Yahoo! had a neat little write up on a collection of photographs by a fellow named Michael Galinsky. The photos were all taken in malls all across America during the 1980's. Great stuff.

Wow, what a treasure trove. I honestly think this kind of thing belongs in museums and the Smithsonian over a lot of "art." No one ever thought to take pictures of these usual places. I'd kill for some pictures of my hometown growing up and the local Toys R Us.

It would have been cool if someone purchased a mall from the 80s, shut it down and reopened it as a museum. 

To me old pictures is a form of art and it's interesting to see what a mall looked like before my time (1991).

Indeed. With so much stuff advancing beyond the "brick and mortar" model, malls may one day become obsolete. Hopefully this never comes to be.

These were the days when you could enter the mall and find anything your heart desired. Play a game in the arcade, hit up your favorite toy or entertainment store, and so much more.

Nowadays, my own local mall is resigned to selling... well... clothes. That's about it. Oh, well there are, of course, the CANDLE stores and the highly corporate EB Games/Gamestop holes in the wall. Bleh. And now they are being infested with "primitives" shops. Don't get me wrong, some primitives are nice to look at. But they are WAY overpriced and there are way too many of them.

I used to go to a mall in NY called Eastview Mall and I saw alot of places come and go the place I miss the most there was the FYE cause it had the store part and also had an Arcade that I used to go to on the weekends. It turned into clothing stores along with the 50s style diner across from it. There was also a place attached to the local regal that is like Discovery Zone on Steroids that was around that I used to go to every once in a while. Ball pits, mini golf, Motion simulators, arcade. Now it's just sitting there unused and frozen in time.

Yeah. It seems that store turnover these days is so much bigger an issue that it ever was before.

Not only that, but you really only need one mall in so many square miles of an area. Some places overdid it during the 90's and early 2000's. In Orlando, for example, my family and I saw a HUGE mall on International Drive and thought we just HAD to check it out. It was very nice and themed quite well... and completely empty. And I don't mean just a few stores here and there... I mean EMPTY!!! The only thing there that I remember was a little food stand and the theater. That's it.

Vaporman87 wrote :

Yeah. It seems that store turnover these days is so much bigger an issue that it ever was before.

Not only that, but you really only need one mall in so many square miles of an area. Some places overdid it during the 90's and early 2000's. In Orlando, for example, my family and I saw a HUGE mall on International Drive and thought we just HAD to check it out. It was very nice and themed quite well... and completely empty. And I don't mean just a few stores here and there... I mean EMPTY!!! The only thing there that I remember was a little food stand and the theater. That's it.
-end quote

There's a mall in NY I remember that is like that though it's called the Medley Center it used to be called Greeceridge Mall. 2 stories and really nice dead as a corpse outside of a couple places. I know what mall you're talking about I have friends in Orlando.

How much money was lost on that do you suppose. I know it hasn't been there for too long because I was there in 2001 and don't remember that mall being there.

Alot most likely.

I really would like to go visit the Mall of America. I can't fathom how they keep that place in business. There's a handful of dying malls here in Pennsylvania, the one large one seems to be doing ok. Malls back in Ca though, a bunch of ghetto themed hoochie boutiques occupy them.

I was reading on MSN about how China is building citys that no one can afford to live in, whole empty cities...

I did become a lil' Mallrat until 1987.