In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 129: Classic Mall Stores of the 1970s, 1980s, & 1990s Part 1(1-24-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 129

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Let's go to the mall! Words that were always music to the ears of anyone who grew up in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. A visit to the mall was always a special and exciting time back then.
The indoor mall is still a popular destination today, however, its heyday was definitely the '70s through the '90s. 
You didn't need much money as the 'mall rat' identity only required you to be inside a mall hanging out with friends. Kids of the day could spend hours sitting on benches or wandering the corridors looking into some of the stores that will be mentioned this week.
In Episode 129 of the podcast, we will look back at some of the popular, beloved, and maybe some lesser-known mall stores that attracted customers, or perhaps at least hordes of wandering mall rats.
How many of these stores did you spend hard-earned money at?
If your favorite store of the past isn't mentioned have no fear as there will be a Part 2 coming in the future!
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Speaker 00:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 129. You've heard of chicken soup for the soul. Well, this is going to be sort of like that. Chicken soup for the Generation X soul. As this episode, we're going to dive into classic mall stores of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. It's all the nostalgia you could possibly want and very likely is going to be part one of at least two, maybe more, when you think back to all of the famed mall stores from the 70s, 80s, 90s and lesser known ones that you probably don't remember because they came and went in a flash so what i've got is a list of 15 mall stores obviously in no particular order and we're going to go into each one share some history some memories and if any of these if i gloss over them kind of a bit and you want to hear more about them you can always hit me up let me know As we start leaning more and more into the nostalgia, the Gen X years, things that happened in the 70s, 80s, 90s, I'm going to have more and more room on the podcast to do deeper dives into things like individual classic mall stores, etc. But before we jump into that, just a little bit of house cleaning to start the podcast. I wanted to say thank you to the great people at Connect 55 and Buzzards Bay, the retirement community. Recently, I debuted a new presentation. I had mentioned it before on the podcast called 12 Stories for 12 Generations. And this is 12 of my favorite stories, not the 12, but 12 of many that I think kind of define Cape Cod. It was a big hit, so I'm really excited because what I want to do in 2024 is have a presentation like that, which is not connected directly to any specific book of mine, because I'd love to do events and not have to do all the work on books to lead up to them. And of course, a big thank you to Pandora Peoples for setting this all up. We recently, as in this past weekend, did an interview for WOMR where she is a radio host speaking a lot about the Lady of the Dunes as this is now the 50th anniversary of that infamous crime. I'll be sure to link to that interview once I have the link in hand. I also wanted to take a moment to wish all the best to former now New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who left after 24 years. I have an interesting story about him. So the third book I wrote was a Nantucket travel guide. And those of you that are from here and know the sports world, you might know that Bill Belichick has a home on Nantucket where he stays quite a bit. So naturally, once this Nantucket book was released in 2016, one of the first things I thought about was getting a copy of it sent to him. So I sent a signed copy of the book to his office at Patriot Place, not expecting anything. But lo and behold, a few weeks later, I got a signed response back from Coach Belichick. So the letter was typed. He could have dictated it. It very much sounded like something he would say. Very dry. You know, basically just saying thank you for the book. I received it. Thank you for your support. I have no idea if he ever read it. It's probably just tucked away in a drawer. And now that he's gone from the Patriots, maybe it's in the trash. But I treasure it. I have that letter that's signed by him in a frame on my wall. So I just wanted to wish him good luck, knowing that if he never looked at the book, he'll never listen to the podcast. But still, for record keeping sake, I wished him good luck on the way out. So classic mall stores, where did this come from? So for all transparency, my goal... was to write kind of a little bit of what they call a listicle, an article that doubles as a list of the original Cape Cod Mall stores and what they were, where they ended up. There are more than 50 original mall stores when the Cape Cod Mall opened in 1970. Some of them were easy to find the histories of. Others were not. Some of these were local stores that