PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson
CURSES, AMAZONED AGAIN
Poor forlorn shopping mall, not long ago, it was visited and loved by many. It was chock-a-block, cheek-by-jowl with teeming throngs of shoppers. If you felt someone else’s hand in your pocket, it wasn’t a pickpocket. It was just the guy beside you trying to reach his wallet.
Sadly, times and technologies change. Now, people buy things they can’t feel, hold, try, or try on, online, and little toy helicopters deliver them to your door. I miss the milling crowds, almost as much as the forlorn mall merchants do. At least I can get a parking space near the door.
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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.
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As a personal pat on my own back, today’s 100-word Flash Fiction is my number 900 published blog-post. I know of a couple of bloggers who have been at this for over 10 years. At least one of them has surpassed the 2000 mark. Plod, plod, plod, I am better than the May-flies who flutter in and die after a few posts, or the uncommitted, who post “I know I haven’t published anything in over a year…”
Archon's Den 
First of all, kudos on the 900th! I’m only at 482 and I’ve been at it for 4.75 years 😉
And as for this flash, it is so true. I miss the hustle and bustle of the crowds and almost miss the cursing to find a parking space. I don’t know about your area but this new style of mall that is really an outdoor complex is a pain in the ass. You need to walk outside and they are so huge, you need to move your car from one store to the next because there is a mile in between and you can’t be carrying your bags…
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Thanx for the head-pat 🙂
I first ran into the outdoor-style mall 25 years ago in South Carolina. At least there was no snow to trudge through. They must have followed me home, because the next year, I found one, early December, in Niagara Falls….and there was snow. 😯
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😊
Guess they are not new then…
We do have a humongous one that in winter has 2-3 fire pits going and music playing… trying to give the ole ambiance…
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There’s a saying that ‘Indian build small fire. Keep warm by sitting close. White man build huge fire. Keep warm by chopping and carrying wood.’
We have no local malls with fire pits. However, the nearby Saint Jacob’s Farmers’ Market (6/8 acres) has two, between A and B buildings, and B and C buildings. 4-foot metal pyramids with steel grating to contain the fire, manufactured by local Mennonites. You can find them in Home Hardware (also headquartered in St Jacob’s) stores/catalogs.
Staff never add much wood, so crowds get warm by huddling around them. Like yours, they’re more for ambience. Put some wood-smoke in the air to make tourists feel they’ve found the “real country market.” 😉
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Exactly! All around with you on this comment.
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Home shopping on another level at the cost of human interaction. 😀
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It’s a sad comment about social change, driven by technological advances. Smart phones and tablets connect – but separate us from others. 😦
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Yeah exactly. Probably only going to get worse as time goes on too.
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Honestly, I hate shopping at malls because of the crowds, so whenever I do go now, I cherish the emptiness so that I can look at stuff in peace.
And more importantly, congrats on the 900 mark 🙂
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Thanx for the congrats. I shall attempt to produce more. 🙂
This is definitely a work of fiction. I too hate large crowds. There must be a happy medium, but I’m not happy if I can’t just get what I want, and get out quickly and easily. I am part of the problem. I stay away from malls from the first of November, till after New Year’s. I increasingly order online, and Mr. Amazon knows my address. 😳
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I wonder if nostalgia in the future will be so lonely.
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Possibly not. The social pendulum may swing in the opposite direction, but there will always be something for old fogies like me to decry, “In my day, things were a lot better.” 😛
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Well done on the 900. Great take on the prompt. Incredibly interesting.
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Thank you for both lovely thoughts. I felt that this was one of my ‘lighter’ FF posts, but find that I’ve struck another social nerve. 🙂
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Perhaps ‘Shopping Malls’ should be dismantled and shipped over seas to new sites. I would be pleased to see the old fashioned corner shops return. Congratulations on the 900.
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City Council here is using Light Rail to re-invigorate the downtown core. It is working to some extent, but new malls keep going up around the outskirts. 😯
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A sad observation very well written. The little market town I live in is losing shops every week. Buildings either stand empty or become residential. When I want to revisit my childhood excitement at going “to the shops” I have started taking the train into London and going to the East End – Brick Lane, Spitalfields then off to Notting Hill to get my fix of bustle.
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So true, so true! My solid little manufacturing home town of 1800, is now a tourist/retirement community of 3200. The four furniture and plywood plants are closed. We have a big chain supermarket. The small, independent grocery stores are now bubble tea, or palm reader, or antique stores for old fogies like me who want things as old as they are. Anything to separate the gullible from their cash.
The wife’s penchant for watching documentaries and imported British ‘telly’ has me almost as knowledgeable about London, England, as I am of London, Ontario, an hour’s drive down the highway. We recently watched how (Ho)spitalfields got its name, and the archeological dig some years ago where they unearthed hundreds of skeletons of plague victims.
Thanx for the visit. You are always welcome here. 🙂
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Sad. But I, too, have become an online shopper. I just don’t like malls. Never did.
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I understand why lab rats will attack and fight each other when their population density becomes too high.
I like things better when – I had a day off, and went roller-skating in the afternoon – and was the only customer. The teen male employee refunded my money, even after I’d had a GREAT time. Or when the wife, son and I went to a movie near the end of its run – and were the only three viewers in that particular multiplex.
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