Rust Belt Mallwalker

  The owner of Johnstown Galleria mall in Johnstown, Pennsylvania is mad and ready to go to court, following the sale of the former Sears to a storage company. Johnstown Galleria is a two story mall, which according to their website, has typical mall staples (Hot Topic, GNC, Claire’s, Auntie Anne’s), but is otherwise populated by local businesses.  It is owned by Leo Karruli, who is a longtime business owner in the area. In 2022, he purchased the mall at auction for $3m, pledging to bring the mall back from death. , From what I’ve read, he’s doing just that. He took an entire dead food court and repopulated it with local businesses, and it looks to be working well in the interior of the mall, too. The mall has very few empty spaces. I have yet to visit Johnstown Galleria, but it is on my map of places to visit, especially after reading about all of the revitalization and seeing the fountain in Ray Out There's Johnstown walk-through (hot tip: rayoutthere is also a great IG fo...

 I love this ad for Rolling Acres Mall, my childhood mall located in Akron, Ohio. The ad is for the expansion of the mall, which included the bubble elevator. 

Sherman Oaks Galleria starring as Ridgemont Mall in Fast Times at Ridgemont High   Welcome to a mall and a movie, with me, flannelkimono! When I wasn't hanging out at the mall, I was definitely at home, watching movies. My family always prioritized having cable over everything, so we always had cable with HBO and Showtime. Ridiculous, right? But I'm thankful for that digital babysitter. Now I'm a wealth of ridiculous pop culture nuggets! Fast Times at Ridgemont High was absolutely one of the movies I watched repeatedly on HBO. I still wear the same black and white checkered Vans slip-ons that Jeff Spicoli wore in the movie. And the carrot scene from that movie was absolutely in my head the first time I ever gave someone a blowjob. Ah, youth. Like many of the movies of this time, the mall acted as a central character; it was where all of the stories and the people came together. It could absolutely be argued that this movie is the one that planted the idea in my head that t...

  Monroeville Mall: the Zombiest mall of all. Welcome back to a mall and a movie, with me, flannelkimono! Today's movie is a personal favorite. Why, do you ask? I was in this movie! <3 I love Kevin Smith's movies. Many, many years ago, longtime homie and pop culture vulture SuperNoBueno used to work at a video store that I frequented. His staff picks were always solid, and that was how I saw Clerks for the first time. Clerks blew my mind, because I was at the time toiling away in thankless retail jobs, and I couldn't believe how many "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" moments I would have at work. We also fucked off supremely at said retail jobs, just like in Clerks, although  nobody ever fucked a dead guy on the clock that I know of. I was very active on the View Askew boards, because when I like something, I REALLY like it and want to know everything about it. The community of fans at the time were great, and I have always loved and appreciated ho...

  Welcome to the Mall Mixtape! This is where we will discuss all of those songs and videos that take us to the mall. The obvious starting point (at least for me, a Gen-Xer), has to be 80's pop darling Tiffany and her breakout hit, 1987's "I Think We're Alone Now". This was a cover of a song first made popular by Tommy James and the Shondells in 1967. But, by the consumer driven mall frenzy of the late eighties, nobody remembered that.  First, here's the video. Watch it in all of it's mid eighties shot on VHS glory.    My MST3K-style notes: Tiffany was killing it with those hand flourishes.  I identify as the girl with the big hair who is singing every single word (you'll see her). The video is pure chaos. She goes from sexy train hobo to mall performing teen queen to dancing on a boardwalk in very fast succession. Also, none of her outdoor looks are actually seasonally appropriate. Why is she wearing shoulder pads at the beach like a divorcee at h...

  Photo from the Swatch collection of skateboarder Jürgen Blümlein. Found online. Swatch watches were all the rage in the late eighties. And it felt like they came out of nowhere, too. It's like one day, you're reading a pile of magazines, and in every one of them- from Sassy to Thrasher-there was an ad for Swatch. Swatch watches were fairly cheap, usually around $30-$35. They were colorful plastic, you could switch the bands, and they were waterproof. They provided a nice alternative to the standard Timex watches all the nerds would wear. They caused Beanie Baby-levels of hysteria in some markets. It was no surprise that these tough little watches crossed over perfectly into skate culture, where bold prints and individuality were celebrated. Around 1987, Swatch started to sponsor skateboarders, who they would then send out on skate demos at malls around the United States. One of their featured skaters was Rodney Mullen, who is now known (and rightfully so) as the godfather of ...