were in and out pretty quick. So for a few of them, the only history I have is the announcement that they were going to be in the Cape Cod Mall. There's nothing else. But then I realized that with the dawn of the indoor mall in the late 60s, early 70s, a lot of these mall stores weren't unique to Cape Cod. They were in most of these malls. And so that's where this came from. I wanted to get a list going of mall stores that were in places, not just Cape Cod, not just New England, but wherever you're listening from in the U.S. or across the oceans. Stores that you would be familiar with, or if you're not familiar with, would be interested in hearing about. The history of the mall as we know it began in 1956 with the opening of the Southdale Center Mall. In Edina, Minnesota. I hope I said that right. Edina, Edna. Sorry to anyone from there who's listening. But this indoor mall, it was revolutionary. People could shop at all these different stores and not have to venture outside into the weather. So in Minnesota in the winter, could you imagine? It's been cold on Cape Cod in the last few weeks in the 20s. In Minnesota, they're routinely below zero this time of year. So an indoor mall was... The greatest thing ever. The peak of the indoor mall was the 1980s. And I think that's why this episode, malls in general and such, will really appeal to people of my generation, my age group, because that's what we grew up with. I mean, back in episode 110, I did a back in the day segment about being a 90s mall rat. And for people of my age, maybe a little older, a little younger, you know, hovering around right now, your late 30s to early to mid 50s, the mall rat was an identity. And malls and these stores we're going to get into in a second are going to bring back all that comfort food for the soul. I'm going to live up to my words saying I wanted this to be all inclusive for people across the country. So not just people from Cape Cod, New England. So some of these stores in here, I never saw in the mall. Cape Cod didn't have them. And I didn't really venture all around checking out different malls from New England growing up. But there's the prelude. Let's jump into this list. 15 stores, no particular order, memories galore starting right now. Let's start with Woolworth. Anyone out there remember Woolworth? If you're younger than 30, you likely only know them through history videos. This was a five and dime retail store. created by F.W. Woolworth in Utica, New York, all the way back in 1879. I can remember this store from the Cape Cod Mall. That logo they had was kind of a retro chic blue swooshy type logo. For those younger that aren't sure exactly what Woolworth was, think of it as Target, as Walmart, or people a little older, Kmart. That's really what it was, Bradley's. What's interesting about Woolworth and a few of the other stores that are on this list is thinking about the fact that there was a time when you couldn't imagine this store not existing. For me, I remember the Woolworth and the Cape Cod Mall closed at the end of 1993. And in reality, they still operate... a few stores outside of the US and they transitioned their business to the Foot Locker brand. So if you think of Foot Locker, that's kind of the spiritual successor to Woolworth. But going back to what I was saying, imagine being someone of your parents' generation, grandparents' generation, growing up with Woolworth being the big store along with Macy's maybe. It's like people today telling someone that someday target or walmart will be gone or that amazon.com will be shut down like these giants of business that's what woolworth was it was a giant for decades but like i mentioned the other stores currently that are like that target walmart and i mean recently kmart The advent of those stores was really what did in Woolworth. Having more competition, other places to get that same sort of a deal eventually did it in. The last Woolworth in the U.S. closed in 1997. The second store I was going to talk about was Sears or Sears and Roebuck for anyone who's in their 80s or 90s listening. Right up there, neck and neck with Woolworth. Giants. Sears and Roebuck. They started off as a mail order catalog company. Go back to episode 123 if you want to hear about the top five weirdest Sears catalog products ever sold. Richard Sears and Alva Roebuck founded the company in 1892. Like I said, a mail order catalog. They began in Chicago, which is where the formerly Sears Tower, which at one point was the tallest building in the world. That's why that's there. For decades, Sears was the largest retail company in the world, all the way up to the 1980s. So even when I was a kid going to the mall, you never could have convinced me that Sears was going to go under. Granted, it's not like Woolworth. There are still some Sears around, not many. The one in the Cape Cod Mall I believe closed in 2018 and made way for Target, naturally. Sears was more a department store than a five and dime like Woolworth. They had everything. Anyone who is of the age that remembers when Sears was a giant, you can picture in your mind. Clothes, appliances, sporting goods, anything. It's hard not to stress enough how big Sears was to those that are younger that think of them as kind of ancient history or has-been store. Much like with Woolworth, the growth of Kmart, Target, Walmart, that all affected Sears. Although, interestingly... In 2004, Sears and Kmart basically merged. They didn't combine their stores, but they became under one umbrella, same company, which seemed like trying to save two floundering store chains. But if you had said in the 70s or 80s that one day Kmart and Sears are going to combine, it might not be like... Apple and Microsoft combining. But it's just big, big names getting together. But in reality, it didn't help them. 