Talk about BUSTLING/ALIVE malls

[Skyweaver]

I really like going to malls and shopping centers when I can (sadly not often due to my circumstances), and a few malls within my area are all quite active.

The first one is the closest to me but also the most BORING imo. It's an outlet mall and it's almost nothing but chain fashion stores. There are a few stores that are semi-interesting (hot topic being one of them) so unless every other mall was nuked from existence, the outlet mall wont be my first pick for hanging out.

The second mall is somewhat close to me (20 mins away). I actually haven't been there a while but last time I was there (a few years ago) I was dragged there with my parents and it wasn't that interesting. I did hear a few new cool stores had opened there, such as a DND(?) store and some "cutsey" shops.

The third mall is by far the coolest mall I've been to, problem is it's SUPER far away. This is the only one I will disclose the name of due to privacy reasons, and it's the Stonebriar Center and I LOVE the place. I was visiting family when my cousins took me to the Stonebriar Center and i loved every square foot of that place. tons and tons of interesting stores around, such as a lego store, cute accessory stores, and a record shop. I even took a few pics! As you can tell, it's super active and bustling.

Honorable mention: Antique mall. It's really an antique store thats roughly a third the size of a walmart and has a lot of booths. i love it so much!

[hein]

I don't know what to think about shopping malls. My local smaller one is pretty dead, but most I've been to are super crowded (I live in Europe) and they just feel 'fake'. I'd rather have an organically created shopping street with medieval buildings transformed into various specialty shops. Sadly my own town demolished most of their medieval or 17th century buildings during the 60s. So now it just looks kind of sad.

[bugholder's epiphany]

The malls I go to tend to be more alive than the ones around my home. Usually they're the ones near the big cities, like Atlanta or Chattanooga. They're pretty nice, with the one down in Chattanooga having a Dave & Busters in it. Hell, I was just at that mall yesterday, came back with some music, two dvds (One of which being the Super Mario Bros movie, the OG one, the live action one, the REAL one if you ask me lmao), and a manga. Always like going to that mall, though it's distance makes it a bit harder to go to on a regular basis.

[ValyceNegative]

Malls are very much alive here, though most are "medium size" galleries with an assorted variety of shops within. We have plenty near our hometown, one of these is our main place to go when shopping for groceries on Sunday. It's big enough that it often hosts events or art installations, many of which partnering with museums so a lot of times we have seen dinosaur/animal statues. Last time we went, there was a LAN tournament! It was FIFA so not my genre, but it was cool to enter the mall and just see rows and rows of computers linked together ready to play xP

[milo]

It's cool to hear about all these alive and well malls!

The one in my hometown seems to be doing just fine. Lots of small businesses have opened up in it within the last few years and it got a Round1 a while back too. Although Round1 has seemed to want to replace all the actual arcade games with crane and redemption games which I find to be kind of a bummer.

There's another one a bit further away that seems to be doing great. Some of the shops there have been hosting a yearly toy and gaming convention that has been getting better each year. However, I hear that the powers that be want to turn the space into apartments. Not sure how I feel about that honestly, as the mall seems very much alive and making that change would leave so many small businesses in the lurch.

The ones in the big city near me are okay. There's one with a few decent stores, like a LEGO store or some anime and collectible stores. There's a drafthouse theater attached which is so freakin cool and is my favorite way to see movies now.

[Kolo]

The mall that was near where I grew up was dying; sections of it were completely empty and sequestered off. I looked it up recently and it's been demolished entirely, which made me feel a little sad! I don't really have a strong impression of it, though. Mostly my friends and I would travel there when doing our normal hangout activity (which was trying to navigate towards telephone towers at night... we had not much better do do).

But the mall near where I live now is extremely bustling! It's absolutely huge and filled with a lot of little shops. My partner and I do actually go there quite often... many of the shops are really expensive, more than I would like to spend, but there's some nice little ones. And, thankfully, lots of seating. There's always so many people when we visit it can be a little overwhelming, but also enjoyable to sit and watch all the unique lives passing by.

This mall also has a LEGO store in it, actually! We've bought LEGOs a few times but the employees are trained to be very friendly/a bit nosy and that overwhelms me also hahaha.