WEBVTT - Live from San Francisco: How Malls Work 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:04.640 Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:13.760 dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.160 There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We're in beautiful San Francisco, 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:44.640 California at the Castro Theater. Good, thank you, it's wonderful. 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:48.839 Our biggest, our biggest show to date. Seriously today on 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:55.480 a Sunday afternoon. Who San Francisco Sketch Fest. All right, 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:02.000 So we're talking today everybody about a little something called 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:10.600 the Mall. And I'm not joking. Yeah, that's what I have. 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.920 So that's good. So we've been wanting to do something 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:16.400 on the mall for years now and years and years, 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:19.000 and we thought, well, what is San Francisco if not 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:24.000 the Mall? Right, they're gonna love this one, and I 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:28.720 guess we were wrong. Now, you guys will love it. 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:31.399 I promise. It's just like, um, like the Grass episode. 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.200 You may have been like, I'm not listening to that, 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:36.440 and then you finally ran out of episodes. Listen to 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:38.360 the Grass episode and you're like, that wasn't as bad 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:40.480 as I thought it was gonna be. This will be 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:44.360 similar to that experience, Okay, except the Grass episode is 0:01:44.440 --> 0:01:52.640 free I promise we will give it our all. I 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:54.640 don't know why we're selling it. Like this is going 0:01:54.680 --> 0:02:00.320 downhill so fast, it's great, okay, so hill shall we 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:12.520 get in the way back machine? Oh? Which is imaginary boo. 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:16.760 So when you think of shopping mall, you think of 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:18.880 the mall. Right, everybody knows what the mall is. If 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:21.200 there's somebody who doesn't know what the mall is, raise 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:23.519 your hand and whoever sitting next to that person, punch 0:02:23.600 --> 0:02:25.400 them in the arm. Really hard to be, like, come on, 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.399 you know what the mall is. I assume San Francisco 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.639 has malls somewhere. Oh yeah, they've got I've never seen one. 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.440 They're probably out a bit. It's not like a mall 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.200 in the middle of the mission, is there, I don't 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:43.320 think so. Right, there's a few they pop up here there. 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:48.519 You guys will know, because I'll be like, so if 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:50.560 we're we're all on the way back machine and we're 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.760 going all the way back backpack back to ancient Rome 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.920 where the actual the first what you could consider a 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:02.560 shopping center appears. It was called Trajan's Market, and Trajan's 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:05.360 Market was built in something like one oh seven. I 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:10.919 think that's early. I think it's anchor store was Trajan's Horse. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:18.240 That was okay, sorry, if I had a store back there, 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.040 that would have totally called it Trajan's Horse. Yeah, and 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:24.960 it's it's known as the world's oldest shopping center for 0:03:25.040 --> 0:03:27.200 good reason. Again, it was built in one oh seven 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:30.239 and right now it's in ruins. There's some guy who 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.360 sells um those little balls with the raccoon tails on 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.840 the end of them on a tray, but he's technically 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:40.440 outside of the mall, so it doesn't really count. So 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.960 the mall is closed. It has been for several millennia now. 0:03:45.440 --> 0:03:49.800 But the oldest continually operated. Um what you would might 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.800 call an outdoor market or mall is the Grand Bazaar 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:58.640 with an A and three. A's actually two, No, there's three. 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.160 You've been drinking, Yeah, just not together be a Z 0:04:01.320 --> 0:04:04.680 A R. Yeah, I guess if I'm not gonna checking 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.880 his math checks out. That's a joke from Fletch. If 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.520 I'm not mistaken, I don't like alright, deep cut the 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:17.599 Grand Bizarre Istanbul between fourteen fifty five and fourteen sixty 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:19.880 one and is when that was built, and it is 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.920 still an operation today. About five thousand cupboard shops still 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:26.360 gets about a quarter million visitors a day, so it's 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:30.080 still rocking day. Yeah, yeah, a lot of folks. So 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.280 you've got what medieval market towns kind of started to 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:38.000 come later, um, seeports, all these things, these commercial districts 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.520 where people went to shop. They all had to kind 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:45.040 of be centered in an area together because people rode horses, 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.200 or they walked, or they were chased by other people whatever. 