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy. Kmart has since gone under. We had one on Cape Cod and Hyannis for decades. It closed last year. Actually, it's probably 2022. I keep saying it like it's last year. I got to remember it's 2024. As of last month, so December 2023, There are only 12 active Sears stores left in the United States. And they still have their website, but I don't know how much longer they're going to last. Moving on to a store that I am not familiar with because it wasn't on Cape Cod, and that is Montgomery Ward. For all I have read and researched, Montgomery Ward was very similar to Sears. The chain was started by a man named Aaron Montgomery Ward. in Chicago in 1872. So interesting that it was a lot like Sears and it was started in the same city as Sears around the same time. They were also known for their mail order catalog. In fact, you can find most of them online. You can actually flip through them. They're digitized. So that's a fun look back in time for those that are interested in that type of stuff. Those of you who are familiar with Montgomery Ward and likely from places not in New England, you can let me know if Montgomery Ward and Sears were ever in the same mall, or maybe if it was something like one mall gets a Sears, you can't have the other, and one mall gets Montgomery Ward, you can't have the other, vice versa like that. Much like with Sears, the increased competition really affected Montgomery Ward. They closed their mail order catalog in the 1980s to really focus on their actual physical brick and mortar department stores. But they closed down in 2001. An interesting little side note is that Montgomery Ward still exists today, but it's a different company because it went out of business in 2001. But in 2004, it opened as an online retail site. It's just wards.com. And on their website, they mention 150 years of history. So even though they closed in 2001 and reopened, I guess they're considering themselves to be the same business from all the way back in 1872. The fourth store, and one I remember from the Cape Cod Mall, is The Limited, which was a popular women's clothing store, which first opened in 1963 in Ohio. It was called The Limited because the clothing was focused on the younger generation at the time. And The Limited was a big deal for a while. They went public in 1977. In the 80s, they bought a lot of other companies, including the Victoria's Secret stores, Lane Bryant, Lerner's stores, and some Abercrombie & Fitch. But with The Limited, it was two things. Again, increased competition, which... I'm sure any of you that had gone into the mall in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, there's not just one women's clothing store or one clothing store in general. There's half a dozen just in the same mall. And you multiply that all across the country. And I guess in my research, it says they didn't really adapt to the changing fashion trends of the 21st century, which led to them closing their brick and mortar stores in 2017. I never went into the limited, never shopped at the limited, so I don't know much about what they had, what their appeal was. Any of you ladies out there that have shopped there, let me know what it was that appealed to you about them. They still operate online, though. Belk.com has a limited section. I don't know how similar it is to the former mall stores, but you can go check it out. The fifth store is one that should be familiar to everyone of my generation, and that was Walden Books. Even if you didn't go there to buy books, you could go and read them like it was a library and then leave. I remember Walden Books in the Cape Cod Mall. It was wide open, so there wasn't a door to go in. It was the whole front was wide open, and they would have tables that would kind of creep out into the hallway that had books on them, which I'm sure that was good for thievery. They were first founded in 1933 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Even with the rise of online bookstores and e-books, I don't think physical bookstores are going to go away. Although I'm saying that as talking about Walden Books, which went out of business in 2011. At its peak in 1994, Walden Books had more than 1,200 locations. They were purchased by Kmart in 1984. And then in 1992, Kmart also bought Borders Books. And obviously, you can see where this goes. Eventually, they merged these bookstores together. So starting in 