Are You Being Served?
An article in Collectors Weekly about the mid-century re-invention of department stores and their role as anchors for the rise of air conditioned shopping malls. Lots of cool pics like this one, which are pure nostalgia fuel if you grew up in the era. Click for more.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 12:43
2 Comments:
I think for many large cities, you will see the mall almost disappear. For some, like ours here in Winston-Salem NC, the mall is more a regional mall and will hold on for a lot longer than some. Winston is surrounded by many small rural communities and most come to shop off the main shopping road and the mall is located right at the freeway exits. They were running into the same problem of teenagers hanging out and driving away business, but the mall passed a rule no teenagers in the mall unescorted after 6. This has helped to bring back the shoppers instead of just the stealers.
On a side note, I was reading a site that talks of "Dead Malls" and I saw that Pasadena Town Square was soon to be one of them. Another piece of my childhood going to the dustbin of history. I can remember spending many a Saturday there, and Im sure I was responsible for financing the arcade there a few times. Like many things, I believe it is a reflection of our declining lifestyle, soon we will be Europe with our old shops and dying population.
Ah, I'll commiserate with you there. PTS, especially the arcade, is indeed featured prominently in my pre-adult memories. Even more so the old Sears a bit further west on Southmore. Some of my very earliest visual memories (around the age of five or so) are centered around the interior of that old Sears store. Much of it looked much like that photo above. It catered to the very middle of the post-war middle class, and stores just like it were a fixture of more than one town in America during the mid 20th century. It was conservative, the staff polite and the clientele reserved. It reflected our culture and society.
On that site now stands a Wal-Mart, run by over-educated money men, selling cheap Chinese consumables to illegal Mexicans -- a.k.a, barbarians. Thus may we trace the path of our fall.
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