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:50.800 But you had to go and get all of your 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:53.120 shopping done at one place, right, And that's just kind 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:57.600 of a very ancient idea, and it's right, it's wonderful. 0:04:58.200 --> 0:04:59.800 By the turn of the twentieth century here in the 0:04:59.880 --> 0:05:02.320 u US we had something we still do. It hasn't 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:05.200 gone away. But pre mall, we had the department store. 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:08.280 And um, I think I even mentioned this on another show. 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:10.800 It didn't dawn on me, you know, like the simplest 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:13.159 words dawn on you late in life, like what it 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.160 really means. I just always said, Hey, a department store. 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:17.880 It really just occourad to me a couple of years ago, like, oh, 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:22.920 just store full of many departments. Never really thought about it. 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:28.040 Do you ever have those? It's kind of nice department stores, uh, 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:33.440 thirteen stories high in Chicago, the Marshall and Field Company, Marshall, 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.200 Field and Company. And then in Detroit there was one 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:40.599 called J. L. Hudson's that it was twenty five floors 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:45.840 of department store floors of retail space. And this thing 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.359 took up like a whole block. Yeah, and there's nineteen eleven. 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:51.280 So there's a lot of stuff. It is a lot 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.560 of stuff. Uh. In eight though, if you back up 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:57.760 a little bit, the first sort of enclosed shopping center 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:00.200 that you might kind of consider a mall mall even 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:02.920 though we really don't, as you'll see, because it didn't 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:07.080 have an arcade, even though it is it's called the 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:11.680 Westminster Arcade, ironically, I didn't have an arcade. And Providence, 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:15.599 Rhode Island. Has anyone ever been to this place? Yeah? 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:22.760 Have you really? Yes? I didn't know that you didn't 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.440 type in here I've been there. Yeah, all right, I 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:30.080 didn't know I needed to say that. Well, it was assumed. Uh. 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:31.680 It's a pretty cool place. So if you look it 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:33.720 up online, it doesn't look like the mall that you 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:35.440 would consider the mall looks like sort of like a 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:40.560 Greek revival building, and uh, it's like, yeah, it's really nice. 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:41.960 It's got three it sort of looks like a train 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:46.279 station three floors, and recently they were going to demolish it, 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:51.120 but someone swooped in and built micro apartments. Now you 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:53.560 can live in there and they're really kind of cool. 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.320 And I was gonna explain again what a micro apartment was, 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:59.480 but I forgot where I am. So you all know, 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:05.760 isn't that like a dresser drawer? Yes, and you walk 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:09.200 through the little thing that's like, I love living in 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:13.080 thirty square feet and it's just some guy standing in 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:22.000 a broom cloth. Pretty much. Uh, screw the sup herbs. 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:26.920 Wait even well, even back further than this, Russia should 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:32.560 get its due right, even even before the even before 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:36.520 the the the Westminster Arcade, there is this thing called 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:40.880 the ghost Veeded Voor. And I looked at the pronunciation, 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.720 but I should qualify that I looked at the pronunciation 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.400 on the same site that I looked up the pronunciation 0:07:47.480 --> 0:07:52.600 on Disha chain, which I called Dixia chain throughout the 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:57.520 entire Underground City episode. So to take that for what 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:01.560 it is, I was about to say, all our Asian friends, 0:08:01.600 --> 0:08:03.840 let us know that was wrong. But really, everyone of 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:07.760 every race. Let us know that was wrong, Thank you dummies. 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:11.840 After World War two, things really kind of evolved with 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:14.320 the shopping center though, That's when things kind of started going. 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:20.040 And um, in nineteen fifty Seattle's Northgate Center was Uh, 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:21.920 but I feel like we say several times the first 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:23.520 thing we think of them all. I guess it was 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:27.000 just part of the evolution, right. South Dale was the 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.320 first real mall. Alright, so Southdale we're gonna pick up 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:36.440 with Southdale. Southdale was in Adena, Minnesota, and Dinah, thank 0:08:36.480 --> 0:08:42.720 you live corrections very nice. Where were you when I 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:49.240 was saying Dixie a chance over and over and over again. 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:54.800 Well previous to that, boy, we're jumping all around. Uh. 