4 Ways British and American Malls Are Very Different

The time has finally arrived to do a deep dive into British vs. American malls.

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[eliinthewolverinestate]

Save the malls. Move the senor center and social security office into them. Malls here get the most use by senors walking laps in them. It is climate controlling, plenty of seating, and bathrooms.

[aredub]

the sears Christmas catalog was THE THING.

[uncletoby-]

Oh now, Nephew you’re too big of a YouTube Sensation to ever fail.

[MrDEWaters]

It is ironic that Sears started out as a remote shopping company. The Sears catalogue was used by people in small towns across the U.S. and purchased items were shipped to local catalog stores or by mail. The company failed to adapt when online purchases became common in the computer age. There are two malls that have recently been demolished in the St. Louis area, where I live. Malls that are thriving seem to be the more upscale ones.

[SecretSquirrelFun]

My father used to call the local shopping centre the “indoor mall”.

Makes total sense now. Thanks.

[cathywells]

The Mall of America is my local mall. I do a lot of shopping there because it's such a one-stop shop. Between there being no sales tax on clothes in MN, the mall having two hotels, and being 10 minutes from the airport, it is a tourist destination. Plus there's an Ikea in the adjacent parking lot. The indoor amusement park is actually not bad either. It's a great place to kill time if nothing else.

[maryannspicher]

I hate shopping online. Nothing ever fits right, you can’t feel the materials. How can you know what a perfume will smell like? Or a new candle scent? You can’t tell the quality of what you’re buying and the joke is always on us.

[hypocrisyhunter]

In the U.S. a shopping mall is enclosed while a shopping center, you must go outside to change stores.

[elultimo]

Being an ex-Chicago boy, a "shopping center" was a group of adjacent stores, requiring one to exit outside to enter another store. A "mall" was an enclosed center, sometimes with store entrances outside, but also rear doors which entered the courtyard. (A very convenient way to shop in Chicago, to avoid the blizzards or the sweltering heat and humidity).

[Fadamor]

Here in the Washington DC suburb of Alexandria, VA, there was a large mall that opened back in the 1960s called Landmark Center. There were three anchor tenants: Woodward & Lothrop (later Lord & Taylor), Hecht Co. (later Macy's), and Sears Roebuck & Co. (later just "Sears"). It was originally an outdoor mall but they enclosed it in 1990 - changing the name to "Landmark Mall".
The mall went through the typical rise and fall of most malls until by February 1, 2017, the "mall" had only one tenant still open for business - Sears. The only reason the mall owners, who wanted to re-purpose the land for something more profitable, couldn't evict Sears was because a clause in Sears' tenant contract stated that Sears couldn't be forced to leave - they had to decide to leave on their own accord. I sometimes wonder if Sears - who was definitely hurting financially by 2017 - was hoping the landlords would forcibly evict them, allowing them to receive some money via a breach of contract lawsuit. The landlords wouldn't comply, however, and us local residents would see a massive, empty parking lot leading up to the Sears anchor building with a huge banner saying "Yes, We're Still Open!". Eventually Sears couldn't justify the expense of paying the rent and employee wages for the small number of customers that still shopped there during COVID, In the middle of 2020, Sears announced that they would be closing their Landmark store as part of a 28-store closing. Thus ended the story of Landmark Mall, Alexandria, VA.

[ronsbookreview]

Hey Lawrence, you should have a branch segment for things distinctively about Chicago, like the food, the sites, and your perspective of the culture and history from the perspective of a person who grew up in something way different.

[OldMan_PJ]

The mall near me is basically a few resellers charging 3x the price you would pay anywhere else and a Gamestop that mysteriously remains open. No food court, no clothing stores, and no Santa. Edit - LOL, the Sierra Vista mall sign you used in your video is my local mall, the Sears store closed years ago, Target is outside the mall, and Kohl's keeps the steel gate closed that opens to the mall to reduce theft.

[rpd]

As a member of the boomer generation, I find that if I spend too long in a shopping mall or big box store I start feeling disoriented, I refer to this state as being malled, and it is an indication that it is time to go home. :)

[TerryTheNewsGirl]

To Americans: if you come to Sheffield, do not visit Meadowhall. It's pet-named Meadowhell for a reason. Visit either the Meadowhall retail park (strip mall) and Ikea further down the road or ignore them and go to Crystal Peaks. Much quieter and much nicer. I prefer stores with more variety like Home Bargains or the Range and sadly the now defunct Wilko.

[Hollandsemum]

As an older person, the term shopping center was used in the US before the enclosed mall. The earliest malls were open air. Loops of separate stores with covered walkways (Old Orchard in Skokie, and Short Hills in NJ - though I haven't seen the latter since around 1970). Once enclosed Malls came into being, the the open air Malls adopted the name leaving the term shopping center for linear strips of stores, which are now called strip malls. It's clear that the word mall is shorter and faster to use. The only time I can think of using the term today is generically for a variety of types together, as in 'this town has five shopping centers and that one has two' so you don't have to specify.
The term shopping precinct just isn't used in the US, I'd guess because the word precinct as a geographic area tends to be used for defining your voting area & topics, and police coverage areas. Both are quite serious in the US, and I cannot think it would occur to anyone to apply the word to something as relatively common and sometimes frivolous as shopping.
Btw, open air malls are interesting - like that time a tractor trailer hauling cows flipped over on the Edens in the middle of the night, , and some of the cows were found wandering through Old Orchard.

[saraross]

While shopping online is convenient, I do prefer in-person whenever possible. It's much easier to check the quality, material, and especially size when it comes to clothing.

You hit a memory when you mentioned Sears. I was surprised to see one still hanging on a few years ago in the Gardens Mall in Florida. It was a shell of its former self. When I was a kid, the lower level had appliances, and the upper level (it's a two story mall) had clothing and accessories, both brim full. When I visited a few years ago, all that was left was a small collection of clothes and purses. When I visited earlier this year, it had completely gone. The mall itself still seemed very active.

[GeneCash]

Lawrence, where was the wind whooshing away the marshmallows from the "SUBSCRIBE"??? How will I know what to click on?

[jonofthehill]

Speaking of Malls, do you have a video yet on British vs American movie theaters/theatres? The theater in our Mall is its life-blood.

[georgehelyar]

I'm guessing the main difference is that in the UK we now only have asian barbers, polski skleps and bookies in ours. Maybe a Primark or Lidl if you're lucky.

[onceuponamelody]

I'm originally from Alaska - since shipping is always costly, malls still do pretty well there (with a couple exceptions in certain areas, but those ones have historically always been dodgy). I remember hearing about malls dying in the early 2000s, and as a mall rat teen, I was like "What?!" Now I get it - being in a state with same-day Amazon shipping makes a HUGE difference.