June 20, 2009
The shopping mall. Sure these places still exist, but in this day and age do they still stand as grand monuments to our consumerist lifestyle? With the internet they are ideal for instant gratification, but the goods I want are not typically available at malls. But still there is a special place in my heart for what I always referred to as “my mall”, and that mall was Southwyck Shopping Center.
Located in South Toledo, Southwyck was a central location for me during my formative teenage years. It was not too far from my high school, literally right across the street from my best friend’s house, and right next to my after school job. My friends and I always seemed to end up at Southwyck for one reason or another, but not generally to shop. Just like the main characters in Kevin Smith’s movie Mallrats, we just hung around the mall with little else to do. It was a refuge, a place to go when you didn’t want to go home and had no money to actually go anywhere else.
The mall has seen better days, and last year it finally shut it’s doors for good. The area isn’t exactly a hot bed for shopping these days and once the last anchor store shut it’s doors you knew it was doomed. The mall was being left to rot, and other open air malls were going in just down the road instead of revitalizing Southwyck. FFgeeks.net has some great photos of the mall before it closed, including the extremely depressing food court. A few months ago the demolition of Southwyck started, and now it’s been reduced to nothing more than a pile of rubble. I drive past it on my way to work each day. But the more it disappears, the more I remember all the great times I had hanging out there:
- Being a cub scout the regional pinewood derby tournament was held at Southwyck. One year both my brother and I got to the finals since our scout troop was so small. While my brother’s group was racing, I’d duck into the B. Dalton bookstore and catch my first glimpses of the nude female form thanks to Playboy magazine. I was tall for my age and would shove the Playboy into a copy of Scientific American, which I would flip back to when people would come over to look at the magazines. My brother of course told my mother what I was up too and I’ll never forget her telling him, “I don’t doubt it”. Awesome, thanks Mom! Keep reading →
