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Every mall I’ve ever visited (list)

Here is a list of every mall I have ever visited, that I can remember.

A few disclaimers:

  • I only listed enclosed malls (or ones that were enclosed at the time)
  • Some of the names have changed. I’m not going to go through every mall bought by Westfield and change stuff like Fox Hills to Westfield Culver City or whatever.
  • Some city names don’t match actual postal addresses. Like is Mayfair legally in Wauwatosa or Milwaukee? Whatever.
  • I’ve obviously forgotten exact names of places from childhood. I know I’ve been to some malls in St. Louis and Chicago that I’ve forgotten.
  • These are in no real order.
  • This isn’t an encyclopedia or a published peer-reviewed dissertation. It’s a list of memories. Don’t even think about giving me corrections.
  • § = dead or demalled

The list:

  1. Concord Mall, Elkhart, IN
  2. Pierre Moran Mall, Elkhart, IN §
  3. Scottsdale Mall, South Bend, IN §
  4. University Park Mall, Mishawaka, IN
  5. Glenbrook Square, Ft Wayne, IN
  6. College Mall, Bloomington, IN
  7. Southlake Mall, Merrilville, IN
  8. Markland Mall, Kokomo, IN
  9. Lafayette Square Mall, Indianapolis, IN
  10. Oak Ridge Mall, Oak Ridge, TN §
  11. Woodfield Mall Chicago, IL
  12. Northgate Mall, Seattle, WA §
  13. Factoria Mall, Factoria, WA
  14. Southcenter Mall, Seattle, WA
  15. Alderwood Mall, Lynwood, WA
  16. Totem Lake Mall, Kirkland, WA §
  17. Bellevue Square, Bellevue, WA
  18. Columbus City Center, Columbus, OH §
  19. Three Rivers Mall, Kelso, WA
  20. Triangle Mall, Longview, WA §
  21. Lloyd Center Mall, Portland, WA
  22. Manhattan Mall, New York, NY
  23. Newport Center, Jersey City, NJ
  24. Staten Island Mall, Staten Island, NY
  25. The Mall at the World Trade Center, New York, NY §
  26. Queens Center, Queens, NY
  27. Short Hills Mall, Short Hills, NJ
  28. Hudson Valley Mall, Kingston, NY
  29. Pyramid Mall, Ithaca, NY
  30. Roosevelt Field Mall, Long Island, NY
  31. Eaton Centre, Toronto, Ontario
  32. Ala Moana Mall, Honolulu, HI
  33. Lahaina Cannery Mall, Lahaina, HI
  34. Cherry Creek Mall, Denver, CO
  35. Park Meadows Mall, Denver, CO
  36. Fox Hills Mall, Culver City, CA
  37. Beverly Center, Los Angeles, CA
  38. Tanforan Mall, San Bruno, CA
  39. Serramonte Mall, Daly City, CA
  40. Westfield San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
  41. University Mall, Davis, CA
  42. Hilltop Mall, Richmond, CA §
  43. Northgate Mall, San Rafael, CA
  44. Stoneridge Mall, Pleasanton, CA
  45. Vallco Mall, Cupertino, CA §
  46. Sun Valley Mall, Concord, CA
  47. Bayfair Mall, San Leandro CA
  48. Southland Mall, Hayward, CA
  49. Newpark Mall, Newark, CA
  50. Eastridge Mall, San Jose, CA
  51. Great Mall, Milpitas, CA
  52. Sears Mall, Anchorage, AK
  53. Fifth ave mall, Anchorage, AK
  54. Meadowood mall, Reno, NV
  55. Reno town mall, Reno, NV
  56. Fashion show Las Vegas, NV
  57. Boulevard mall Las Vegas, NV
  58. Meadows mall Las Vegas, NV
  59. Galleria at sunset, Henderson, NV
  60. Grand Canal Shops at the Venetian, Las Vegas, NV
  61. Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas, NV
  62. Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas, NV
  63. The Shops at Crystals, Las Vegas, NV
  64. Mayfair mall, Milwaukee, WI
  65. Bayshore, Milwaukee, WI
  66. Southridge, Milwaukee, WI
  67. Grand Avenue, Milwaukee, WI §
  68. Galleria at Redondo Beach, Redondo Beach, CA
  69. Galleria at Sherman Oaks, Sherman Oaks, CA §
  70. Tyrone Square, St Petersburg, FL
  71. Tampa Bay Center, Tampa, FL
  72. Regency Mall, Racine, WI
  73. MyZeil mall, Frankfurt, Germany
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general

Back to Earth

I guess I’ve been back from LA for almost a week, but haven’t done the full stupid trip report, as usual. Not a lot to report; I tried to get out and do a few things, but I wanted to avoid three particular activities: eating ten times the normal amount; doing tourist trap stuff; and catching the plague. I gained a pound and a half, but tested negative on Friday, so partial success, I guess.

