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Edgar Allen Ho posted:And yet old people at the store constantly block aisles contemplating different brands of canned black beans Remembers the horrors of Cuban grocery stores full of cans of only one brand of beans?
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Aug 27, 2023 16:27
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Gyges posted:On the topic of buildings that lend themselves to conversion for housing, are ungodly numbers of hotels popping up all over the place? Jacksonville has just an ungodly number of hotels, which may tie back to our idiotic Super Bowl bid. However, so many places around here look like they're some condos or apartments but then you realize it's the 9th loving hotel you've passed on the street.
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Aug 27, 2023 16:38
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:And yet old people at the store constantly block aisles contemplating different brands of canned black beans I've been working on a bit where family from different cities build identical "locally made" gift baskets for one another. Inspired by the weird popcorn trend.
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Aug 27, 2023 16:42
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Mellow Seas posted:To be fair, most people who go to Jacksonville want to leave within a few days. Can confirm.
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Aug 27, 2023 17:16
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Mellow Seas posted:To be fair, most people who go to Jacksonville want to leave within a few days. was born there, left for a reason
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Aug 27, 2023 17:26
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Aug 27, 2023 17:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Remembers the horrors of Cuban grocery stores full of cans of only one brand of beans? So much time and effort and money and material is loving wasted because the squealing masses want the frozen chicken* patty on reheated bread* buns with THIS cartoon rooster on the plastic packaging, not THAT one.
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Aug 27, 2023 17:37
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Byzantine posted:So much time and effort and money and material is loving wasted because the squealing masses want the frozen chicken* patty on reheated bread* buns with THIS cartoon rooster on the plastic packaging, not THAT one. People like brands because sometimes the alternatives actually AREN’T as good, and while there’s basically always an equivalent off brand, you have to know which ones to get. (Although Kirkland is almost always a good choice.) People don’t want to risk getting lovely sugar-on-cereal-flakes so they get the famous one that everybody knows is good with the Tiger on it. The problem is the existence of marketing itself, the fact that the way people get information about products is perverted by profit motive and bought-and-paid-for market dominance via relentless advertising.
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Aug 27, 2023 18:06
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Honestly I would say it's less about quality even than consistency. People want to know what to expect, so they get the same brands they got last time because they were acceptable. Something new might be better, but it might also be worse, and that's not really worth the risk when you just want a can of beans.
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Aug 27, 2023 18:32
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For me, the malls that are doing well near me are 1. Mall by the state capital in an easily accessed area with literally no way for competition to arise because all available land is taken and very very expensive. Even so they have lost the big box stores but were converting them into more small stores to appeal better to the rich people who live nearby. 2. Casino more or less attached to the mall 3. Mall built in a very very planned out community that is basically built around the mall meaning there are high rise offices and apartments surrounding the mall itself which is designed as a place to go to within walking distance
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Aug 27, 2023 18:39
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:And yet old people at the store constantly block aisles contemplating different brands of canned black beans
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Aug 27, 2023 18:44
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Clarste posted:Honestly I would say it's less about quality even than consistency. People want to know what to expect, so they get the same brands they got last time because they were acceptable. Something new might be better, but it might also be worse, and that's not really worth the risk when you just want a can of beans. The black beans thing is actually a funny example because there really is a significant difference between, say, Goya (firmer texture, larger beans), Bush's (pre-seasoned, slightly mushier), and Kroger brand (less consistent bean texture).
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Aug 27, 2023 19:02
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Washington is full of examples of urban spaces that people like to go shop at that aren't anything like a traditional mall. Most famous being Pike Place Market in Seattle which has a year round farmers market, art stalls, independent shops, restaurants, etc over several blocks. Seattle also has several "neighborhood main streets" with shops and restaurants that are crowded on the weekends. Just about every city and town in Washington has a lively downtown mainstreet that's mostly independent shops and restaurants, with few if any chain brands present. Personally, this is the ideal shopping environment to me. I don't get the allure of reviving malls unless they're very different than they currently are. If you've been to one mall you've been to them all, nearly all the shops and restaurants are the same. WA actually has something called a Main Street Program that encourages these kind of urban commercial spaces: https://dahp.wa.gov/local-preservation/main-street-program
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Aug 27, 2023 19:05
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I assume the appeal of the shopping mall is for suburbans, not places like Seattle. Like same here, I’d rather go to the french quarter and tourist watch than go to a mall. Well AC would be nice though please go away summer I definitely think a thriving Main Street is healthier for the community. Like everyone I knew as a teen has multiple instances of getting kicked out by mall cops bc we were bored out of our minds with no money, no car, nothing to do but stir poo poo or make out in public bathrooms. Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Aug 27, 2023 |
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Aug 27, 2023 19:08
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AtomikKrab posted:For me, the malls that are doing well near me are Hello fellow Marylander
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Aug 27, 2023 19:09
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Malls are mostly dead in urban areas unless they are more upscale. There are some exceptions but it’s a lot different than it was 40 years ago.
