Speaker 1: recreate downtown, but a nice, happy disneyesque downtown where nothing
Speaker 1: ever goes wrong and everything is great. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's also a mall and it's outdoors. And to follow
Speaker 1: this trend, malls are doing the exact opposite of what
Speaker 1: they did when Gruen started designing and closed malls. They're
Speaker 1: tearing the roofs off and following this new trend to
Speaker 1: try to survive. Yeah, he calls them lifestyle centers. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's one here. There's one in Atlantic
Speaker 1: called Atlantic Station. I hate them more than anything, really
Speaker 1: strong opinions. At least the mall is a mall. It's
Speaker 1: not pretending to be a small town. You know, It's true.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, we just built these streets and there's
Speaker 1: it looks like a stoplight, but your your child can
Speaker 1: control it fully. And then there's no cars with a button.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like downtown USA. There's no crime anywhere,
Speaker 1: security guards everywhere, and all you do a shop, shop shop,
Speaker 1: So to me, there's like there's a certain sadness over
Speaker 1: the depth of the mall. Like for me personally, I
Speaker 1: think even for some of the boos in here you
Speaker 1: spend time at the mall, the mall represented something to America.
Speaker 1: But if you step back and look, it's about exactly
Speaker 1: what the mall represents, and even more to the point,
Speaker 1: with the death of the mall represents, is it really
Speaker 1: the death of a golden age or a golden eraw
Speaker 1: when things were great? Because if you look at the mall,
Speaker 1: it's an outpost of consumerism. It's like a church of consumption, right,
Speaker 1: So if we've lost that, then maybe out of the ashes,
Speaker 1: out of the things that are so broken right now,
Speaker 1: you can find some kind of weird hope that maybe
Speaker 1: we can rebuild in a new, better way to where
Speaker 1: the most important part of civic life isn't the mall. Wow,
Speaker 1: and that is mall. That's malls. Thank you everybody you
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