We visited one this weekend just a few days before Christmas. Massive parking garages, 3 floors. Almost completely empty. Food court had only 2 places open. Only about 1 in 5 store fronts had anything open. So few people there it almost felt like it was closed and we weren’t supposed to be there. Super weird.

The one near me died and was converted into a community college so at least a positive came out of it

Now, mostly undecorated, half the stores closed, and a few old people roaming about. Almost liminal.

In the US...If they're one of the ones that have managed to survive... Not much different, honestly. Lots of them are closing or are being piecemeal converted to other businesses, however. So much so that it's a thing we, as a country, point at.

Pretty much the same in the part of the country I live in. Malls never went away here.

Malls all died out 10-20 years ago with the advent of online shopping. Malls were all at the outskirts of town and their rents kept driving higher and higher, running small local businesses out. As online shopping gained traction, people decided they would rather wait a few days for what they wanted rather than deal with the hassle of driving 45 minutes to the mall for a few things.

My local mall got leveled and replaced with a giant Amazon distribution center. So now we have two anecdotal stories about malls.

Some malls died out, but the really big ones that are placed somewhere smart are still plenty busy. The death of the big department stores is what did a lot of the damage.

I moved from a more populated area to one that is...not. I had a thriving mall, current city's mall is almost abandoned.

Same. All of my local malls were packed during the holidays. Malls never died off; the only ones that shut down were the old and outdated ones that never renovated, and thus failed to attract businesses that customers actually want to shop at. The malls that kept up with the times are still thriving.

The difference is that cities used to have numerous malls dotting the suburbs. Now they might have one or two, usually in the rich part of town, filled with fancy stores.

The local mall, with a couple of anchor department stores, a bunch of casual clothing stores, a bookstore, a record store, a movie theater and a food court, have been replaced by sprawling shopping centers with no sense of community.

I'm not sure about that.

The style of the gap logo on the storefront suggests this should be no later than 1988, according to the logo history on wikipedia

Kinda weird because to me here in 2025, their original rounded logo seems way more modern than their actual 90s one, but that's just logo design fashion over time, I guess!

Remember "allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery"? Because that was the norm back on the day.

I would say we’re no happier with the increased accessibility to “ stuff “. Sure there’s a threshold between abject poverty/starvation and Bezos’ daily plastic Chinese landfill filler delivery, but having the world at our fingertips may have done more harm than good.

No the blues brothers trashed the place and it was never the same

Using a stick from the level below or a scissor lift.