Finding Comfort in 1980s Mall Videos

I. Drinking Bottled Mall Water

There’s something oddly comforting about camcorder videos taken at the mall in the 1980s. Whenever stress peeps its lumpy head in to check on me, I find myself reaching for a nostalgic visual comfort I wasn’t old enough to comprehend or engage with, but still find myself longing for. Before I jump in, do yourself a favor and click through Mall City for some context. It’s a beautiful documentary taking a casual look at Long Island’s Roosevelt Field Mall Culture in 1983 (you can literally click anywhere and find something interesting).

The people-watching in Mall City is primo. A perfect time capsule of the 1980s. Everyone is a character I want to spend another twenty minutes with. I also want a “where are they now?” follow-up. The dude who seems to be incredibly high appears to have been filmed as a joke, but he ends up being the most thoughtful and prescient out of everyone. My only gripe is with the filmmakers pushing the dating angle so hard, but I’ll pretend that was all the rage in the ‘80s.  

It’s fascinating to wander through a time when capitalism was celebrated and communal. Kind of feels like I’m watching footage of a critically endangered animal before being informed it’s endangered. When I watch these videos, I know I’m projecting more hope onto these people than I would if I watched the same film made in a mall today, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why.

What I do know is that ‘80s mall videos put me in a good mood. The frantic, optimistic energy emanating throughout each scene brings me such joy. So much life and so many maskless people breathing on each other like it’s totally normal. Being recorded wasn’t yet a novelty, and everyone hammed it up for the camera. None of them know these malls will become a shadow of their former selves. When I’m watching these slices of life, I feel like I’m there, I’m the cameraperson and I want to soak it all in. Whatever is stressing me out hasn’t come yet because malls are the place to be, and that’s all that matters.  

I think the reason I reach for a bottle of mall nostalgia when I’m feeling stressed is because of what the idea of going to a mall represents to me. I did hang out at malls when I was a kid. It wasn’t THE thing to do, but the peak of my mall-goings was when I was around 10 to 14 years old in the late ‘90s. That sweet spot, where I didn’t have any real responsibilities, stresses, or external pressures outside of school. 

The beauty of nostalgia is its power to transport anyone back to a time when life felt simpler. Sometimes you choose it, and sometimes you don’t. It’s not always fun to have your brain send your hurtling back through time, but it is always an experience. My mall memories are brief slices of flitting fragments that feel more like pictures than films. Flashes of buying X-Men toys with my brother at K·B Toys, winning multiple stuffed animals at the filthy arcade, holding my mom’s hand while walking to a baseball card show, watching The Italian Job and rubbing knees with my then-girlfriend and now wife for the first time, sneaking into Beavis and Butt-Head Do America right at the scene where Beavis sees a donkey pooping and says, “The poop is coming out of the asses ass” and feeling like a criminal, and getting my daughter her first pair of walking shoes at the Payless shoes that’s no longer there.

What’s interesting to me is when I watch these videos, I’m not floating back to my memories (I mean, they happen, but they feel incidental). Instead, it’s as if I’m pining to have experienced this mundane moment I can never be a part of. 

The pandemic has intensified this feeling. I want to be a part of this community that doesn’t exist anymore. To go to an air-conditioned, clumped-together smush of chain stores just to meet up with friends. To make jokes next to the overly chlorinated fountains, run my hand over the dusty plastic ferns planted in even dustier mulch, and wander in and out of stores looking at everything and nothing wasting something I have very little of… time. I know the idea of a bunch of thirty-five-year-olds hanging out at the mall sounds pretty sad, but is it any sadder than that same group getting drunk at a Cheesecake Factory? 

Malls are the beginning of the end of the dream of capitalism, but these videos are recordings of that dream, a swirl of ingredients never to exist again, sealed in a bottle to be consumed by me whenever needed.  

Part of me wonders whether malls will find a comeback after the pandemic. Stimulus checks and a desire to get out and see people may lead to a boom in mall populations. But then again, this 2019 Wired video of Emily Dreyfuss talking with architecture professor Ellen Dunham-Joneson about the death of malls doesn’t bode well for that theory. Neither does the popularity of this 2017 video and all the others like it of people exploring abandoned malls.

The idea of the death of malls leaves me unsettled. Watching malls close down, lose their anchors, or become ghost towns feels like watching my parents grow older. A reminder that nothing, no matter how massive, how immortal it seems to be, will die. These malls, those moments I’m reaching back for, they’re gone, just like the fragments of days of nearly unlimited free time and no responsibilities I find comfort in. It all feels ethereally poetic, and holy shit, I think I finally fully comprehend the entirety of mallsoft and vaporwave music. 

II. Cutting Room Floor 

If any of these videos sparked your interest, there’s a fantastic documentary about a dying mall called Jasper Mall. It’s on Amazon Prime and is well worth a viewing for the people-watching alone. The movie is a slow burn, but if you watched any of the above videos all the way through, then you’ll love it.

The Dead Malls series mentioned in the Wired video is excellent, but didn’t make the cut. Dan Bell’s dead mall videos are essentially that feeling I described of noticing your parents age but in a more entertaining way.

2:30am at a 7-11 near Disney World - 1987 is my favorite time capsule video. I was rewatching this before sending to a friend when I ended up down the mall video rabbit hole that inspired me to write this article. The entire video is perfect, from the title to the guest stars. Do yourself a favor and click through.

I wanted to include The Terminator 2 Galleria mall scene because it’s got some solid mall and arcade action, but I’m it was filmed in 1990, and though that’s still pretty much 1989, it just didn’t feel right.