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Aug 27, 2023 19:17
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I miss going to Suncoast Video and seeing what the hot new $95 VHS release was
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Aug 27, 2023 19:19
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FlamingLiberal posted:Malls are mostly dead in urban areas unless they are more upscale. There are some exceptions but it’s a lot different than it was 40 years ago. A handful of higher-end malls here in LA are dying, including the ever dying Westside Pavilion in Santa Monica, the Paseo in Pasadena and my neighborhood combo condo/mall specializing in Asian stores. Sure, some stuff is thriving but it's all tourist-trap places like The Grove, The Americana and Universal Citywalk. And I wouldn't be surprised if failed mayoral candidate Rick Caruso is somehow behind them all. We have had an empty lot in our suburb for decades, it was an old warehouse knocked down to become another Lowe's but it was turned down by the city council. Now it sits wasted, while the city grapples with a growing homeless population and NIMBYs scream about new condo developments.
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Aug 27, 2023 19:26
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Malls have very predictable stores. In that way, malls are often more convenient for tourists and business travelers than for locals. If I am on a trip and I suddenly need a white collared shirt or a cross body bag or a pair of jeans or x, I'm going to go to a mall because they are going to have predictable brands with predictable hours and predictable prices and I don't have time to go window shopping or wait for something to be shipped. In the same way though, malls are kind of lovely places for killing time because they're extremely boring places with boring things.
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Aug 27, 2023 19:39
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KillHour posted:In the same way though, malls are kind of lovely places for killing time because they're extremely boring places with boring things. Well sure, because they took out the arcades. 
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Aug 27, 2023 19:49
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Presto posted:Well sure, because they took out the arcades. Pretty much once PlayStation came around and had arcade quality games at home we stopped going to arcades. The only thing that kept me going in the late 90s, because fighting games were largely awful on the PlayStation 1.
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Aug 27, 2023 19:53
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Time Crisis just isn’t the same on a console though
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Aug 27, 2023 20:14
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I've got a pair of outlet malls near me that are petty popular. But those are outdoor malls that you can basically park in. Drive up to the store you want (provided there's parking), get what you want, maybe walk somewhere else, leave. Personally I wouldn't mind visiting them if there was a better route to reach them by foot than "alongside a busy highway access road without a sidewalk".
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Aug 27, 2023 20:47
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Mustang posted:Personally, this is the ideal shopping environment to me. I don't get the allure of reviving malls unless they're very different than they currently are. If you've been to one mall you've been to them all, nearly all the shops and restaurants are the same. What makes a mall nice is the same thing that makes a shopping district nice: a high density of people and/or good public transit. The malls in Europe I've been to have been quite good. They're often connected to subways, have grocery stores inside them, have a decent selection of stores, and are generally lively.
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Aug 27, 2023 20:51
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Very high-end malls tend to do well, as do malls in dense and touristy areas. Not a super big mystery; small towns and depressed areas where all the jobs left decades ago can't sustain malls. I do find it fascinating that malls continue standing for years, sometimes decades, after they are dismal failures, when it would be much more useful to convert them into something else. But I guess that would take investment capital, an actual plan, less red tape, and some rich rear end in a top hat not sitting on it (the Lampert investment strategy).
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Aug 27, 2023 21:14
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Arcades could have instilled a better psyche amongst the youth by teaching us constructive social skills and also how to buffer complex signature moves while you're engaged in a combo or throw. And even with all those quarters it wasn't monetizable enough.
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Aug 27, 2023 21:26
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I grew up with two malls within a few miles, the Shore Mall and the Hamilton Mall. Both died slow and painful deaths over the course of the mid-00s, but only the Shore Mall realized it and was razed accordingly. The Hamilton Mall continues chugging along, but it's in a depressing state. Mostly empty storefronts. Another mall near where I ended up moving to — Echelon Mall — is somehow even more sorry than Hamilton. I legitimately thought I was walking through an abandoned building until I got to the food court, which I guess services all the corporations officed nearby. A little further away is the Cherry Hill Mall, which last I checked is doing fuckin' gangbusters. Downside is you have to go to Cherry Hill.