  I read recently that most Simon owned malls have removed their customer service desks over the past year. I worked in a Simon mall for years, and was reminded of an asshole customer story, again from the Big Coffee Shop that I worked for. Since we were in the mall, the majority of our regulars were people who also worked in the mall. One day, this guy started coming to the shop. He'd order a venti latte, extra hot, with mint syrup. Not even a mocha, this maniac was drinking hot mint milk with coffee in it. He would go, drink a bit of the drink, and then bring it back to us, complaining that it wasn't hot enough, or there wasn't enough mint syrup in it. He came in nearly every day for weeks, doing the same thing: order the drink, drink a little, bring it back and load it down with syrup and HOT HOT milk. Most of my fellow baristas would remake the drink, and LOAD the damn thing with syrup. Other baristas would follow the recipe (which I believe a large only got 5 shots of ...

  Did you see Machine Gun Kelly's performance on SNL over the weekend? I did. Despite the fact that I live in Northeastern Ohio and have been hearing MGK's name for years, I've never really listened to him. I had read about his pivot to pop punk, and me, a lady who has gone to many a Warped Tour, so I was curious, finally. His performance was solid. But my immediate thought was "hey, does anyone else remember when Machine Gun Kelly got arrested at South Park Mall?" Here's what happened: In 2011, Colson Baker, aka Machine Gun Kelly, was on top of the music world, having just signed to Diddy's Bad Boy label. One day, he tweeted out to his followers, "I'm thinking about doing a flash mob at a mall or something tomorrow lol cleveland should we do one while I'm home?" Over the next few hours, he came up with the location (South Park Mall in Strongsville, Ohio), and gave his fans directions: show up in the food court, and at 5pm, "No one m...

  Archie the Snowman, in his new home at Lock 3. As malls continue to disappear, we hear more stories about the things that people miss about them. The one thing that crossed my mind (pre-pandemic) was Christmas. Malls used to have amazing decorations. I remember Rolling Acres Mall had a huge castle set up, and Santa sat in the middle of it. Richmond Town Square had a similar setup last year; I'm not sure whether they're still even open. When malls close, they usually leave everything in them, including all of the decorations. Akron's Chapel Hill Mall has been cruising slowly towards foreclosure all year, which made me start to wonder around September what would happen to Archie. Archie is an over 20 foot tall talking snowman, who has lived at Chapel Hill Mall on and off since the late 1960's. He lived at the mall until the early 2000's, during an ownership change. There was a crowdsourcing campaign to bring Archie back, which was a huge success. Archie was at Lock ...

  Back in July, I got a text from my dear friend Marc, asking me to come on his podcast and discuss my journey with mental health. I didn't hesitate. Marc was one of those people who, when I first met him and really got to talk to him, I knew he was a kindred spirit. He was a bright spot in a dark time. I talked about what led me to therapy, how I got through everything, and how my work with malls and photography grew out of the work I was doing in therapy. This is one of the more vulnerable things I've done, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. In fact, I'd love to do more things like this! My episode of Recovery Talks can be found  here , or wherever you listen to podcasts. Eternal gratitude to Marc Lee Shannon for having me on. Doing this podcast gave me the opportunity to let everything out, and man, it feels pretty good. In addition to being a great guy, Marc is also a great musician. Make sure to check out his Bandcamp !  

I have a pretty extensive collection of various news clippings that I've collected over the past couple years, mostly focusing on Akron area malls. This article from The Ashtabula Town Beacon in 2007 is the early call: malls are dying. Most of the malls in this article have turned into Amazon fulfillment centers. Ashtabula Mall is owned by the same company who owns Akron's very dead Chapel Hill Mall, and is very much dead. Millcreek is the only mall that I think is still doing ok. "Hopefully there won't come a time when we buy everything either online or at Wal-Mart" makes me wonder if the writer of this is still around. I'd love to hear what he thinks now. COVID has kicked the collapse of the American shopping mall into high gear, but this has been happening for years now. We're seeing the American dream die in real time, both literally (the American Dream Mall is the most cursed mall in America), and figuratively (hi, I haven't been out of m...

I've spent the past four years visiting and documenting malls across the Rust Belt and beyond. It started with a nervous breakdown, which led me to pick up my camera, which led me back to my first childhood home, Rolling Acres Mall. I've always been in malls. Rolling Acres was always quite literally in my backyard. I could see the mall clear as day from my high school, which made wanting to go to school really tough, since high school sucked and the mall didn't. My house was two miles from the mall. We spent a lot of time coordinating how we were going to get to the mall, who we were going to meet there, and who was going to bring us home. My childhood home was unpredictable, and my neighborhood wasn't very safe. I wouldn't walk around my neighborhood, but I'd walk around the mall alone, no problem. The lights were always going to be on at the mall. I could hang out with friends at the mall, and we collectively were able to skip the part where we had ...