2004, the Walden Books were converted into something called Borders Express Books. Which I don't remember on Cape Cod. I remember it was just gone. Not too long later, though, 2011, Borders went out of business. But for those that love actual bookstores, I mean, there's plenty of mom and pop ones. We've got tons on Cape Cod. And of course, the giant Barnes and Noble that seems to show no signs of slowing down. So we've been walking around the mall here, checking out all these famous stores from the 70s, 80s, 90s. Have you started to get hungry, thirsty? Well, let's stop at Orange Julius. Oh man, the Orange Julius store. God, that was front and center. At the old Cape Cod Mall, the middle of it, you would walk in through Filene's. And when you got out of Filene's, you were facing the food court. And to your right, the beginning of the food court was the Orange Julius with the machine mixing that famous drink. They began in the late 1920s, and their signature Orange Julius drink is ice, orange juice, milk, some kind of sweetener, powdered egg whites, and vanilla. It's funny, you can find that recipe online, so I guess they don't care if you make it yourself at home. They were a destination. Orange Julius, you'd see people walking all around the malls with those cups. They were kind of orange and white, and the O in orange had the little leaf on it, so it was kind of like the fruit. In 1987, Orange Julius was bought by Dairy Queen. And it says as of 2023, there were more than 960 locations. Now, I don't know if that's Orange Julius in the Dairy Queen or ones on their own, because I know the Dairy Queen, at least one on Cape Cod, has an Orange Julius in it. But any of you out there, do you have an actual standalone Orange Julius or one in the mall still where you're from? I seem to remember the Orange Julius and the Cape Cod Mall going away when they expanded and the food court kind of migrated to one end of the mall. If you were in need of records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, maybe CDs, you could go to Sam Goody. Now granted, Cape Cod Mall, we didn't have Sam Goody. We had Record Town, we had Tape World. There was never 8-Track World or CD Town. I guess those names just kind of went with the time. Sam Goody was started in the late 1940s as vinyl records really became popular. The man who started it was a man named Sam Goodowitz, also known as Sam Goody. This chain of stores grew throughout the 50s and 60s and 70s. In 1978, they were purchased by Musicland, which was Sam Goody's rival. That's another store that we didn't have in our Cape Cod mall, so I'm sure a lot of you hear Musicland, and that brings back memories too. For a time in the 1980s, that Musicland group of Musicland Sam Goody, they were the largest music retailer in the country, with more than 1,300 stores, including more than 800 being Sam Goody's. Much like with books, though, the changing of how people consume music is what affected Sam Goody as people switched to digital downloads in the early 2000s. In 2006, Transworld Entertainment bought Sam Goody and began to phase out the Sam Goody name, changing them to FYE. Interestingly, we didn't have Sam Goody in the mall, but we had FYE. Because at first I said, what the hell is Fi? And that's what I had to see is for your entertainment. If you're out there looking to go to Sam Goody, well, there's two left in the country. The Ohio Valley Mall, which is in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and the Rogue Valley Mall, which is in Medford, Oregon. I checked. They both do still exist. Oregon's really great for nostalgia, aren't they? They've got one of the last two Sam goodies and the last blockbuster. All right, so we did some women's fashion earlier. How about some men's fashion? Do you remember the Chess King stores? I remember Chess King in the Cape Cod Mall, but even though their clothes were geared towards 12 to 20 year olds, so the younger male demographic, I don't ever remember going in there. They were founded in 1968 and by their peak had more than 500 locations. They were known for clothes that had bold coloring and designs, things that were different and unique, especially in the 80s, really capitalizing on, I guess, what we growing up in that decade would look back as the definitive 80s look. It's interesting because the research I've done says that the Changing fashion trends led to Chess King's demise. But you would think that the wild fashion and trends and colors and such that they were known for in the 80s, that it carried over into the 90s. I mean, just think about those hyper-color shirts that changed color with the heat of your hand. You're telling me that Chess King couldn't have done something like that? They were sold by their parent company in 1993, right? And by the end of 1995, all Chess King stores were closed. The more research I do on mall stores that were featured in so many different malls, the more I realize a lot of these stores were part of the same parent company. I kicked off this kind of list with Woolworth. And now we're jumping into Kinney Shoes. Do you remember Kinney Shoes? George Kinney