Opening Ceremony is pleased to present columnist Alexis Wilkinson's after-hours thoughts. And you know she has thoughts: president of the Harvard Lampoon; crusader of Domino's delivery boys; educator of Darwinian origins for the bad bitch, Alexis—with her candor and wit—is our new girl crush. Here, "Late-Ish With Alexis" shines the spotlight on why she doesn't do the mall anymore.
They sent me two left shoes. “They” being an eBay seller with an unpronounceable screenname, and the shoes being a pair of “new” fur-lined, no-nonsense, waterproof boots that I had hoped would be my savior this cold, wet winter.
Two left shoes are a funny problem to have, but also pretty infuriating. My message to the seller was more or less “Hey, so... You sent me two left shoes... And I have a left foot and a right foot... Because I am a relatively standard human specimen.” I essentially got catfished by some shoes. Shoefished. Bamshoezzled.
I’d like to say at that point I got off my lazy ass and went to a “shoe store” perhaps in a “commercial galleria,” my favorite euphemism for “mall.” But I absolutely 100% did not. I don’t do the mall anymore. And I’m not alone. The decline of the American mall in the wake of online shopping is quickly changing everything from holiday season habits to city planning. Grumbling, I just opened another page and within an hour had ordered a different pair. They were delivered in a few days and had the anatomically correct shoe combo.
I don’t attribute my obsession with online shopping to pure laziness. With my size 11 feet (try finding something bigger than a 10 that’s not made for a drag queen), customer service-induced social anxiety (thank God for self-checkout), and little to no tolerance for slow walkers, the mall these days comes as close to what I imagine hell is like, without actually having Satan boiling me alive like a lobster while calling me “ma’am” in a thick Boston accent.
I didn’t always feel this way. As a teen back home, our local mall was the hangout spot. Not childish like a bowling alley or arcade, but not so adult your mom wouldn’t let you go. You’d grab a sugar pretzel and window shop until you found something better to do or go see a PG-13 movie with that kid in math class you’re crushing on. Regardless, your friends were always there. The mall wasn’t a place you went. It was a thing you did.
And not much has changed since then, which might have led to its demise. “Are Malls Over?” mused the New Yorker in March, and a piece in the Guardian published in June seemed to answer “Yep.” Why mill around in a concrete block for an hour when you can sit in your pajamas for 15 minutes? Why deal with pushy salespeople, crying babies, and fresh gum on your shoe when you can just not?
Real-life shopping is like a fishing trip. You go in a little blind and hope to stumble upon something good and waste a lot of time in the process. Online shopping is a military extraction: Find the “store.” Find the product. Secure the product. But the mall’s biggest liability is also its biggest, and perhaps only, asset. The experience. The sights and smells and the waste of a litt
They sent me two left shoes. “They” being an eBay seller with an unpronounceable screenname, and the shoes being a pair of “new” fur-lined, no-nonsense, waterproof boots that I had hoped would be my savior this cold, wet winter.
Two left shoes are a funny problem to have, but also pretty infuriating. My message to the seller was more or less “Hey, so... You sent me two left shoes... And I have a left foot and a right foot... Because I am a relatively standard human specimen.” I essentially got catfished by some shoes. Shoefished. Bamshoezzled.
I’d like to say at that point I got off my lazy ass and went to a “shoe store” perhaps in a “commercial galleria,” my favorite euphemism for “mall.” But I absolutely 100% did not. I don’t do the mall anymore. And I’m not alone. The decline of the American mall in the wake of online shopping is quickly changing everything from holiday season habits to city planning. Grumbling, I just opened another page and within an hour had ordered a different pair. They were delivered in a few days and had the anatomically correct shoe combo.
I don’t attribute my obsession with online shopping to pure laziness. With my size 11 feet (try finding something bigger than a 10 that’s not made for a drag queen), customer service-induced social anxiety (thank God for self-checkout), and little to no tolerance for slow walkers, the mall these days comes as close to what I imagine hell is like, without actually having Satan boiling me alive like a lobster while calling me “ma’am” in a thick Boston accent.
I didn’t always feel this way. As a teen back home, our local mall was the hangout spot. Not childish like a bowling alley or arcade, but not so adult your mom wouldn’t let you go. You’d grab a sugar pretzel and window shop until you found something better to do or go see a PG-13 movie with that kid in math class you’re crushing on. Regardless, your friends were always there. The mall wasn’t a place you went. It was a thing you did.
And not much has changed since then, which might have led to its demise. “Are Malls Over?” mused the New Yorker in March, and a piece in the Guardian published in June seemed to answer “Yep.” Why mill around in a concrete block for an hour when you can sit in your pajamas for 15 minutes? Why deal with pushy salespeople, crying babies, and fresh gum on your shoe when you can just not?
Real-life shopping is like a fishing trip. You go in a little blind and hope to stumble upon something good and waste a lot of time in the process. Online shopping is a military extraction: Find the “store.” Find the product. Secure the product. But the mall’s biggest liability is also its biggest, and perhaps only, asset. The experience. The sights and smells and the waste of a litt