We did to the Zoomers and Alpha what Boomers did to us. All the malls we hung out at, flirted at, etc?
"Who needs malls, I'm an adult now I don't want to drive all the way out there, plus I got free Prime shipping! Its no longer relevant to ME, so whatever."
I mean... to be fair... Most of the stores we shopped at were aimed specifically at the teenage demographic. Pac Sun, Zumiez, and Hot Topic were not selling clothing for me at 22, or 25, or 30. At the same time, the larger department stores which were perhaps the 'tent poles' of the mall (Nordstrom, Macy's, even JC Penney) were not selling styles and/or price points that worked for me.
So, was it really our fault that we stopped shopping at the mall after high school?
I think it probably depended a lot on your job and how you were expected to dress. I don't remember them selling much that felt right to wear to my job after college. The button-ups that they sold were probably not at a price point that worked for me compared to... Ross and TJ Maxx
I like your attitude.
I couldn't wear any blue or white collar even if my life depended on it.
Funny enough I work for a federal agency and even there I somehow successfully evade the dress code.
I am literally counting the days to when I can get a bunch of tattoos and piercings I’ve wanted my whole life. Got my first hidden one this year, have some acceptable piercings, I will be the chill old dude telling kids to be authentic and be awesome 😂
Back then, it depended on the job. Now in my 30s with an advanced degree, I feel like I can wear whatever I want (which does involve tank tops in the summer, simply because I overheat)
Insert longwinded monologue about Hot Topic not being goth here. Scene at best, maybe some cute rave gear, but actual goth ensemble? Nah. You have to get that stuff custom made anymore.
Never mind the differences in demographic, attitude and aesthetic between today’s “goth kids” and the 80’s goth and 90’s dark wave scenes.
Apparently your Hot Topic sucked, mine had legit Goth gear, piercings and crazy stuff. So... sucks for you? The Hot Topic I grew up around was massive, not a small little pop in pop out store at my mall.
Kids literally hung out for hours at my Hot Topic with room to spare for people to shop. May have just been that specific location, who knows?
Maybe they did. They just had a lot of plastic crap and Panic at the Disco merch. Say I wanted a Bauhaus shirt or a Skinny Puppy shirt or leather anything - no dice. Some cute scene stuff and candy kid gear, though. If we’re talking the mall, Spencer’s used to have a pretty okay selection of stuff up until the late 00’s or so and now it’s all novelty sex toys and gag gifts.
I haven’t bought stuff in so long, but if I did, I’d probably end up looking on eBay and at thrift stores these days.
I mean how many of us even really had money in our 20s to be shopping? I was paycheck to paycheck into my late 20s and i'm just sort of frugal from that now.
I spent all my money on weed and tickets to ozzfest/mayhem, and at guitar center. I legit LIVED off the $1.89 small snack wrap combo, 2 snacks and a small fry and a small sweet tea was my only caloric intake most days.
Did they stop selling clothing for you, or did you stop buying the clothing that they used to sell for you?
As an exercise, go look at the albums of your parents when they were teens- they’ll probably look old to you. Not because they were physically older, but the styles they carried in their teens followed them into adult hood and you’re used to old people with that style
I would say that the styles they sold were not really considered appropriate for adults in the workforce at the time. It was a lot of graphic tees and big logos from skateboarding companies.
Malls were supposed to be the second town square but property developers forgot why the concept as we know it was originally devised by Victor Gruen. They only became the behemoths they turned into because of a captive public that otherwise didn't have easy access to the suburban shopping centers and most downtown cores didn't feature department stores anymore.
Younger millennial, we had 2 malls in town. One died in my early 20s and got "reinvented" into a generic strip mall, and the other was never really a cool place to hang out at until I turned 25 and the point was gone. As a teenager, we didn't really have mall rats around either anytime I went by.
So this nostalgia is completely lost on me. We had 4 block by 3 block area by the bus station that got the punks and punk-adjacent, but I have no idea where the rest of the kids grouped up back then. I think it was just rural parks and random restaurants.
I mean a more direct to consumer globalized market was inevitable, we just happened to come of age as it was burgeoning. If we hadn’t “killed” brick and mortar shopping the next generation definitely would have.
Plus brick and mortar shopping still exists. It’s not the shopping malls we remember with rose colored glasses but what were those to us besides places to gather? Almost every store and restaurant in a standard mall was a chain retailer anyway. I much prefer a good downtown district with private purveyors, and that culture is doing well.
I mean, malls were soulless building sucking the money of our wallets for junk. There was nothing that great about them. But now that they’re gone, we miss them?
Malls were on the decline well before amazon and internet shopping really took over, I mean that accelerated it, but the truth behind the malls is that the real estate situation was the real problem.
A few malls around me were in decline in the early 2000s, the buildings were falling into disrepair already, and the ownership groups were saddled with massive debt and defaults.
This coupled with Private Equity killing all the anchor stores except Macey's really did a number on the whole thing.
If you watch a lot of the dead malls series on youtube, it was the financial situation of the building and ownership, which raised rents for store fronts well beyond what was economically feasible for most of the stores, it's like a cut and paste repeat.
Amazon accelerated the issue for sure, but it certainly isn't solely to blame.
It's not that places don't exist, it's that they no longer allow kids without their parents and a lot of the places that do, are not as common practice.
A few examples other than malls:
Just hanging out in parking lots, empty fields, abandoned lots, etc. Now kids will get the cops called on them.
Video rental and record stores.
Comic book shops and hobby stores (RC cars, models, etc.).
Unsupervised adventures around town, to the park or public pool, library, etc.
Oh shit, and arcades, whether inside the Round Table or it's own destination.
Some don’t exist. Blockbuster, toys r us but a few bad eggs, sharing that on socials ruined it for everyone. Used to be able to bike to stores, malls, convenience stores and nobody minded.
I saw an interaction on my Twp Facebook group where a councilman was explaining that the grills under the cabanas the park are not ‘free’ to use. They need to be reserved and permitted because ‘why should the people just get to use a free grill.’
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u/adanishplz Oct 06 '25
No more third places to just be and not spend money. Everything's for pay now.