created the shoe store. In 1894, which is fascinating because by the time I was familiar with Kinney's Shoes, they were already 100 years old. They were a family shoe store chain. At their peak, they were the largest family shoe store in the country. This was in the 1930s when they had 335 locations. But like I said, about all of this cross-pollination with these famous mall stores... Kinney Shoes was sold to the Woolworth Company in 1963. And for a few decades, Kinney Shoes continued unchanged. But slowly but surely, with the advent of Foot Locker, Kinney's became less and less necessary under the Woolworth brand. So slowly, those stores got phased out. And by 1998, Kinney Shoes was gone. Although I guess, theoretically, because Foot Locker is still going, you could say that the spirit of Kinney's is still going. I don't ever remember getting shoes at Kinney's. When I was little, my mother usually brought me to Stride Rite to get my ruse or my zips with the Velcro straps on them. Here's a place that should be familiar, at least name-wise, to most of you, and that's the Sharper Image. They were founded in 1977 and were known for electronics, unique and innovative gadgets. They had a catalog and they had a lot of weird things, things that you didn't think were necessary, but they looked cool. We didn't have a sharper image in the Cape Cod mall, but I liken them to a store like Brookstone. where Brookstone has a lot of really cool stuff, but it doesn't seem to be things that would be necessary. It's more luxury items. I don't know if maybe that's just my opinion on it. What do you think? Is Brookstone kind of similar to Sharper Image? Maybe not the same exact products, but the same sort of idea. Sharper Image for a while was really popular. They had that Ionic Breeze air purifier, which was a big deal, but also kind of led to their downfall. This was in 2007, where Sharper Image sued Consumer Reports for fail reviews of that Ionic Breeze. But then in return, customers who had the actual Ionic Breeze then sued Sharper Image because the products, I guess, weren't that reputable. Things didn't go well from there. In early 2008, the Sharper Image stock fell to 29 cents a share and they got delisted. The original Sharper Image filed for bankruptcy and was closed down in 2008. But within the last few years, maybe 2019, they were relaunched as an online shopping site. So you can get some of those same products if you miss the Sharper Image stock. But they currently have no retail locations, and that's even listed on their website. Much as we saw the slow decline of places like Sears, like Kmart, another huge, huge name that people of the generations before us could never have seen going out of business was Radio Shack. They're a consumer electronics store. They first were opened in 1921. Radio Shack, 1921. Kind of right at the launch of the radio boom itself, here was Radio Shack. For decades, they had the catalog with all those products. You could make your own radio, which was kind of why it started, was so that people could build their own radios or fix what they had. Radio Shack was everywhere. Any of you out there that are, you know, older than 30... will probably remember a Radio Shack near you. At its peak in 1999, there were more than 8,000 Radio Shack locations around the world. Their decline was slow. Like I said, much like Sears and Kmart, you could just see it slowly sliding down, revenue declining, poor worker relations, bankruptcies. They also got delisted from the New York Stock Exchange, much like Sharper Image. In 2017, they shifted their retail model basically to just online stores, but they're still operating and they're still trying to get this brand going again, keep it going. It's sort of like Toys R Us where they're gone but not gone and they're just bubbling under and hopefully there's a resurgence. I know that near where I live on Cape Cod, we had a Radio Shack in this strip mall and it probably closed four years ago, but they had the sign on a big tall pole signed with their logo on it and that's still there. So I find that kind of funny. I'll drive by there every now and then and there's the Radio Shack logo, but the Radio Shack store itself is empty. Now I just mentioned Toys R Us. But as far as mall stores go, KB Toys was the king of everything for me when I was a kid going to the Cape Cod Mall. They were, much like Waldenbooks, wide open. There was no door to go in to get there. It was this wide open garage door, and there's shelves of toys just calling you in. It's interesting because I don't think KB, the physical store... was that big. When I would walk in there, even when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, it seemed kind of small and cramped. Maybe it's just because there were so many aisles of toys and so many kids in there. Those of you out there that remember going to KB, did it feel small? Nothing like Toys R Us, where that store was like 50 airplane hangers with just toys everywhere. KB was founded in 1922. as a retail candy company by Joseph and Harry Kaufman, Kaufman Brothers, KB, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. So