
Uninteresting Places - luu
http://popula.com/2020/07/27/florida-mall/
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Apocryphon
I wonder how many weird internet musical micro-genres will be birthed by the
economic and social waste laid by COVID-19. Mallsoft was just a weird
vaporware offshoot paean to mall culture in the '80s and '90s; now it's a
requiem to the malls of today.

[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/mallwave-
mallsoft](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/mallwave-mallsoft)

~~~
TedDoesntTalk
What the...? I never heard of mallsoft before. I watched some of thoss videos
(well, listened). I cant believe that's a thing. I'm laughing. Am i supposed
to laugh or is this considered art?

~~~
thinkingemote
Mallsoft popped into my head when reading this too. Basically mallsoft is a
sub genre of vaporwave which is Ambient / electronic music with a focus on
evoking and creating nostalgia. mallsoft is a sub genre because it focuses on
the nostalgia of an empty shopping mall.

Vaporwave etc is absolutely fascinating.

It's also dead now.

~~~
Apocryphon
It's just expired because it was a big internet niche fad in like 2012.
Subsequent micro-genres have appeared since, and also had their turns. Perhaps
we'll soon see new ones based on '00s nostalgia.

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aosaigh
This feels more like a "I don't like David Sedaris" article than a
"Uninteresting Places" article.

~~~
zel_cole
Hi, author here. Thanks for reading! Glad to see the article getting interest
here. I do in fact like and respect Sedaris and have read several of his
books. Commenter throwanem put it well when they wrote that Sedaris is a
metonym. What Sedaris said at the talk gave me a certain feeling, and I wanted
to explore that. I think it's also a testament to his skill as a speaker that
he was interacting with the audience so much, and his interaction left an
impression on me.

~~~
sdenton4
Sedaris has been on the 'making old NPR listeners laugh via speaking gigs'
track for a looooong time now. I saw him in Berkeley a while back; go spend a
day in town and make jokes about it seems to be a bit of an easily-
transportable schtick. The bit I remember from Berkeley was a visit to a kind
of stationary store that was somehow appointment-only in like 2015-ish, and
got a mix of admiration (HOW?!) and ribbing (REALLY, BERKELEY?!).

That kind of mix of nostalgia and disdain is the essence of Sedaris, i
think... A cloying love for the past with a solid recognition and disdain for
the terrible parts of it. Mid-century modernism accompanied with a side of
unrelenting homophobia. The familiar atmosphere of home, suffused with the
cigarette smoke that will eventually, slowly, painfully kill your mother.

Like most comedy, there's a question of punching up vs punching down. Punching
up is funny: sticking it to the homophobes is great. But punching down is mean
and contemptible... So it all comes down to whether you, in the audience, see
Sedaris as a survivor/escapee of suburbia, or as some New York literati come
to talk about how much your mall sucks.

~~~
defen
> Like most comedy, there's a question of punching up vs punching down.

"Punching up" vs "punching down" is this weird trope that materialized in the
past couple years as a way to argue "making fun of MY preferred groups is not
allowed." But there are many successful professional comedians who don't agree
with it, and "punching down" on the rubes is in fact a time honored genre of
comedy...

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zgotsch
For those who left the article wondering what Sedaris’s beach house is named,
it is the “Sea Section”.

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matthewh806
Interesting article, I don't really know if this is what Sedaris is getting
at, but recently I came across the term "non-place":

Non-place or nonplace is a neologism coined by the French anthropologist Marc
Augé to refer to anthropological spaces of transience where the human beings
remain anonymous and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as
"places".

[https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/course...](https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/courses/archaeologiesofplace/7994.html)

From what I've read online the inclusion of shopping malls is a bit
contentious because for many friends they served as a central meeting &
hangout place. And as a result of that kind of transcend their primary
purpose. I can certainly see why people hold a strong nostalgic (possibly even
melancholic?) attachment to malls in particular.

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paulmooreparks
To the author: Thanks for this. I grew up in Tallahassee (actually, Havana,
but even fewer people know where Havana is than know where Tallahassee is). I
spent way too many hours of my childhood in Tallahassee Mall, Governor's
Square Mall (I remember when it opened), and the long-dead Northwood Mall.

Now I live in Singapore, another place with heat, humidity, rain, mosquitoes,
and reptiles eager to ruin your day. What it has that Tallahassee doesn't:
literally dozens of malls. :)

~~~
zel_cole
Thanks for reading and sharing your experience! I go to a gym that's in
Northwood Mall, and there are a couple other businesses survive. I should've
written about that one too, wish I could've seen it back in the day. The City
just bought Northwood and they're turning it into a big police station.

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andykx
So many formative moments in my life happened in my local mall. I live in the
exurbs of NYC and the mall was the only sensible, safe meeting place for my
friends and I. Notably, it was a place where we could hang out without parents
around.

It’s hard to defend the existence of malls. I think they’re a symptom of
larger problems concerning community design. I also think that they encourage
excessive commercialism. Still, none of that changes what the mall means to
me.

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Animats
This is a nostalgia thing. What he wants is this.[1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/VUMTshUflTg](https://youtu.be/VUMTshUflTg)

~~~
zel_cole
Hi, thanks for reading. You're right, but the mall golden age was before my
time. What I like about the mall I wrote about is that it doesn't feel dead,
it still has some of the essence captured in Fast Times or this video, which
is one of my favorites:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_q7zfJwQIsg](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_q7zfJwQIsg)

~~~
TedDoesntTalk
I grew up in the 80s and went to the mall many friday and saturday nights to
be with friends and, later, to flirt with girls.

A typical exciting night went like this: parents dropped us off and picked us
up (too young to drive). Sometimes I'd carpool with friends, sometimes we
would just meet there.

We might catch a movie (two screens were typical, maybe 3, so they could fit a
theatre attached to a mall unlike today's 24-screen monsters).

Then we would hit the mall video arcade -- some malls even had two arcades! --
then the ice cream shop or Orange Julius ... this was before food courts...
then browsing or shopping at KB Toys toy stores, Spencer Gifts, and Encore or
Walden Books (especially the Dungeons & Dragons section in the book stores).

But the primary reason for going was to socialize. We would pass other groups
of kids walking up and down the mall like us, looking for something do but
really just enjoying being together but never admitting that to each other.
That wouldn't be cool.

Sometimes we knew those other groups of kids, sometimes not, and on rare
occasions a fight might break out or at least a chase through the mall.

I didnt go into the department stores really, unless they had a toy section or
maybe a sports section, but i think the girls went into them for makeup, etc.
Claire's didnt exist yet and neither did Victoria's Secret or Target.

When it was time to go, we'd call the parents on pay phones if we hadn't
prearranged a pickup time, then wait outside if it was summer.

I remember seeing E.T. in theatres in this manner in the summer of 1982. And
later, Rocky III.

Simple memories of fun childhood times when we were learning independence.

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hardlianotion
I'm a little shocked, actually, that the writer dislikes David Sedaris.

~~~
fartcannon
Interesting, I like malls and dislike David Sedaris. I dont think Ive ever
felt so connected to an author before. Different strokes, I suppose.

~~~
zel_cole
Glad I'm not alone! Thanks for reading. Like I've commented elsewhere in this
thread, I by no means hate David Sedaris. I think he of all people would
appreciate a nobody taking potshots at a famous writer, and hopefully value my
criticism. That criticism is genuine but ultimately lighthearted and an avenue
to discuss other feelings.

