Do you still regularly shop at the mall?

The major mall near me is like a ghost town. The anchor stores have long pulled out and most of the smaller stores are closed. There really is no reason to go there now.

I live ten minutes away from a great mall in CT. My daughter and her friends go there maybe once a month for shopping and eating. They like stores like Bath and Body Works and toy places. The mall just put in a new two story Barnes and Noble. It also has or is getting a Target. It has a JC Penney, which I am surprised has survived the times. The mall has a huge carousel which is popular with people of all ages.

When I worked and would need clothes for a fancy occasion, like a party, I would go to the mall to Lord and Taylor for clothes and to purchase gifts. Lord and Taylor is not there any longer. I rarely go to the mall now. I would like to go visit the new Barnes and Noble that’s there but I probably won’t be going any time soon.

We don’t have a mall where I live in The Villages, so the only time I went to the mall while living here was if I drove 45 minutes to an hour to go to one, which was about twice a year. I also went to the mall sometimes when I was traveling. In the last year we are also living in the Sarasota area, and there is a great mall right near where I have been staying. I have been to that mall probably 6 times in the last year.

I worked in malls for 25 years, but I was never a big shopper once I became an adult and stopped growing out of clothing quickly.

I think it is a shame some malls are having such a hard time, because it’s nice to be able to be inside, in air conditioning, and do whatever shopping you need to do. Plus, mall walking is really nice to have access to also. In Florida many of the malls are still very busy because of tourism.

I have a couple still quite alive malls near me. I would say that the only time I go to the mall to shop is around Xmas and I do find stuff there. There’s an advantage to seeing some things in person. Especially when shopping for kids.

More often, I’ll go to the mall to mall-walk when either it’s rainy or brutally hot or freezing cold. I will also sometimes use the food court because other restaurant areas get really busy on weekdays, but people seem to forget about the mall foodcourt when going to lunch from work.

Now, i will say, I don’t think your particular complaint seems any different than it ever was. Malls have ALWAYS been about 4/5ths women’s clothing because women buy and shop for clothing the way men in olde times used to hunt boar. It’s sport.

But every mall near me has at least a couple stores of interest in them. For example, there’s an actual bookstore in one of my malls. Like…physical books. Pages and pages of paper glued together. I have to explain because so many people aren’t familiar with the book concept anymore.

Another store has one of those permanent puzzles/games stores that has alot of weird and creative toy choices for when I’m shopping for the kids. I’ve got a GameStop in that mall, though I don’t use it. It gets even better when you consider the little island mini-stores. I hate those islands, but some of them have odd and interesting things that I hate to admit I’m tempted by at times.

I guess what I’m saying is, sure, it’s still 80% women’s clothes…but I feel like if anything, there’s MORE variety at this mall than the average mall when I was growing up.

I have seen the inside of a mall less than a handful of times in my whole life.

I do. It’s a nice family gathering occasion. And besides, sometimes there are things that we just need but don’t have time to wait for the delivery. Malls can provide instant products.

Maybe it’s just me, but I enjoy the bonding experience.

Probably 3 to 6 times a year. I love the old school shopping since I’m older.

I wish I could go on a traditional shopping spree again.

Remember walking around with a nice wad of cash and carrying bags around and enjoying the scene?

There’s one that I can think of that’s doing reasonably well still, but I avoid it whenever possible. The dickhead who designed our mall routed all of the outgoing traffic as yielding to incoming traffic, so it’s like a giant fucking Hotel California-esque Chinese finger-trap “You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave.” It took me 45 minutes to go from the parking lot to exit onto one of the adjacent roads one year.

I forgot to mention the mall where I worked as a teenager growing up closed down a year or two ago. It was a huge two story mall. The last ten years I kept hearing from friends it was too dangerous there. I had shopped in it a couple of times when I visited home during those ten years. I don’t know if the crime was really much worse or just reported more.

