Waiting for the cinema to open,
we walk through the connecting mall.
Once a bustling indoor market
with frustrated mothers managing
weary children,
the now vacent walkways
and darkened doorways
grim reminders of the isolation
of Co-vid.
The toystore is empty of animated animals,
Payless shoes is shoeless,
clothing stores undressed,
bargain books,
the dollar store, offer no deals.
Instead,
there is the arrival of a consignment shop
hidden in half darkness.
And, in the mall's center,
proclaiming salvation
in several former retail shops,
looking desperate and
extravagant, is a new age church.
Right in the closed down mall.
Sitting there. A church.
A new service to worship
now that the retail goods
have disappeared.
We saw no church goers.
But postscript.,
guess how many
in the theater?
Yes. Just us.
Share
Print
Save
Follow
I don't know about malls. But my partner tells me that, while marginal businesses have failed, business is back and booming here in Houston. Like diseases remove the weak people like me (I just survived a week of Omicron), their economic affects have and can show us the weakness in our economy, like our dependence on foreign production of goods rather than producing locally. Single source producers shut down for various reasons unrelated to demand.
Your our description matches something that has been happening here in Houston for a long time based on white flight and upward mobility. Suburban sprawl has resulted in top malls turning into what you describe. For example, Sharpstown Mall was the first mall in the United States to be air-conditioned in 1961. Mr. Sharp even gave homes to Apollo astronauts in his planned community. When I arrived in 1981, Sharpstown was thriving. But by 2000 it was as you described. Morphed a couple of times by redevelopment, it is still there. But like several other malls, not for shopping and entertainment anymore.
Ron