The Life and Death of American Malls

Saturdays in high school, if I wasn’t getting wasted on Coors Light in a friend’s basement, I was at the mall. It was the largest in my state (Pennsylvania) and the third-largest in the nation: 2.7 million square feet of retail, two food courts, seven department stores, 40-plus restaurants, a brewery, majestically arcing skylights, and a 30-foot-tall fountain lined with marble. It was always 70 degrees, the tiled floor was always immaculate, and it was never empty.