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:58.280 This designer and really, um, the man who were gonna 0:08:58.800 --> 0:09:01.160 either thank for the mall or blame for the mall, 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.640 depending on how you feel about malls is a gentleman 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.160 named Victor Gruin. Anyone want to correct me on that. 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:14.360 He's an Austrian architect and uh he designed Northlands Center 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:19.160 in Michigan. Is that correct? And it was? Northland Center 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:23.000 is in Southland, Michigan. Now looks so confusing, it's terrible. 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.240 It had a what was known in I said, anchor 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.400 store earlier. And this is what malls have. They have 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:31.760 these anchor stores which are still to this day mainly 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:36.280 department stores. And that anchor store was Hudson's Department Store, 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.280 but had about a hundred and ten other stores. But 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:40.720 it still wasn't a real mall mall because it wasn't 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:45.240 um as you'll see uh introverted correct, and it wasn't enclosed. 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:47.640 It was open air. Yeah, like you know when you 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:50.640 go to those outlet malls today where it's just all 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:54.360 you're walking around outside like an idiot. You know. This 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:57.160 is kind of like what what um Southfield was like 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:00.120 in Michigan. And that's what all shopping malls were like 0:10:00.200 --> 0:10:03.440 up to that point. They weren't closed. It was ninety 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:08.080 six in a Dina, Minnesota when the first enclosed mall 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.520 like we think of it today came about. Yeah, and 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:13.120 I actually looked up the previous Northland They did close 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:15.440 that in in the seventies and it finally shuddered for 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:17.560 good a couple of years ago, and I found this 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:20.760 website that said twelve weirdest things left behind in the 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:24.600 Northland Center And it wasn't that exciting, but there was 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:28.120 one the group to tension room, and I started thinking, 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:32.360 holy crap, malls have jails. And I looked it up 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:35.240 and someone said, uh. I went to Yahoo answers like 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.400 where else do you go to get the real truth? 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:43.520 And the number one voted up answer said, it's not 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:45.960 a real cell. It's just a small dark room with 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:47.880 no windows, in a chair and a camera in it 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:52.280 that you that you're not allowed to leave. It's like 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:57.439 and this one that's a department basically. This one had 0:10:57.520 --> 0:10:59.760 chains on this benches and I was like, no, that's 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.800 a al cell. So I saw that too. There was 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.360 like a target cart under a spotlight. I think. I 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:08.360 thought that was beautiful. Yeah, it was very arty, haunting. 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:15.000 I'm with you, lady, alright. So jumping back forward again 0:11:15.480 --> 0:11:26.360 to Minneapolis. Outside of Minneapolis, is it aDNA Southdale twenty 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:30.640 million bucks? The anchor store was Donaldson's and Dayton's, right, 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:36.959 who can forget Donaldson's? I did, okay, And Dayton's actually 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:39.560 commissioned this mall to be built because they were building 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:42.800 a new outpost in the suburbs of Minneapolis. And it 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:47.040 wasn't just by coincidence that Diana was ten miles away 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.680 from downtown Minneapolis because again this is nineteen fifty six, 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:53.800 so during the Cold War, and that's actually right outside 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:58.439 the eight mile blast radius of atomic bomb were it 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.040 to be dropped on Minneapolis, because of course that's what 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:05.480 the Rooskys were thinking, We're going from Minneapolis first. But 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.560 they've built a mall outside of the blast radius, so 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:14.280 I guess we'll just give up. So the original idea 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:16.800 for them all from Victor Gruen was to um, he 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:18.560 wanted to kind you know how they have these mixed 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.199 use centers. Now, he had this idea way back then 0:12:21.240 --> 0:12:23.920 and he wanted people to live there and uh kind 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:26.400 of congregate there. And we'll get a little more to 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.640 this later, but it sort of ended up just being 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.880 a shopping mall, to his disappointment. But he modeled it 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:35.440 on Northgate in Seattle and sort of the big idea 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:38.439 was that you go to these department stores because that's 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:40.360 what people were used to. But how do you get 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.280 them to these other stores? Was the big question, Right, 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.160 how do you get them shopping? Oh at the mall? Yeah, 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.680 like ice, they're there because people went to department store. 