yay for New England, we had that one. They transitioned to a toy store in the 1970s, and they were KB Toy and Hobby. By its peak in 1999, they were the second largest toy company in the country, I'm assuming behind Toys R Us only, with more than 1,300 stores. I don't know if there were any standalone KBs. Do any of you out there remember going to a KB toy store not in the mall? They eventually began to decline. The rise of online shopping, much like it made Toys R Us suffer, it did the same with KB. They filed for bankruptcy in 2009. A company named Strategic Marks actually bought all of the intellectual property and everything to do with KB in 2016. I guess what they do is try to rebuild defunct brands. And there were plans to try to reopen some KB stores, but obviously that didn't happen. And it said as of 2023, there's nothing. There's no plans. Nobody owns the property, any of the trademarks. So hey, if any of you out there want to try to restart KB... I feel like brick and mortar toy stores are something that are so necessary for kids of any generation. Online shopping is all well and good and you can do it for music and books. You just get it downloaded. But that ability to physically have toys, test them out, even video games, test them out. That's something that kids these days growing up now are missing out on. I couldn't imagine growing up and not being able to go to KB or Toys R Us or we had Child World down here. But let's keep going on this list here. I haven't been calling out numbers. This is the 13th one. Tom McCann. Do you remember the Tom McCann shoe store? The logo was kind of like handwriting, a little bit swooshy. A man named Ward Melville first started the Tom McCann brand of shoes. I always remember Tom McCann from the Cape Cod Mall, mainly because of the way it was spelled. How could T-H-O-M be Tom? It was Thom. So I said, why is Thom McCann? Why isn't it pronounced that way? They were started in 1922. So for generations of people, they know the Tom McCann name and had Tom McCann shoes. By the end of the 1960s, there were more than 1,400 locations selling Tom McCann shoes. But again, when it comes to a lot of these stores that we've talked about today, stop me if you've heard this one, increasing competition, changes in fashion, and changes in shopping habits led to the decline of Tom McCann. Throughout the 90s mainly was when they really went down. Interestingly, Kmart and Sears started carrying Tom McCann shoes and even some Walmarts. I have not gone looking in Walmart for Tom McCann shoes. Maybe some of you out there can tell me if you've seen them in any of your local Walmarts. It's harder to go look for them in Sears and Kmart since there's none close to me. Kmart's gone and Sears is basically gone. We're almost near the end of my list of these stores. How many of these are you familiar with? How many of these have brought you back fond memories? I feel like when I put together the video version of this podcast, it's going to be filled with loads of photos and such that'll really capture those moments. Because even though Indoor malls, they're not really dying because online shopping, it's not as big of a part of life as you would think. It's somewhere around between 15% and 16% of all retail shopping is online. So when you think about it, it's not that big. It is bigger than it was 20 years ago, though. But there was just something about the malls in the 80s and 90s hanging out there, all of these brand names just being ingrained in you, even if you were only sitting there with friends hanging out. Names like Tom McCann or Walden Books, they're just ingrained in you because you saw them all the time. Another one that we did not have in the Cape Cod Mall, at least as far as I know, was County Seat, which was denim and casual apparel. So it was blue jeans, jeans, founded in 1973 in Dallas, Texas. And so the finances began to suffer. In 1996, the Wet Seal Company, boy, there's another old mall store, Wet Seal offered to buy all of the county seat locations, but they were rejected. And it was later the same year that county seat first filed for bankruptcy, and they filed for a second bankruptcy in 1999, and that was the end. It's too bad. I mean, Wet Seal didn't last forever either, but it would have been interesting to see what they could have done with an extra 500 or so county seat locations. And as we wrap up this part one of old mall stores from the 70s, 80s, 90s, there's Cherry and Webb. I remember them in the mall with their handwritten cursive logo. The company was started in 1898 by a man named George Cherry and Frederick Webb. They were a clothing store. Not so much discount, affordable clothing, so it's not quite like Marshalls or TJ Maxx, but a little bit kind of like that. They were so successful at the beginning that their original store, they had to keep expanding and expanding, and then they couldn't expand anymore, so then they had to create new stores. It is said that Cherry and Webb, especially as it went on in the 60s, 70s, 80s, was considered the mother's store because mothers could get their clothes there, but also get their