Stupid Mall Names and a Sad Reality

So for all you newcomers to the blog, you must think that all I talk about is RuPaul’s Drag Race. And while that may be true while Season 5 is on the air, there’s other things I like discussing, including some really mundane crap that enters my mind that makes me question humanity. Like this:

Shopping malls. Due to the employment I’ve been finding myself in the past few years, shopping malls are a big part of my life, and I find myself in them almost daily. Add on the fact that New Jersey has the most malls of any state and probably any region of the world, and it creates a complicated love/hate relationship between us.

Malls are an interesting entity in the building world. One giant building that holds dozens of smaller buildings inside it, mostly dedicated to either shopping (mostly clothing) or food (but rarely grocery). These malls design themselves to be community centers where regional and out-of-towners come together with a common interest of consumption. Even though all malls serve the same purpose, and many include the same stores/restaurants inside them, not every mall is created equal. (Unless they’re part of the Simon Property Group, which has a notorious habit of creating McMalls.) To further expand each mall’s uniqueness they are given (usually pompous) names. Let’s discuss some of the more memorable names I’ve come across in my research.

These malls just follow what Simon Says. Makes sense, actually.

To start, not every mall is called a ‘mall’. Malls in New Jersey are generally referred to as such, and as we move into upstate New York, Pennsylvania and beyond we come across more regional adjectives. Let’s begin with ‘Galleria’, such as the Poughkeepsie Galleria (NY). What a word if I ever heard one. No, we’re not going to the mall, we’re going to the galleria! What, like it’s a gallery of stores but instead of calling that we’re going to make it sound fake-foreign? Come on, now. It doesn’t even make sense, since things in a gallery are things that are seen but not touched, experienced, and especially not walked into.

Don't mistake it for the Louvre!

A relative of the galleria is the ‘collection’, as in the Somerset Collection (MI). Now we’re not even referring to it as a building! At least a galleria implies it’s an actual place. Collection… collection of what? Usually the super-upscale wannabes that call their malls Collections also refer to their stores as boutiques, just to up the ante. I’ve even heard of stores referred to as concepts, as in they’re trying to figure out if the store is even necessary. It especially backfires if the mall is dead or dying, because then we are left with an empty collection of crap.

The only thing this is a 'collection' of is natural sunlight.

A lesser-known deviation is the ‘commons’, most popularly the Bridgewater Commons (NJ). What exactly is a commons? I mean, galleria we could figure out, and a collection is self-explanatory, but commons is one of those words where you think you know what it means until you try to define it. Oh well. I’ve come across this adjective too infrequently to consider it a true part of the mall name epidemic.

Apparently this is a 'commons'.

Then there’s the malls that call themselves ‘The Mall at ____’, as in this is the one and only. That may be true but it still ranks high on the arrogance scale. Take for example The Mall at Short Hills (NJ). It’s actually in the mall’s style guide that it is not to be referred to as the Short Hills Mall, even though that’s exactly what it is (and what everyone calls it anyway). Seriously what is the point of the wordplay? If they wanted it to stand out from the crowd, then they should have given it a badass name, like The Mall at the Source (NY) or The Mall at Millennia (FL). Thank god they didn’t cave and call it The Short Hills Galleria, or The Collection At Short Hills, because that would have rocketed the snobbery into the stratosphere.

The Mall at Short Hills. Don't you DARE call it by any other name.

So although malls go by a million different names and clarifications, it mustn’t be ignored that malls themselves are a dying breed. Year after year malls are being de-malled and turned into generic big-box plazas. What once held fountain displays, neon signage and about a hundred different stores are now gutted out and turned into a single Walmart or Best Buy. Even sadder are the malls that are held up in legal limbo and are literally rotting into the ground. Picture if you will:

Fashion Center (NJ)'s directory before it was de-malled. How did the graphic designer keep a straight face when making this?! You probably can't read it, but that's ok because no one was there to read it in the first place.

There stands a mall that everyone used to go to back in the 80s and 90s. It was *the* place to be. After years of decline it now stands with no marked entrance. The parking lot is slowly being overtaken by weeds and where the lines are is anyone’s guess. The anchors lay vacant, as the mall’s mother Macy and father Sears have long since abandoned it (along with its Aunt JC Penney and Uncle Boscov). The interior is looking as drab as the exterior, with half-lit chandeliers barely making up for the oxidized skylights. It has about 5 or 6 stores still open inside them that haven’t been evicted yet, and it’s a wonder how they stay in business. Usually they consist of a shoe store (Payless-style), a hair salon (privately owned and barely operated), a really bad pizzeria (where pizza is microwaved to order), a comic book shop (overweight owner and all), and a democratic party headquarters that still has a banner saying ‘VOTE DUKAKIS’ in the window. In between these stores are empty spaces bearing the labelscars of Caldor, Waldenbooks, KB Toys, and a dentist that was sued for malpractice. Besides the 10 total employees of the existing stores, the only other people in the mall are 80-year-old mall walkers, one-off shoppers who are in denial, dead mall enthusiasts (they do exist), and some guy sitting on a bench who can’t remember how he got there.

Some random dead mall. And look behind the column, a shoe store. Told you.

As much as I make fun of malls (and will continue to), a part of me has always loved them. Stories like the made-up one above are becoming all too common, and it breaks my heart when I read about how grand these gallerias, collections, commons and ‘The Mall’s used to be. Do us all a favor, shop at a mall today. Take in the climate control, dated architecture and fake plants, pick up a few knickknacks (if anything to help bolster the economy), and top it all off with a Cinnabon. For some reason, you’ll be glad you did.