>>513895386
Surprisingly very few malls have died around here. Some real smaller ones were completely torn down, especially strip malls but also indoor malls.

But even the biggest ones around here have lost most of not all of their anchor stores now that The Bay went tits up a while ago.
The anchor stores always get repurposed into some bullshit, but I miss the glory days of riding all the three floor escalators at fuckin Sears and Eaton's. I miss how most if not all of the walmarts used to be Zellers.

Otherwise it's very much like the quote from Pirates of the Carribean where the world's still the same, there's just... less in it.

There used to be two different music stores that were my favorite places to hang out at just checking out CDs and movies on DVDs all afternoon long & those are all gone. For a while there was no more music store at all, but in the last few years there is now one that's like a third of the size of either of them back in the day.

I really miss video stores and arcades, which were the bread and butter of both indoor malls and strip malls. Now I'm lucky to find a few bullshit chinese arcades downtown that are mostly crane games and emulator cabinets, there's also a few barcades with genuine retro machines.

But otherwise it's still a place for teenagers and old people to hang out at. Like there's still a goth/edgy tshirt store, zoomers are buying anime figurines at the music store and also the gaming store - some malls have their own figurine stores, there's still also plenty of stores that are just trading card games as well as board games for quirky chungus adults.