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:51.199 So if you put a department store out in the suburbs, 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:53.640 they'll go to the department store. They're like, I thought 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:55.160 I was supposed to take a left. Now I'm taking 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.640 the right. I'm at the department store. Who cares. Right. 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:00.360 The problem is is if you put Hunter and ten 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.760 other stores coming off of that department store, they just 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:07.120 go to the department store and leave. Not good, right 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:11.120 if you're one of these other stores. So what Northgate 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.959 figured out, and what is mind numbingly obvious but really works, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:20.240 is you just take this department store, put another department store, 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:22.800 and then put the shops in between them, and then 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.680 the people take a right, but they should take a left. 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:28.160 But they're fine, we're going to the department store. Oh 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.760 there's another department store. Well, i'll just walk past this. 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:33.840 Maybe i'll buy that. We'll buy a little bit of this. Sure, 0:13:33.880 --> 0:13:36.520 i'll take a feather boa And then they walk into 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:41.680 the other department store and and consumerism is saved. That's right. 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.360 It was revolutionary at the time. So he built he 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.000 was commissioned at least by Dayton's department store to build 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.080 this uh kind of advanced shopping center. Didn't call them 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.679 malls at the time. They called him advanced shopping centers 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:58.440 and that's so high tech. He actually at its space 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:00.400 for a competitor at the other end because he had 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:02.720 this idea like how to keep people there? And I 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.840 don't know how he talked Dayton's into it. Were like wait, wait, yeah, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:09.120 like hold on a second, no, no, we're paying you 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:11.760 to do this, and you want to put a competitor's 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.000 store in there. He's like, yeah, it'll work, trust me. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.319 So a few minutes ago I mentioned that it was introverted. 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:21.480 My uncle's still texting me, um, still looking for parking, 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:29.160 just circling the castro at this point. Uh so we 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:33.160 mentioned introverted and extroverted malls previous to this. We're outdoor, 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.760 and like we said, they were extroverted. So in other words, 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:39.800 you walk the perimeter and the stores faced the outside 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.640 and they had doors on them that you would walk 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.040 into if you wanted to shop. So he had this 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.440 idea like, wait, let's reverse all that. Let's turn it 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:52.280 all inside. Where you walk into this huge building. You 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:55.360 got these two stores on both ends, and there are 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:57.960 no doors. They might have a gate they lower at night, 0:14:58.360 --> 0:15:01.400 but it's just open, like pool will just walk through 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.600 this little concourse and all the stores are wide open 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.320 for everyone's air conditioned. It's heated, not at the same time, 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.960 at appropriate times, especially in a place like Minneapolis, it's 0:15:11.960 --> 0:15:14.160 probably a nice place to go in the wintertime. Yeah, 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:16.880 it was a big deal, and he introverted him. Is 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.480 what they're called right where they look in on themselves 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.040 and they're enclosed as well. So for the first time ever, 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.200 you could just walk around this beautiful place with trees 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:29.040 and he put like a twenty foot bird cage, and 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:32.320 there were goldfish ponds and all this stuff. And it 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:34.120 would be the middle of winter and you could walk 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.520 around in short sleeves and be like, I live in 0:15:36.520 --> 0:15:43.800 a Dina, not a dina. Uh. The other thing he 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:46.600 kind of nailed right out of the gate was um. 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.640 Previous to this, shopping malls were usually um or shopping 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.080 centers are on one floor and they were spread out 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.000 over this big, broad area and you had to enter 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:56.640 from the outside and walk around the cold and it 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.320 was all this one big, single level. And he said, 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.080 how about this, how about we stack it, because this 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:04.720 is a genius. Everyone put a store on one end, 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:06.560 put a store on the other end. You stack him 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:09.480 on top of each other. You put escalators on both sides. 