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Aug 27, 2023 21:34
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Both malls near me seem to be doing fine, but I only ever visit one because it's got a massive puzzle room/art hunt complex with new puzzles that gives you experience and levels every time you visit and *really* good food, and the other one I visit because it has the best movie theatre in the entire state (a very good IMAX) and an incredibly popular Dave and Busters while being very easy to reach by car and public transport both. I've actually been seeing a rise of "activity malls" built around experiences like that - a third new mall like complex went up between the other two about a decade back that has a trampoline park and axe throwing and a bunch of other poo poo amongst the retail commercial areas, where the idea is you go to have fun and then do some shopping while you are in the area, and that actually seems like a pretty good model to me? Who knows what their finances are looking like behind the scenes, though, maybe they are all bleeding money.
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Aug 27, 2023 21:59
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Name Change posted:Very high-end malls tend to do well, as do malls in dense and touristy areas. Not a super big mystery; small towns and depressed areas where all the jobs left decades ago can't sustain malls. The problem is that the structures are very difficult to repurpose for anything. They don't work well at all for housing or office space, smaller malls can work well for activity complex type things as noted, but we have more abandoned malls than we need activity complexes. One of the more interesting conversions I've seen is College of the Mainland took over a large anchor location at a previously dilapidated mall. It hosts lifelong learning classes, plus their cosmetology program, and dual credit courses for local ISDs. I haven't been inside, I have no idea how extensive the renovations were - but that's kind of a neat use case for former anchor stores. A vacancy tax would do wonders to put mall owners on a path to either revitalizing, repurposing, or selling/razing the properties for new development - and in general, vacancy taxes for both commercial and residential aren't inherently bad ideas.
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Aug 27, 2023 22:42
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The former McAllister Square Mall in South Carolina has been converted into offices and I think classrooms for a college now.
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Aug 27, 2023 22:50
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They should turn dead malls into giant skate parks. Imagine a half pipe going down the entire long central corridor of a decently sized mall.
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Aug 27, 2023 22:52
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Speaking of rich folk buying up land and land distribution: https://www.businessinsider.com/flannery-silicon-valley-billionaires-build-new-california-city-solano-county-2023-8 quote:A mystery company backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has been snatching up land in a northern California county in an apparent bid to build an entirely new city in the state. Narrator: They did, in fact, end up building crazy libertarian utopias for techies.
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Aug 27, 2023 23:07
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Logic Probed posted:Speaking of rich folk buying up land and land distribution:
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Aug 27, 2023 23:35
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Mustang posted:Personally, this is the ideal shopping environment to me. I don't get the allure of reviving malls unless they're very different than they currently are. If you've been to one mall you've been to them all, nearly all the shops and restaurants are the same.
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Aug 27, 2023 23:41
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Mustang posted:Washington is full of examples of urban spaces that people like to go shop at that aren't anything like a traditional mall. Meanwhile, the Everett Mall is some sort of bizarre zombie mall. Lost all of its anchor stores except one, but they've made some changes so that mid-sized stores technically count as anchor stores now. I went through there a couple times in the past year or two, the food selection is always changing except for like 4 ethnic food places, one of which is a teriyaki stall that's been there since the late 80's. They also brought back an arcade, split between two small corner stores, but most of the games are overpriced and some of them are just arcade versions of mobile games.
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Aug 28, 2023 00:09
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"Don't worry, this won't be a crazy libertarian utopia for techies. It will be a crazy authoritarian utopia for techies."
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Aug 28, 2023 01:36
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Give it three years before the libertarian paradise devolves into cannibalism and tribal warfare.
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Aug 28, 2023 01:51
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Queering Wheel posted:They should turn dead malls into giant skate parks. Imagine a half pipe going down the entire long central corridor of a decently sized mall. I liked that Vice "Abandoned" show as well! they should bring it back
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Aug 28, 2023 01:52
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Madkal posted:Give it three years before the libertarian paradise devolves into cannibalism and tribal warfare. One word: bears
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Aug 28, 2023 01:57
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The mall by me is mostly a good place to shoot someone and/or get shot, which people tend to not like. You'll have to forgive me to my lack of sourcing on that last part. On the similar subject of not remembering sourcing, I remember reading an article that malls with outdoor sections/outlet malls were doing well because it wasn't all depressing indoor dated decors. When the weather is good people want to wander around semi-outside with some cover from the elements. Medullah posted:Pretty much once PlayStation came around and had arcade quality games at home we stopped going to arcades. The only thing that kept me going in the late 90s, because fighting games were largely awful on the PlayStation 1. You will apologize for your Tekken 3 slander you son of a bitch.
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Aug 28, 2023 02:17
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