Good evening, Kibitzers. I’m afraid I’ve fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole, and I’m about to take you with me. You know how it is—you start off watching some video, and several videos later, you’re somewhere in the weird part of YouTube, unsure of how exactly you got there.
Lately, I’ve been in the “dead mall exploration” part of YouTube, which I’m willing to bet you didn’t know was a thing.
The picture you see above is of the center of the Warren Mall in my hometown of Warren, Pennsylvania. By now, I believe the mall has been converted into a strip mall, which (sadly) is probably for the best, because the property really was a blight. Although it is now no more, the Warren Mall used to be quite the happening place. The mall dates back to 1979, and it was anchored by three main stores: Kmart, The Bon-Ton (which recently closed all of its stores), and JCPenney. I have a lot of great childhood memories in that mall, particularly in the Aladdin’s Castle arcade and exploring the books in Waldenbooks (now dead). My memories are of a time when the mall was not only alive, but bustling and vibrant—I remember when you could barely even move because of all the people around Christmas time. But by my high school years, the mall had begun its decline, with stores closing one by one. JCPenney was the first anchor store to close, and it was replaced by Big Lots (which also closed eventually). Kmart held on for quite a while, but well, you know how Kmart is doing, and eventually they closed their doors as well. At a certain point, the only store left in the mall worth mentioning was The Bon-Ton, but you know how that story ends.
A couple of years ago, while I was on a trip back home, I decided to walk through the mall, I think mainly out of morbid curiosity. The parking lot was like a war zone, so full of holes that I could barely navigate it. I was literally the only person walking through the mall, and I was so thoroughly creeped out that I left after a few minutes of roaming around. I noticed that the main fountain pictured above (talk about a throwback to a previous era) was being maintained by the Warren Area Society of Paranormal, which really said a lot about how the mall was doing.
Anyway, that brings me to my latest YouTube excursion. Somehow, I ended up watching a video walkthrough of the Warren Mall—a couple of years after I did my own walkthrough (it was somehow worse). It was really something else, both fascinating and completely depressing given my nostalgia for the Warren Mall.
I soon discovered that this is a whole genre of videos on YouTube, and I quickly found myself getting sucked into the abyss of watching creepy dead mall walkthrough videos. The best of these YouTubers is a guy named Dan Bell, who has dozens of these kinds of exploration videos. Gizmodo calls the videos “weirdly hypnotic,” and I think that’s the best way to describe them.
Videographer Dan Bell has been documenting America’s countless mausoleums of forgotten economic booms through his series Dead Malls. As the title suggests, he travels the country touring these sprawling facilities that have been made largely redundant by online shopping, losing “anchor” stores year by year. What remains are the ghosts of capitalism past: movie marquees that haven’t been changed since they shuttered, gated and gutted spaces where stores either fled or went out of business, and a few of the world’s last remaining Radioshacks. (Lol.)
Bell’s commentary is part researched video essay and part unboxing video. He flatly describes the upkeep level and color palettes of food court tiles while dropping bizarre facts about how some of these dying malls are owned by nearby universities or religious organizations. Each episode also opens with a montage Bell cuts together from salvaged commercials and VHS tapes, set to vaporwave music to enforce the conflicting feelings of touring a post-capitalist dystopia in present day. They’re weird and delightful.
I found that Bell also toured the Warren Mall last year, and it really has the feeling of exploring a haunted house or something (the Warren Mall part begins at 10:45):
Into the Dan Bell rabbit hole I went, and I haven’t stopped yet. It’s a bit of a masochistic thing, because I never feel good after watching these videos (some of the malls are particularly beautiful, which makes it even more depressing), but I can’t quite look away. I don’t know if you find this as fascinating as I do, but if you’re interested, here are a few of my favorites (you can find many more on your own). Frederick Towne Mall in Frederick, Maryland:
Century III Mall in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania:
Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio (he got busted by the police in this one):
Do you have any dead or dying malls in your life? What stores are you nostalgic for?
What else do you want to kibitz about tonight?