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.400 You park in this side, you go into your department store, 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.400 you walk down on the first level to get to 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:17.920 the other department store, you get down the escalator, and 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:19.680 then you walk back on the other level to get 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.520 to your car, and you've seen every store and it 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:27.560 was genius. It was retailed genius, exactly pretty amazing. And 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:29.640 again we take this for granted now, but at the 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:31.720 time everyone's like, I never thought of that. Well, the 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:34.320 point that we take this for granted, like all of 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.840 this sounds brain dead. All of this came essentially from 0:16:37.840 --> 0:16:40.400 this one guy, this dude named Victor Grewitt, who was 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:45.000 kind of like a high artsy Fartsia society type from 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:48.600 Austria who fled the Nazis in and was a self 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:52.200 taught architect right who just started designing them all. And 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:57.480 he invented the mall, and he got basically everything right 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:00.520 right out of the gate, actually amazing. The MSS has 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.600 a really great quote about him, They say that, um, 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:08.879 he it was as if Orville and Wilbur Wright invented 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:14.159 not just manned flight but also tray tables and duty 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:18.600 free service. Not bad. The other thing he got right 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.240 right out of the gate was these uh low balconies. 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:23.159 You know, if you ever go into them all, you know, 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:25.800 if you're on that top floor, you can look down 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.040 and say, I gotta go into Chess King and get 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:31.000 some parachute pants. Or if you're down on the bottom floor, 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:32.800 you can look up and you can see, I gotta 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:35.160 go to Merry Go Around and check out the ladies. 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:40.440 Merry Go Around. Man, that takes me back. There will 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.399 be a bit of nostalgia peppered in here and there. Actually, 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:44.920 I don't even think I put Merry Go Around. I 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:49.960 put Camelot music is what I have in my Camelot 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.320 music everyone. And the joke I have was the Duran 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:58.480 Duran Kiss single. Oh my God, the Kiss single. It's 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.040 like I just ate a whole bud of member berries 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:05.480 or something of what member berries. I don't know. It's 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:15.200 a yeah, well three other people love that joke. So 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:19.000 more than seventy five thousand people. Seventy five thousand people 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:21.880 turned out on the grand opening day of South Dale Mall, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:27.520 and not just local press, Life Magazine, Time Magazine, UH, 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:31.680 New York Times, Business Week, Newsweek. They all came out 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.159 and said things like it's the splashiest center in the 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.399 US as a goldfish pond, birds art, ten acres of 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:40.760 stores and all under one Minnesota roof. It's a pleasure 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:43.960 dome with parking, said Time magazine. But one guy got 0:18:43.960 --> 0:18:48.480 it right. One guy said south Dale has become an 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.639 integral part of the American Way, and this is the 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.520 first mall. And some journalist points Witt and says, this 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:56.960 is how things are from now on. And this is 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.160 the page that is very hard for me to read because, 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:02.119 as you can see, I crumpled it up. Well, hold on, 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:03.880 so if we're going to release this, we should probably 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:06.520 take an a break. Huh oh yeah, sure, Okay, you're ready, 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:32.520 so we'll be right back. And we're back, all right. 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.560 I'm glad you thought of that. You guys get to 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:46.359 see how the sausage. So, as I was saying before 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:51.000 the break, I don't know if you can see it there, 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:52.760 but this is crumpled up and very hard to read. 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.720 Because Josh sent a new version and I in the 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:57.639 hotel room, I said, great, I printed it out. I 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.600 crumpled up the wrong one, m through it away and 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:02.520 right before I came, I was searching through the trash 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.520 and uh, here it is. It's not the bad actually, 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:10.200 so we're gonna entitle this next section the Golden Age 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:14.640 of the mall. That it wouldn't be a live show 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:18.040 if we didn't have a golden age of skyjacking, Golden 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:22.000 age of pr golden age of grave robbing, and now 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:24.280 the golden age of the mall. It was about to 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.240 say golden Age of Brodney Dangerfield, but it was all 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:30.479 golden age for that guy. So the mall had its 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.520 golden age. Between nineteen fifty six and two thousand, five 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:40.000 fifteen hundred malls America were built, possibly two thousand, possibly 0:20:40.119 --> 0:20:44.560 three thousand, what no one knows. They just stopped counting 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:48.159 pretty much. They're like, forget it will stay seven thousand. 