It has everything. It has:
- Giant 10 Commandments slab in the entryway
- A declaration of war against birds
- An old person's idea of the ideal zoomer store - a store just for taking selfies with random statues and backgrounds
- A restaurant that serves homemade soups and cobblers (soft food is good for dentures)
- A "WWII Museum" stocked by the guy down the street who has an alarming amount of Nazi war artifacts
A liminal space carved out of the carcass of 80s/90s consumerism. Some real twilight zone shit. A bizarre holographic projection of the past onto a more recent past onto the present.
I like the WWII museum where there's just a ton of Nazi and Axis powers flags (with one tiny USSR flag). Bet you a million dollars the person running that museum is fash and very possibly a neo-Nazi.
He says the German government allows its citizens to refer to German WWII veterans as murderers
the horror
I have a chud family member that’s hella into wwii shit but all he has is nazi shit. Curious
The Chapos did this bit when they came to Minnesota. They said the Mall of America would become a museum for retail consumption like you mentioned.
"Stefon, please just tell us about a nice place people can take their family this weekend."
"New York's Hottest Club is called 'Mall.' It's got..."
Shit, that was my first thought too. Literally came here to make a comment like that. The list just screams it.
They're a pretty good example of the efficiency of capitalism. Congress made some kind of loophole that allowed land developers to make tons of money building giant, wasteful, behemoths that both make commerce more difficult due to the renting thing and screwing over the dupes who bought the land/malls after they were developed. They literally only exist as a get quick rich scheme. All that land wasted. All those resources wasted. All the energy to heat/cool giant indoor plazas. Yet the mall was genuinely a social focal point for gen x and early millennials.
Now they're turning into this and it's some kind of fantastic cronenberg monster of failed capitalist economics and cultural malaise.
i like outdoor malls that are just a huge pedestrian space but indoor ones can get fucked.
me too but what I really want is a pedestrianized downtown with no cars
With those tiny trains you see at amusement parks for trips of a few blocks, and slick fuckin' bullet trains for travel across town
After the end of America all California Pizza Kitchens in the South/Midwest will be converted to tiny Nazi museums.
A restaurant that serves homemade soups and cobblers
Man, I always thought if I ever opened a restaurant I'd just make easy cozy food like that, and you just made me realize it would probably attract a bunch of old bastards
Parlor of Entertainment
Christ that's a bad name.
https://www.parlorofentertainment.com/
Christ that's a bad website.
Selfie Museum - Escape Room - Puzzle Rooms - Escape Pod - Murder Mysteries - Winter Wonders - Gameshow - Coming soon: Lewisville Parlor
Christ that's a lot of focuses which they won't do well.
GAMESHOW
Our newest puzzle room is now open!
Your transported to another dimension landing inside a galactic TV Show! Solve the puzzles while translating alien messages!
20 minutes and only $10 per person
Christ that's an insane price for an attraction they don't proofread the advertisement for.
We must preserve western civilisation.
That website is a fucking treasure.
Especially the gallery. They filled half of it with stock images and thought no one would notice. :harold-manic:
Also if you scroll down they say you can hire a magician for zoom calls. Can you imagine having join a mandatory "team building" zoom meeting at work and encountering a fucking magician?
I did magic back in college. Corporate events were the worst. They always want you to work some just-so story about teamwork or leadership or some HR nonsense into your act, some drunken manager always really wants you to do one of the bawdy tricks they saw you do at a bar with their mortified employee and gets belligerent when you refuse (not-as-obvious-as-you'd-think magician facts! we hire shills for those, that way they get to consent to being part of a bawdy trick in advance and it's a fun part of the show rather than sexual harassment), there's always the one guy who wanted to be a magician as a kid and doesn't understand why you won't sit down and talk shop with him while you're working, and everyone feels pressured to act like they're having fun because it's a work event so no one actually is. The pay is actually really good, I made $5k plus tips for a night's work once, but it's a miserable experience all around.
edit: accidentally a word
At least the zoom magician would be a disconnected experience. I feel like if I went to the real thing the owners would follow me around on the verge of tears asking if I'm still having fun. yes sir just solving this alien message that looks like pig latin spelling "$5 selfie museum- we worked so hard on it please".
Still one if the most prophetic song lyrics I've ever heard, from a song that came out during the mid-90s peak of malls:
The malls are the soon-to-be ghost towns. So long. Farewell. Goodbye.
- "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine", Modest Mouse
By the time I heard that song (in the mid 2000s, say), my area was already devoid of Orange Julius stores. Prophetic indeed
Although we live in 2020s, Boomers and the rest of American culture broadly still yearn for the safety and sanctity of the 90s while acting as if Victory day is everyday. America is going to face a cultural famine soon where all media is in a stasis of the 90s, and it going to be extra tubular!
-7DeadlyFetishes
Looks like the closed soft food stall used to be a Hot Dog on a Stick once upon a time
My local mall had quite a few closures (its incredibly dead now even the ancient long running mall restaurants closed cause of covid) and this one store opened that was The Green Lambo Guy that had... a green lambo in the store. Near as I could tell it was some kind of scam shit because the guy who ran it talked about get rich quick schemes and shit on facebook. It was a fucking weird time for like a year cause he also plastered ads all over the store and all it had was a green lambo.
Holy shit, I'd love to see that. It's some peak boomer shit