That’s another problem at the malls now, safety, or the perception that it’s less safe now. When I worked in Boca Raton, FL at the mall (affluent area in FL) in the 1990’s, we had plenty of shoplifting, sometimes massive steals of piles of clothing at once. There were gangs that would come in and pick up stacks of close and run out the door with them. One time they brought a tarp and pushed a whole bunch of clothes onto it and took it out the door. There was also a Russian credit card fraud ring.

There were a couple of muggings in the parking lot during my time working there, and a couple of people who I worked with had had their cars stolen at the mall.

There’s a nice mall nearby. I’ll go there for lunch and to walk around and browse at the three stores I like. Then, if I find something, I’ll just usually order it online.

It is very popular though and I’m shocked most of the major stores are still operating there.

Funny coincidence, I went to the mall yesterday and was actually going to ask this same question.

The city I live in has the largest mall in the state of Kentucky and it’s nice to visit in the middle of the week when it’s not busy. There’s a handful of movie/pop culture stores that I really like: FYE, Box Lunch, Hot Topic, Anime World, CM Games and Spencers. There’s also a local coffee shop set up in the food court which I always support.

I can’t remember the last time I was at a mall!!! After having my stroke, my closest mall is NOT handicapped friendly, teens took over so it became hazardous, & it became too much trouble for the privilege of being overcharged for anything I needed. Then some of the anchor stores put up a small independent building closer & so much easier to maneuver. Between those & Walmart, Amazon, I can find anything that I truly need!!!

A what?? Mall?

We go a few times a year, next city over, and like @Mimi, we always have a good time. They have a food court with specialty foods you can’t get elsewhere in town.
Our seniors do all their speed walking there as its a safe environment, too.

@JLeslie From time to time, there will be a FB post about an attempted abduction, some shady people who follow a child blah blah blah. People will comment that they’re not going to go to the mall now since it’s dangerous. Then the police (the real police from the city the mall is in) post that there are no reported incidents of this nature. When you search on FB, you’ll see the same story but with the town name changed, in other towns around the country. Someone wants to scare people to not go to the mall. Maybe it’s Russians, I have no idea or maybe it’s to further the idea that there are pedophiles looking for your kids. There’s some reason they’re spreading false stories specific to the malls.

@jca2 I don’t doubt that some of it is made up and to hype up the Republican talking points of pedophiles, sex trafficking, and violent crime. The things I mentioned happened in Bloomingdale’s or the parking lot when I worked there. I knew the people and/or I was witness to it.

I once had a Mexican tourist buy $1,200 in clothing, and he put the bags in the trunk of his rental car and went back in the mall to eat. When he went back to the car the bags were stolen. He rebought most of it, spent another $800 or so.

Unfortunately, the right wing stations get some ratings on reporting some of the real crime and then all of the news starts repeating it over and over again. The way TV media is now, one story about theft can be repeated 20 times in a day for 3 days on a national cable station, instead of a 3 minute spot on the 6:00 local news.

I haven’t been in a mall in more than 12 years. I never enjoyed walking aimlessly around a mall but did sometimes when I had small kids. There is not a single thing that calls me to a mall.

There’s still one existing mall in my region, and it’s high-end. It’s located about 1 mile/2 kms from where I live. I wouldn’t say that I shop there “regularly,” but I do so sometimes.

There’s a nice Nordstrom store, which I love; it’s my husband’s and my go-to spot for clothing and gifts.

I also like L’Occitane, although I had an irksome experience during my last visit. I was trying to pay for the $50 of merchandise that I’d chosen. The salesclerk kept grabbing other items, off the shelves, and attempting to hard-sell them to me. In many years as a customer of that shop, I’d never had that happen.

I never regularly shopped at a mall.

I’ve done it a bit less since before Covid, but I still sometimes do, about as infrequently.

Nope. I can walk around in one and not find a single thing I want or need.

I only go to the mall a few times a year. I take my time when I’m there. I walk around, people watch, look at all sorts of things. I think the death of the malls in this country is not a good thing for society. It removes more social contact from us.

@seawulf575 Agreed.