Gen X-ers REJOICE! We've taken back the malls!

Can you name this movie mall?

Hello and happy Saturday to all!

Ah, the mall.   A place where teens in the 80's and early 90's would go on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon to hang out. We'd meet friends there, we'd maybe get an Orange Julius, and we'd head over to Sam Goody or Suncoast Video to check out the latest in music or movies.

Then we grew up. And had families.  And it was suddenly sort of a pain in the rump to go to the mall, what with the stroller and the diaper bag and having no money because of what was in the stroller.  We had full time jobs and we were too tired to go anywhere on a Friday and Saturdays were taken up with soccer games for our kids or some kind of volunteering at our kids' schools.

So we stopped going to the mall. And Sam Goody and Suncoast Video went out of business.  

Flash forward to 2020.  Many of us haven't make a point of hitting the malls in a long time.  The kids are grown up, they can take themselves shopping.  Target has everything a person could possibly need and whatever Target doesn't have, Amazon does, and frankly, shopping in our sweats is awesome.  We meet our friends at coffee shops and bistros now, when we have the time or the energy to leave the house.  Netflix and all of her many streaming service sisters have replaced the need to go anywhere to see a movie.  

Oh, and our musical tastes are set.  Anything new pretty much sounds like the devil's noise. 

Also, malls are full of kids, right?  We are in the process of getting ours out of the house, why on earth would we want to go where there are more noisy kids who dress weird and have no respect for their elders? 

Sears and Boston Store went out of business.

My point here is that last night Hubby and I had a minor case of cabin fever, so we did something we haven't done in a really long time. We went to the mall on a Friday night.  I gotta be honest, I don't think we've done that since we were in college, prior to the dawn of the 90's.

Not that we haven't been to a mall since 1989, we just really haven't gone to hang out and see what's going on.

Gen X-ers, I'm here to tell you, it's a real revelation! We've taken the mall back!  

Well, not the outside of the mall. If your local shopping mall is anything like ours, it's currently going through something of a renovation.  The outside of the mall is a ring of new eateries, gastropubs, and wine bars, book ended by state of the art movie theaters with their own bars and restaurants, and entertainment venues. We have something called WHIRLEYBALL, which we watched last night.  It's like bumper cars and la crosse had a baby and the younger generation is raising it now.

No, what I'm talking about is Generation X is taking back the INSIDE of the mall!  

There we were, on a Friday night, walking laps around the mall because it was cold outside and the only other people in the place were...

More Gen-Xers!

What once was the mothership for trendy teens has become the quiet locale for a cheap date night for the 40 and up crowd.  We got coffee at our local coffee shop and then headed over to the mall to get a little exercise and talk to each other.  AND WE WERE NOT THE ONLY ONES.

Hubby noticed it first.  We walked in through the back door of the mall (The back door? Yes, we came in through the doors where the storefronts are empty no one's built a restaurant yet.  Very dark, but there was a ton of parking.)  We walked in to the barely lit end of the mall and he pointed out immediately that we were not the only middle aged couple carrying coffees.

The longer we looked, the harder we were laughing.  The storefronts that were actually open (and the mall closest to us is literally dying from the inside. The outside is fine, but the actual inside of the mall is dying.) were empty of customers (Except 5 Guys burgers, which was packed with people.) but the mall area was nicely full of people.  

Tell your friends to meet you at the mall!

I must add, these were people who had little or no intention of actually buying anything.  We were there to have a nice evening with our significant others and, having spent a lifetime together, we had our coffees and each other. We didn't need movies, we didn't need more stuff, we didn't need whirleyball. 

It. Was. Awesome!

Now, did we actually stop in a store and buy something?  Well, sure. I mean, we stopped at
Barnes and Noble and it's a rare trip there that we don't find something. Sure enough, Hubby found a Hootie and Blowfish album (on vinyl...how throwback is that?) and a healthy eating cookbook (I like his optimism) so we got that.

Then we came home, fired up a couple of episode of "Man in the High Castle" on Amazon (we're in season 4 and I'm pretty sure I still have no idea what's happening) and tossed a frozen pizza in the over.  

Dinner and a movie? Not anymore. Mall walking and streaming movies.  

And, with no kids hanging around to bother us, it's PERFECTION!