Zombie Malls

This post started as a comment on Martin Weller’s post “Meet me by the Blogroll,”  but it felt like something I might want to also have on the bava proper, so here we are.

Martin’s post draws a parallel between the life and death of the mall (a space near and dear to my 70s and 80s childhood) and the blogosphere. As with all of his metaphors, they are provocative in some really creative ways that I deeply appreciate.

Dawn of the Dead zombies roaming the mall, as they did in life 🙂

Immediately upon reading the post I thought about George Romero’s second installment of his Dead series: the amazing Dawn of the Dead (1978). This film takes place almost exclusively in and around a shopping mall. It’s also the film that notes the dead that walk the earth are returning to what they knew in life: THE MALL! So good!

Zombies from Dawn of the Dead clamoring to get into the mall

Recently my family and I went to the West Coast for a vacation. A large part of the stay was in Portland, Oregon cause we love that city. To the point of Martin’s post about the rise and fall of malls (and the blogosphere), a huge mall in the center of Portland—the Lloyd Center—lost almost all of its anchor stores and was essentially abandoned circa 2021. But something funny happened, a number of local, independent businesses saw the advantage of this moribund mall’s now super low rents. This was in many ways fueled by the fact that commercial rent in Portland has gone sky-high. So now this huge mall built in 1960 was the home to small, experimental start-up shops.

Portland’s Dead Mall: Lloyd Center – check out the Reddit thread about it

When we went there we found comic shops, record shops, Pokemon game shops, a working ice skating rink, and a crazy build-your-own-lightsaber shop—brilliantly playing off that “build-a-bear” concept. There were all kinds of other very Portland ideas percolating in the space that made this “dead mall” feel more alive than it probably has since the Fast Times at Ridgemont High 80s. The spirit of Portland is so awesome, and I have to think that’s really why that city is under attack with the recent blustering about deploying the National Guard—what a colossal fool.

I just love that the mall’s afterlife in Portland is an actually relevant and cool space again. It’s really powerful for me because if I go with Martin’s metaphor it might mean that the blogosphere is not dead yet 🙂 And while I’m not sure how much longer the Lloyd Center will exist (or the blogosphere for that matter) given both are built on prime real estate that some huge developer will build a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell sooner than later. But until that day comes it’s a model for what the blogosphere (and web) can become again—a welcoming, low-rent space that offers an escape from the platforms that everywhere box us in!

Scene of an abandoned mall from The Last of Us on HBO with a surprising amount of working games

Fun story, my family and I visited what appeared to be the last box store standing in Lloyd’s Center: a Barnes & Noble book store. Turns out it wasn’t your average Barnes & Noble. Not only was everything half off (it had become a wholesale store), but also the lights would turn off every few minutes. We thought it was a signal the store was closing, but the employees assured us that it’s an intermittent electrical issue they’ve been dealing with for months and that we can safely ignore it. So strange.

All of this led us to the conclusion that this Barnes & Noble was actually cool. Cheaper than Powell’s and potentially haunted! When we were joking with the cashier about our assessment, he was sure to remind us that Powell’s is a far better book store. While true, his admonishments reminded us we were still in Portland after all.

Anyway, thanks to Martin for an excuse to post about my summer trip while blogging about the half-life of blogging 🙂