The Dying Mall: A Photo Essay

And also an essay essay.

There’s a “production space” in Yonkers that’s actually an abandoned former Lord & Taylor in a dying mall. I’ve worked on two commercials there, something I can’t help but find ironic, since walking around in there feels like a Disney Haunted House ride where all the ghosts are trying to warn you of the dangers of late-stage capitalism.

The first thing I worked on at this location wasn’t actually an ad but a message from the CEO to the board of a big hospital chain. I’d worked on ads for the chain as well, that were shot in one of their hospitals, but obviously they’d decided to pull out all the stops on this one (it was for the board!) by paying to film in a bankrupt retail space. Everything I’d done with them featured this same CEO, who would only give us an hour or two to come in and do a bunch of lines, making those jobs short and easy, so I liked them. Then I found out that he made $17 million a year, and that the hospital was one against which nurses were on strike, the main sticking point in negotiations being “making sure there are enough nurses at the bedside to safely care for patients” — something clearly less important than whatever small island the CEO needed to purchase with his $17 million. The hospital finally settled, but it left an ugly taste in my mouth, because I knew from first-hand experience how much money they were pumping into commercials on a regular basis. I even heard from a PA I know that he’d worked on one that dragged into an 18-hour day because the hospital executive in charge didn’t like the shirt that one of the background extras was wearing. The AD suggested they just take him out of the shot, but no, she insisted that someone go out, while the entire crew waited, on the clock, and buy him a new shirt.

The thing I worked on more recently in the space was an ad for high-end skin care products with a celebrity “brand ambassador” (a term which seems to rank product lines with sovereign nations, but since corporations are people*, I guess that tracks). The ad felt more germane to the surroundings, since there was still a lot of what was formerly the cosmetics department left behind, so our prop people only to had build (or maybe even just scavenge?) one display. On the other hand, this particular actress made it pretty clear that she didn’t want to be there. I mean I didn’t really either, but when I’m making $700+ a day, I put on a happy face and say, “Woohoo, Yonkers!”, and she literally signed up to make at least a thousand times that, whereas I often have no idea until the night before where I’m going to be filming or what the product is going to be. The one job I’ve turned down in the past year that I can remember was ads for Fox News, and I was lucky that the guy hiring me told me the truth and gave me the chance to opt out. (I did work on ads for Fox in the 2000s, when we knew they were bad, but not quite how bad, or at least that’s how I rationalize it now). The truth is, however, there’s very little about corporate America in general that I’d want to support. So perhaps the fact that I manage to maintain a decent quality of life doing work for one company for a few days here and another for a couple of days there there, without having to be associated with any of them in any long-term way, is the best I can manage in my current profession. Or maybe I say that because I need to earn a living as we all must do, and right now this is the only way for me to keep my health insurance.

The main thing that I see in these photos is how the beautiful surfaces remain after everything else is gone. To me, that really epitomizes mall culture. I spent a lot of time in malls as a kid. When I first moved to the suburbs, I remember thinking that the Livingston Mall was the coolest because it had Spencer Gifts, where I got my fiber lamp nightlight in rotating rainbow colors. You always wondered who bought those didn’t you? The answer is a a nine-year-old girl with no taste and an over-indulgent dad for whom shopping for toys was a recreational sport because he grew up with nothing. Then toward the end of 8^th grade, my new friends who cared about clothes schooled me that the Livingston Mall was, in fact, the opposite of cool, and that I ought to be shopping at the Short Hills Mall, where they had Benetton, and Laura Ashley (remember that, when we all dressed like we walked out of a combination of Pride & Prejudice and Little House on the Prairie, but with dry cleaning?), and Saks, and Ann Taylor, and eventually J. Crew. Thanks to my parents’ money and these friends’ rigid standards (oversized everything, natural fibers only, must-have closet staples of L.L. Bean fair isle sweater and blucher moccasins worn with no socks), I developed enough of a “style” that by the time I arrived at college, at least one person I met freshman year who became a good friend said that she was first drawn to me by my clothes. But I was first drawn to the clothes by desperation: I needed to crack the code of, if not how to be cool, then how to not be uncool, so that I would no longer be a target. And it worked. I learned how to blend in so well that it took me until my 40s to fully get that what I actually should be going for in life was to stand out.

One of the things I love about NYC is that it doesn’t really believe in malls. There are some in Brooklyn that you can count on to be extremely picked over (Target seems unable to comprehend the amount of product or perhaps shelf space they need for over 2.5 million people packed into 70 square miles), and some obvious failures in Manhattan like the former Manhattan Mall, formerly A&S Plaza (remember A&S? No, neither do I). There’s one called Brookfield Place off of the West Side Highway opposite One World Trade which I only know about because I’ve also had to film there, and the new-ish monstrosities at Columbus Circle, Hudson Yards, and, of course, The Oculus. But does anyone go to any of those places who isn’t a tourist? And why the heck do tourists go there? I mean, I get why people go to Times Square even though I only go there when forced to, because it’s a destination, it’s unique, all those lights and crazy LED billboards are a spectacle, but why the hell would you come into New York City to go to the mall?

Or maybe I only think that because all of those years going to garage sales and craft fairs with my dad made me find shopping extremely unentertaining, and also not the solution to life’s problems. Of course I did just explain how in junior high I realized it was, in fact, a solution to some very specific problems, but that’s because suburbia is conspicuous consumerism reborn as a destination. Bereft of the art and culture that make most cities interesting, life in suburbia becomes about spending enough money to be just like your neighbors — or slightly better, if you want to cause trouble. And malls are the places where you do that.

Of course, the fact that malls are dying (although maybe they’re making a comeback?) doesn’t mean that our culture is leaving behind the ills of consumerism that created them, oh hell no. Black Friday is nearly upon us and it’s blacker than ever, because like everything else in our lives, we’ve moved that online. Many of us, in particular, support one billionaires’ behemoth that is probably eventually going to devour us all — and yeah, we have Prime, because even though I know it’s evil, I need cheap socks, and do you actually expect me to wait three or four days for shipping like an animal? That article says people are coming back to malls to find community, but people find community online too, which I know has its downsides, but at least most online communities are built around shared interests or hobbies or panda videos. That will always be better than the mall to me, because I think finding your people, wherever you do it, should be about connecting over something meaningful to you personally, not shopping together because that’s what everyone else is doing and you’ve got nothing better to do.

Because beneath that shiny, colorful, branded surface is, well, this: a whole lot of emptiness.

* One of those appalling super-American situations that can only be dealt with through imagining what type of people certain corporations would be: Sephora — sorority girl, not as pretty as she thinks she is. Frito-Lay — stoner who’s hilarious at first but gets on your nerves when he won’t stop talking about “vibing.” Kelloggs — suburban, checked shirts, dad jokes. Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprungli — that European couple you met when you were really drunk at a club in Berlin who always comment on your Instagram posts. Tesla — overcompensating racist anti-semitic misogynist dirtbag with hair plugs (okay that one didn’t take much imagination).

Apologies for the dearth of posting lately! I was at The Writers Lab with a group of fantastic writers and mentors, and taking a lot of notes which will hopefully turn into me being a more betterer screenwriter.