Not that anybody should be surprised, but the Livingston Mall is now permanently closed (although I had thought the Barnes and Noble there would have saved the place). This marks the closing of yet another mega-shopping space New Jersey was so known for. Yes, other states have malls, like other states have diners, but in the case of malls, and certainly diners, New Jersey had the best.
Ok, maybe not the best. I am not sure I can really make this claim with any facts to back me up. I can say though that New Jersey malls were the best…for me.
Or at least they were at one time when I was trolling them on a regular basis. My favorites, close to my house as they were making them my favorites probably; Willowbrook Mall and Garden State Plaza. I actually remember Garden State Plaza when it was an outdoor mall (yes it was). I worked in a Spencer Gifts there for one winter season. The picture I have included to top this blog is of the Santa that would sit at GSP come the holiday season when the mall was outdoor and considerably smaller. In the 80s I had good friends who worked at a shop in that mall, so I was there plenty.
Willowbrook, considerable closer to my home, just a bus ride away, which was convenient before I drove, held our favorite Fun & Games arcade, a regular Friday night haunt for my friends and I.
Yes, I did go to the malls to shop, but for kids from my generation it was as much a place to hang more often than not. And in my mall-ing I did happen to hit Livingston, a bit out of the way for me as it was, a time or two. So, I am sorry to see it go. As I am sorry to see retail culture morph into what it is now, no culture at all. As with streaming movies, the majority of people seem to want to stay home to shop off their laptops and cell phones. I know COVID is to blame for most of this, as I blame COVID, or more precisely our response to it, for most of the ills we have now (see how I did that there with the word ‘ill’; COVID could make you ‘ill’ but it certainly made the culture ill-er by our reaction to it…clever huh?).
Yeah, the world is certainly a different little ball of fudge-filling than it was when I was a kid. Which is the way things are supposed to be, I know. Change and all that. But for a moment here allow me to bemoan the closing of another New Jersey mall and pine, yet again, for a time that the malls, like buffalo, littered the landscape (ok, maybe not like buffalo…hell, you know what I am getting at here) and I actually thought there was a movie coming out that I wanted to go and see in a theater.
Oh well, The Livingston Mall is now closed permanently. Life goes on.