Let me try to reconstruct a bulleted list of stuff:

  • I forgot to mention, but the new gear for the Random Life project is a DJI Osmo Action camera, which is essentially a GoPro competitor. It’s about 2×3 inches, an inch thick, with screens on the front and back, waterproof (allegedly), and takes both still or a variety of video formats, up to 4K. It is extremely tiny. In practice, I found that it’s great for dash cam footage or tripod use, and would be good if I did any sport more extreme than walking. When I’m just randomly walking, I found that I would never hold the thing perfectly straight, which is problematic. Wind noise can be an issue too, I guess. Anyway, I brought that, the Canon EOS M mirrorless, and my DSLR, which never left the case. The mirrorless was great for quick shots, but horrible for video. Oh, I had an analog point-and-shoot, the Vivitar, but only shot maybe a roll of film.
  • Went walking at Dockweiler beach one morning. I used to live just east of here, and would walk to the beach a lot during the day. It was pretty empty but a lot more people than I expected. I got there just as the marine layer was not yet clear, and there was a slight haze over the air. It’s so peaceful on that beach, and I wish I still lived nearby so I could walk it every day in the morning.
  • Went to Santa Monica and saw the Space Shuttle Endeavour. There’s some other great stuff to see at the science center, like they have a Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsule, and the only surviving F-20 prototype. But I hustled past everything to get to the Shuttle. It did not disappoint. I was such a huge space nerd as a kid, and the Shuttles were such a big part of my childhood, it honestly made me emotional just to be standing right next to one. It’s also amazing to look at one up close, because from a distance, they look like an airplane with a solid metal body painted white and black, but when you’re a few feet away, you see that it’s made of 21,000 tiles, which look like a reptile’s skin. I took many laps and many pictures around the thing, and the museum was almost dead on a Monday morning, which made it even more awesome.
  • I mentioned the malls in the last post, and didn’t go to any others. Fox Hills (aka Westfield Culver City) was too new and bland with the latest refresh; Galleria Redondo Beach had some good bones to it, but looked like it was in the slow slide;  Galleria Sherman Oaks is now an office building (no more Fast Times); FIGat7th is not a mall at all, just a semicircle of stores downtown, with insane parking fees.
  • Always fun to go back to Ralph’s, and even more weird when it’s the one I used to shop at every week. I forgot that I still have a Ralph’s fob on my keychain. Also forgot that their parent company is one of our biggest customers at the day job.
  • If you were looking to buy houses in LA in 2008 and still remember the prices, do not go window-shopping on Zillow. Just don’t do it.
  • The Promenade in Santa Monica was somewhat depressing to me. I think I’m used to going on a Saturday afternoon in the summer when it’s busy and there isn’t a pandemic going on, so going on a Wednesday morning was a drag.
  • I’ve never been to the Getty, so I drove up there and checked it out. I was more interested in the buildings and grounds, even more than the art. You park at the bottom of a giant hill and take this tram that snakes upward for a mile, but you can also hoof it, which was a nice break. Lots of great architecture, and amazing views of the city from up there.
  • Went to an air museum in Torrance, at Zamperini Field. I primarily went because they have two rare prototype planes there: Northrop’s YF-17 and YF-23, which are the planes that lost out to the F-16 and F-22 in bake-off competitions. Unfortunately, both are locked down in a part of the field you can’t get to right now. But they had a lot of other great stuff on display, and were very nice and helpful there.
  • I ate a lot, ate too much junk. Went to Shake Shack twice. In-N-Out once. Went to Carl’s Jr. once to try their chicken sandwich and only got halfway through it before I had to pitch it, because it tasted like it had a cup of mayo on it. I went to Veggie Grill I think three times, because it was a 30-minute walk each way, and I needed the walk. I walked 30 miles over the course of the week.
  • Didn’t get a lot of writing done. Got some video editing finished. Some reading. I realized how hard it is for me to relax in general. But at least I didn’t check work email.
  • Trip back was pretty easy, and ran into no traffic on the way out of LA. Two traffic jams in the middle of the state, so there’s that.
  • No pictures posted, maybe I’ll get to it. Videos have been showing up or are scheduled on Random Life, so like, share, subscribe, etc.
Categories
general

The Second

So, change of plans on the Seattle thing. I am not ready to fly. And I’m not ready to see people, or see any of the various ghosts of Seattle that would bother me. And then there’s Delta. So, about two days before leaving, I canceled everything, backed out, and then needed to correct course. I wanted a place to hide out for a week, somewhere that wasn’t in the bay area, wasn’t Las Vegas, and was somewhat within driving distance.

So, I’ve been in Los Angeles since Saturday. More specifically, I’m staying in a residency suite in El Segundo, which is about five miles from my 2008 apartment. I figured the weather was nicer here, it was all easy to drive, and maybe I’d see some malls and get some writing done. And of course that hasn’t happened.

* * *

First, the drive down took about six hours and change, a pretty much straight shot through the middle of the state on I-5. The longest trip I’ve taken in this car was maybe two hours. I did the SF-LA round trip a couple of times in 08 with the Yaris, but it’s been a while. And it’s been a while since I’ve done any long-distance driving. (I have had four-hour drives home from work, but that was about 38 miles.)

