A 16 year old at the food court in Plymouth Meeting said malls are boring now, and I can't get it out of my head
I was killing time at the Plymouth Meeting Mall in PA about 3 weeks ago, just walking the loop and taking pics of the empty anchor wing like always. This kid sat down near me with a pretzel and I asked him if he comes here a lot, and he goes no, there is nothing to do here, I just charge my phone. He said he and his friends hang out at a park or someone's house, that the mall has no arcade, no movie theater, nothing. I walked out and counted, 4 storefronts lit up in the whole east wing, everything else gated or papered over. I keep thinking it is not just that the stores left, it is that kids stopped having a reason to be here at all. Anybody else notice the food court is the only part with actual people in it anymore?
Man, the food court being the last stand is so real, it is basically the mall's version of the Alamo now. The arcade and the movie theater were the whole reason we begged our parents to drop us off back in the day, so of course kids bail when all that is gone. Stores are not the draw, stuff to actually do is the draw, and malls forgot that.