MW FY732 empty ZH 20171120144658 What They Should Do With Empty Malls

What They Should Do With Empty Malls

All over the country, malls are dying and no one seems to know what to do with all the empty malls. Well, I know exactly what to do with all the empty malls. This is a multimillion dollar idea and you can have it because I’m poor as shit and I’ll never have the opportunity to pursue this idea, so steal this one and get out there and revive some malls.

Malls that aren’t dead have done two things: converted 99% of all stores into fashion retail outlets, because it’s still inconvenient to buy clothes online; and upgraded their food options. As a result, malls have gone from being the cool hangout spot of the 1980s to being a place you follow your girlfriend to when you lose a fight.

Here’s what they should do: they should convert about 40-50% of mall space into activity space. I’m talking VR Arcades, Basketball Courts, Skate Parks, Paintball Arenas, some kind of trampoline depot, concert venues, you name it.

And if you think I’m crazy, let me tell you something. Yes, probably, but that’s unrelated. And now, let me tell you something else: malls around the world are already doing this. I went to several malls in Japan (which they call cities in English, by the way, which is kinda interesting), and they’re like little mini-theme parks and they’re booming. They had all that stuff I just talked about. VR rides, actual arcades, fullblown concert venues, skate parks, basketball courts. Several of them even had museums. Going to a mall in Japan in 2020 is awesome. Going to a mall in America in 2020 feels like one of the 9 circles of hell.

If you go to a mall right now, what you’ll see is a bunch of clothes stores and some bored dude working at some knockoff Sharper Image that no one ever goes into. You’ll see packed food court, a bunch of restaurants, and a bunch of dudes holding their girlfriend’s purse waiting outside the bathroom.

Now, imagine, if you will, this same, depressing and shit mall, except with a paintball arena and a basketball court. You could like, meet new people, start an intermural league of some kind. It could be like a community hub. Remember that shit? Going outside and meeting people? You don’t even need to schedule an event on meetup.com, you just go to the place and there’s already people there. Turning 40 and don’t know how to skate but life hasn’t worked out the way you thought and fuck it, what if skating turns out to be the thing? Go to the mall.

No more walking past a decaying EB Games and peeking in to make sure the guy in there hasn’t given in to the existential meaninglessness of life and offed himself to transition to an ugly, bloated, decaying corpse. Instead, play one of those cool VR games everyone keeps talking about and then go to the movies with your buds. Make some new friends.

To conclude, I’d like to juxtapose current malls with my proposed malls.

Current malls:
– Get drunk
– Wait around while your girlfriend spends two and a half hours deciding between two shirts and then getting neither of them
– Watch a bored, unnecessary retail clerk contemplate suicide

My new fun malls:
– Make friends
– Shoot paintballs at other humans
– Maybe a movie?
– Laser tag!
– Learn to skateboard
– Play tennis or, perhaps, basketball or, maybe, batting cages
– Trampolines?
– Maybe a rock climbing wall or something. Virtual rock climbing wall?

In conclusions, I used to love malls and now malls fucking suck. The malls in Japan are awesome. It is possible for malls to be awesome. I’ve explained to you how to make malls awesome. This has been my solution to your empty malls problem.

I mean, I know you guys have tried everything. Monocle-wearing mall magnates have tried making the malls fancier. “Journalists” have tried writing about how malls closing is a sign of the endtimes or whatever. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s ever been to a cool mall or tried just making a fucking cool mall though, so maybe try that. Maybe you want to make it a political wedge issue and have the Pepsi and Coke parties fight about it for 50 years first. Maybe make it about race somehow. Wouldn’t recommend it, but that’s what you do with everything else so hey, maybe let’s not fight fate.

God I hate all of you so much.

Author

  • Ryan Night

    Ryan Night is an ex-game industry producer with over a decade of experience writing guides for RPGs. Previously an early contributor at gamefaqs.com, Ryan has been serving the RPG community with video game guides since 2001. As the owner of Bright Rock Media, Ryan has written over 600 guides for RPGs of all kinds, from Final Fantasy Tactics to Tales of Arise.

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