The middle of the state is a strange world, and reminds me of what’s left on the surface of the planet in those Asimov robot books where everyone lives underground. It’s factory farms in every direction, broken up by stretches of nothingness. It would be the perfect long run to zone out on some true crime podcast, except it’s two lanes each way, and a constant war between people going way too fast in the left lane and way too slow in the right. There was also this strange haze in the air for the entire trip. At first I thought it was just morning fog, but after I got further south, I could tell it was some combination of agricultural dust and the debris from the fires up north, getting sucked into the wind tunnel of the central valley.

I stopped about two or three hours in for lunch, at this weird little non-town that was nothing but four mega-stations on each corner of an intersection, each with a fast food place grafted onto it. A bit further out, an older set of fast food joints lay abandoned, either arsoned or destroyed by the elements and vandals, probably stripped of any metal. I got out of my car at the gas station and realized the temperature had risen maybe forty degrees since I left the house. There was no sun overhead, just an amber-brown haze of dust.Too bad John Steinbeck’s not around to write a sequel.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. I had to stop maybe 50 miles out from the hotel for a tank of gas. Not only had I forgotten to turn on Eco mode, which cut my range maybe thirty miles, but I didn’t remember that the last bit was a rough uphill climb through the pass, going from sea level to about 4400 feet and back down. I went to a station right by Magic Mountain, which reminds me of my very first trip to LA in 1997. No restroom there, so I went to a McDonald’s, After using the facilities there, I ordered a drink and some fries that I probably should not have eaten anyway. After ten or fifteen minutes of waiting for a simple order, I said fuck it and left, $3.14 off into the universe.

Once I got back on the highway, it was pretty much bumper-to-bumper for the next fifty miles. Welcome to Los Angeles.

* * *

Somewhere on the 405, Google Maps started complaining about the traffic and routing me onto various parallel surface roads, which I usually ignore, but this time I went for it and dumped off on Sawtelle, maybe around West Los Angeles. And then it became rows of tall palm trees and tournefortia, rows of rancher houses and stucco cottages. And the first reaction was that I really, really missed LA.

And then it was weird, because I’d shut off the GPS, and was just driving, and I realized that Sawtelle runs into Culver, and Culver runs out almost to the ocean, and hits Pershing, and Pershing goes straight to my old apartment. And keep going past LAX, and hang a left on Imperial Highway, then a right on Sepulveda, and you’re at the strip of stores like my old Walgreen’s and my old Ralph’s. And hang a left a block from that, and there’s my hotel. The entire week has been half-remembered connections like that, strange deja-vu moments of remembering driving on a road a dozen years ago, and that it connects with another road and goes to another neighborhood I dimly remember.

* * *

I had almost zero plans coming down here, except that I brought all of my photo gear, thinking I’d take pictures, and of course I haven’t. I thought about going to every mall I could find, and made a list of maybe a dozen of them. But every mall has been bought by Westfield and looks identical. I went to what was Fox Hills Mall, and it feels like it was 100% changed from when I was last there in 2008. Went to the Galleria in Redondo Beach, and it has the bones of a great mall — three stories, giant domed ceilings, plenty of walkways — but it’s largely abandoned. When your Nordstrom leaves and the anchor becomes a dinosaur museum that doesn’t have actual dinosaurs in it, good luck. Today I drove out to Sherman Oaks to look at the galleria that was in Fast Times and Valley Girl, and I should have read the wikipedia before I left, because it was redeveloped into office space.

That’s been the depressing theme here. Everything has been redeveloped. I only lived here for about six months of 2008, so my set of reference points is very small. But it seems like every place I ate or shopped or hung out has been completely nuked. Any strip mall with a large parking lot has been blown up and replaced by a 500-unit apartment building with a Trader Joe’s on the ground floor. I was in the middle of a weight loss thing when I was in LA, and only ate at two places: Koo Koo Roo chicken and Souplantation. Both of those chains are bankrupt. The tiki-themed Fry’s Electronics down in Manhattan Beach went bankrupt. The Panera in Marina del Rey is now a physical therapy place. It’s understandable that chains flip and new things come in, but there’s an insane amount of redevelopment. I guess that’s better than closing stuff down and letting it sit vacant for tax purposes, though.

* * *

Anyway. There’s probably more to write about here, but I have to get stuff done. I have been mostly hiding out in this hotel room, because it has a kitchen and an office, and I can get from the room to my car without passing through a common area. There’s a staircase downstairs, and nobody here uses stairs. Other than that, it’s mostly been driving around randomly. It’s weird to have my own car, And LA is driveable, but not parkable. I went to the new “mall” at Figueroa, which turned out to not be a mall, but three anchors butted together with a piss-poor food court. I turned around and left, and that was $21 in parking. Went to the beach Sunday morning for an early morning walk: $13. An hour at the science center: $20. And the hotel is charging me $15 a day to park, too.

I’ll be here until Saturday. I should probably hit the book stores tomorrow, since I don’t have a weight restriction on my return luggage.

Oh, the title. El Segundo is Spanish for “The Second.” It’s where Chevron’s second refinery is.

Also, still working on this: Random Life. Check it.