The sneaky, smart reasons malls have no windows

[underpants]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/22/business/malls-lack-windows-curious-consumer/index.html


The birth of the American mall ushered in an era of “windowless” shopping that’s largely still here. The strategy was clever and little details in the planning –- from the no-frills shoebox architecture to potted plants – were carefully thought out. These were cost-saving measures for mall operators that were also designed to influence mallgoers to spend freely. The unnaturally bright artificial lighting strived to create a perpetual daytime environment. This way, mall visitors would stay longer than they had expected to and spent more than they would have wanted to.

Fewer windows and more walls, he said, meant more space for retailers to add shelves and rods to stock their products and maximize sales per square foot in their stores that would otherwise be lost to a dull view of a mall parking lot.

But the sneakiest reason why malls limit windows could be to make shoppers lose track of time.

You’ll never see a clock in a casino or a well run bar

[Stuart G]

1. Great Post that gives Incredible Information. Thank You For Posting This One...K and R

[forgotmylogin]

15. I do remember a couple of times...

Going into a mall in the afternoon and being surprised it was dark when we left. It's similar to going to a matinee movie and the whiplash of emerging in dusk. And our mall had skylights, but also flood lights outside shining on them at night so the sun going down was less perceptible.

[hlthe2b]

2. I for one will mourn the loss of shopping malls--especially during weather extremes. I already see

the negative impact among many, including the elderly who have lost their safe and convenient "mall-walking" environment.

The larger ones were common meeting centers and community shelters when needed.

I do not find their demise to be anything but a boon to Amazon (and others) and a loss to the rest of us.

[japple]

4. You and me both. I was just lamenting the lack of a climate controlled place to walk

this morning. It was already 80 by 9:30 here in GA and I cannot tolerate summer sun and heat.

[ShazzieB]

6. Add me to the list.

I hate to see them go.

[Warpy]

10. I do, but for what that loss represents

which is a loss of buying power among working people. Oh, the upper income people rarely went to malls, it was catalog orders and open air shopping at stores with designer names on them. Upper middle class and below did go to them.

After 2008, business seemed to slow to a trickle.. 2020 with lockdowns and people too afraid to go out in states without lockdowns pretty much finished them off. Megamergers and bankruptcies among "anchor stores" also played a big part in their demise.

It's just another symptom of end stage capitalism. Monopolies don't need climate controlled shopping palaces, we have to go there because there's nowhere else to go. Billionaires no longer need us to buy anything, anyway, they move their money around to make it look like they're getting more and more of it.

And that's why I moourn the loss of shopping malls.

[Dem2theMax]

3. In my shopping days, meaning when I had more income to play around with,

I remember being shocked when I got ready to leave the mall, and it was dark outside! Did that more than once.

[PatSeg]

7. In my much younger days,

I remember leaving a bar not realizing how much time had passed. It was quite a shock to see it was dark outside. I rarely spent enough time in a mall to lose track of time, except when I worked in one. I was occasionally shocked leaving work being I didn't realize it was already dark.

Worse than that though was leaving work and not knowing a foot of snow was waiting in the parking lot! Or that it was pouring rain outside.

[Dem2theMax]

9. Yep.

Darkness is one thing. But weather? Especially snow! I used to live in the mountains, but it was during winter, so I was always prepared for snow.

Coming out of the mall and having serious, SURPRISE! weather to deal with is a totally different issue.

[PatSeg]

11. Often left the house without boots or an umbrella

The weather forecast didn't tell to expect precipitation! This was in the Chicago area, so there was also a chance that the temperature could drop 30 or 40 degrees while I was inside.

[Dem2theMax]

14. Chicago explains it!

I've been in Southern California most of my life.
Usually, the only surprise here is that the weather person says it's not going to be very hot, but then it is. 🥵🥵

[PatSeg]

16. Ha, ha, ha!

[Farmer-Rick]

5. I never liked malls

They always felt so claustrophobic to me without those windows or sunlight.

As a kid from a family of 8, mall items were always too expensive for my family to afford. Even when I started earning my own money, I avoided malls if I could find other stores to shop in.

So, I'm glad they are dying out. Maybe small stores on main street will come back.

[PatSeg]

8. Same here

I rarely went to malls other than during the holidays. Even then I rarely spent much money. I didn't find them inviting or comfortable.

I haven't been to a mall in years and I don't miss them. I used to managed a couple of stores in a very small neighborhood mall and that I rather liked. It had a community feel to it and the prices were reasonable.

[marble falls]

12. My KKK neighbor in Nebrask said it's to prevent easy excapes when they get turned into FEMA camps.

... he found out I designed some windows that were installed in the Putnam Camp of the Indiana Corrections Dept. He'd been there in the 70s for buning down a black owned bldg in Indianapolis. He asked me if I had put instructions of how to take the window apart for an escape. I asked him what good would that do? You'd have to know how to take it apart to get the instructions to take it apart, let alone we welded them together.

"https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/carlisle-briscoe/

Acting on reports of witnesses, police are searching for a white male with dark hair, about 5’8”, 160 lbs., wearing a light gray finger-length topcoat at the time of the fire.

Whether or not either of these played any part in the search for the perpetrators, or if they were identified in some other way, on August 6, 1969 the Marion County Circuit Court issued arrest warrants for two men in relation to the crime. One of those men, Carlisle Briscoe, Jr., plead guilty to the second degree arson charges while implicating as an accomplice Jackie Dale Kinser, whom he accused of driving the get-away vehicle. Eventually, the charges against Kinser would be dropped, just before he plead guilty to three unrelated crimes.

Both men had strong ties to the local Ku Klux Klan – Kinser was a member who in subsequent years would be arrested multiple times in Klan-related crimes. Briscoe’s Klan connections are slightly less clear. At first, Monroe County Prosecutor Thomas Berry and Sheriff Clifford Thrasher announced that both men were Klan members. An article in the September 19, 1969 issue of the Indianapolis Star, states that Briscoe himself claimed to be a Klan member. The headline of Briscoe’s obituary in the Vincennes Sun-Commercial proclaims, “Notorious Klansman Dies in Prison: Briscoe Led a Bloomington Crime Wave in 1960s and ‘70s.” As late as 1977, he was arrested while committing crimes alongside Klan members, apparently while carrying out Klan business. However, in 1969, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan, William Chaney, denied that Briscoe was a member of the organization. Regardless of Briscoe’s official Klan membership status, Briscoe at the very least maintained close ties with the terrorist organization. He was sentenced to one to ten years and was released on April 7, 1973 after serving approximately three and a half years of his sentence."


https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/court-of-appeals/1979/1-1077a238-6.html

After he was convicted of some more serious stuff including attempted murder. His appeal was denied.

Carlisle passed in a Nebraska prison "mysteriously" according to his sister on a memorial page around 2016 I found later, just short of release.

Interesting obit:

https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2013/07/19/otorious-klansman-dies-in-priso/47190753/

Interesting if hugely dangerous guy. He let us shut his racism and Nazi shit off around us, but I never knew the whole story until after he died. Never knew how scary he was.

[debm55]

13. TY, underpants. That is very interesting.

[mucifer]

17. I thought because this could happen:

?si=23ulTDqwqtCAwnOp

[underpants]

19. 😆

[snot]

18. Clocks and mention of the time have gotten scarce everywhere,

even on the radio – I expect for the same reason – and I miss them!