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.600 Who cares? Million? A million malls were built between that 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:55.720 time in the US. So there's a woman named Lisa 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.360 Sharon who wrote a book called America The Mall Colon, 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.360 because you book has to have a colon if you're smart. 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.240 The cultural role of retail utopia. And she said, for 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:08.560 the children's seventies, eighties, and nineties, the shopping mall was 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:12.120 the place to be, space where we defined as our own. 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:13.879 The mall taught us how to fit in, how to 0:21:13.880 --> 0:21:18.320 be a consumer ultimately, how to be an American? Uh So, 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:20.000 who I mean, we don't You don't have to say 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:22.240 how old you are. But if if you grew up 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:24.640 in sort of the seventies and the eighties, you know 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.399 that the mall and into the nineties, of course, the 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:31.000 shopping mall was like it's different than it is today. 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.520 Like families used to go to the mall for the day. 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.480 You pick a Saturday, and you all pile in the car, 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.040 you go to the mall. You maybe go see a movie, 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:42.479 the kids would go to the arcade. Mom and dad 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.719 would do some shopping, and you would literally spend like 0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:49.119 six and eight hours as a family outing at a mall. Right, 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.320 pretty unbelievable to think about that. Now you gather around 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:55.480 the laptop and go onto Amazon dot com. Yeah, and 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:57.240 I'll sit around and stare at your phones and ignore it. 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.440 You say, yes, I would like to get into for 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.480 men to pickles. I could do some fermentation weights. Thanks 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:07.480 for suggesting that Amazon. Interesting. You just changed my life. 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:11.800 But it was a big deal. You would spend family 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:14.280 day at the mall. And uh in the eighties, it 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:18.320 was just it was a part of America as anything else. Um, 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.520 there were uh restaurants in the food court at the 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:24.240 mall that didn't exist outside of the mall. They were 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:30.439 born in the mall, like Cinnabon. Someone gasped, that's it, 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:34.600 we can go home now. We're ever working toward as 0:22:34.640 --> 0:22:38.640 a gasp from somebody. Orange Julius that was another one. 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:41.399 And Express was only in malls for a long time. 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:45.560 And apparently Sparrow. Everyone knows of Samorrow right. It was 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:49.119 so tied to malls that when Sabarrow filed for bankruptcy 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:54.080 in two fourteen, they cited unprecedented decline in mall traffic 0:22:54.440 --> 0:22:57.600 in their filing. There's like, no one likes the mall anymore. 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:05.280 We're tomorrow, We're dead. Word good Chick fil A too. 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:07.800 You guys don't have Chick fil A here, do you? Oh? 0:23:07.840 --> 0:23:14.800 You do? Long before we knew the chicken. This is 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:16.840 back when everyone just thought it was delicious and juicy 0:23:16.880 --> 0:23:23.240 and crispy, not filled with homophobia. But no, no, they've 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:28.040 they've since walked it back. So it's all fine. We're 0:23:28.080 --> 0:23:32.320 just not open on Sundays. Uh Chick fil A would 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:33.560 used to only be in the mall. I think there 0:23:33.600 --> 0:23:36.359 was one original chick fil A store in Georgia. I 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:38.800 think that's where it was born. But aside from that, 0:23:38.800 --> 0:23:41.680 it was only in the mall. And I remember, uh 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:44.360 going to the mall. Remember when malls used and they 0:23:44.359 --> 0:23:45.960 may still do this. I don't go to malls. There's 0:23:46.400 --> 0:23:50.159 on Amazon dot com. Um. Malls used to have events 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:52.920 like a world record Sunday, I Scream Sunday or something 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:55.119 to get people there. I went to Chick fil A 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.359 when I was about ten at North Lake Mall, which 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:01.280 was my mall, because they had the world's largest cup 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:06.040 of lemonade on a Saturday afternoon. My mom took me 0:24:06.680 --> 0:24:10.159 and I drank from that spigot among the thousands of 0:24:10.200 --> 0:24:14.320 other people, and it was not even that impressive, Like 0:24:14.359 --> 0:24:16.080 I thought it was giant, but now that I'm adult, 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:18.119 it was probably like eight ft high. Right now it 0:24:18.200 --> 0:24:20.240 was sixty four ounces. But they were just the first 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:23.200 ones to try, so whatever they did was the world's 0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:26.840 biggest cup of lemon eight. That was a mall event 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:29.160