kids' clothes there. So maybe it is kind of like what Marshalls and TJ Maxx is today. Now, those of you from New England who are probably more familiar with Cherry and Webb, I can remember as a kid it being also called Cherry, Webb, and Terrain. Is that a real thing? Naturally, I'm doing my research and I'm finding that. I don't know if terrain became someone that bought into it, but it's not terrain like ground that you walk on. It's T-O-U-R-A-I-N-E. Again, this is a place, Cherry and Webb, in the 80s that I didn't go into. I just saw it all the time at the mall. That's why when I was looking for places to populate this list of mine here, Cherry and Webb was one I had to put on there. Because even though I don't remember going in there, there's probably a lot of you out there that do. But that's it. That's 15 stores, 15 of many classic mall stores. I stuck to the 70s, 80s, 90s because that's the heyday of the mall. Like I said, they're not dying so much. There's not as many malls as there used to be. But still, people don't go and hang out at the mall as much as they used to. Then again, I'm not of the age. If I'm hanging out at the mall now in my mid-40s, that's creepy behavior. Be on the lookout, though. At some point in the future, I'll do a part two with a whole bunch of new stores. But did this bring back a lot of nostalgia for you? I know I had a lot of fun researching it. I tried to keep each entry relatively brief. If I went into a deep dive to each one, this podcast would be four hours long and you'd be asleep. But thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure to come back next week. Next week is episode 130, and I've got some good stuff. Next week, it's going to be Restaurant Storytime 7. We're calling it Making a Great First Impression. It's the story of my very first shift ever in the restaurant business. We'll just say there's a reason I'm going to do a segment on it. It's not an easy, smooth day. We're going to go way, way back in the day, 30 years ago, to look at 1994, the year in music, specifically January through June and everything that happened, specific albums, songs, events that happened then. And then we'll come back in July and we'll do part two. And there'll be a brand new top five that are the top five weirdest, most unusual phobias that I found some really weird stuff that it's incredible that people are afraid of. So all of that and more is coming up next week on episode 130 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Like I said, I'm starting to rebrand it. Comfort food for the Generation X soul. Go to my YouTube channel, subscribe. I've been working hard on the quality and the overall visual appeal of of the videos, if that makes sense. I take segments from each week's podcast and I kind of flesh them out with images, videos, and such. I'm definitely no animation pro, but I'm practicing and getting better. So go and subscribe, check out my latest videos, see what you think. Find me all over social media, Instagram, threads, my X page, the Facebook fan page. I'll keep you all updated when new book events are scheduled. I have a couple coming up, but they're not at libraries or bookstores. They're more private events, I guess, if that makes sense. Not to pat myself on the back or anything. But 2024 is the 50th anniversary of the Lady of the Dunes murder. So I'm really pushing to do events showcasing the book and the documentary. Visit theladyofthedoons.com if you want to get your own copy of the book or watch the documentary. If you're interested in any of my nine books, you can visit my website, christophersetterland.com. If you enjoy what you hear on the podcast, or if you enjoy what you see on the YouTube page, you can go and become a Patreon subscriber. It's the perfect way to support my work. Big shout out to my Patreon subscribers, Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley. If you want to become one of them and get a shout out on the podcast, go check out patreon.com. I've got a link in the description of the podcast so you can easily just click there. But if becoming a Patreon subscriber isn't something that's possible, sharing the podcast, sharing the YouTube videos, letting other people know, that means everything. It's a lot of work doing podcasting, doing the content creation. I love all of it, but it is a lot of work. So word of mouth, having the support system to actually share what I do, that means everything. It's one thing to like a post on Facebook or like a story on Instagram. It's another thing to actually click a link. So thank you so much to those of you who do. who listen, who tell people, who share. And I'll be back next week with episode 130. It just keeps on going. So stay warm. We're in the depths of winter throughout most of the country. It hasn't been crazy cold and crazy snow like winters of my childhood, but still, it's enough. Hopefully you've had some laughs and warm memories with this week's podcast, with any podcast, to keep you warm on the cold days and nights. So take care of your mental health. Sunlight is at a premium. Heat is at a premium in the winter. So take advantage of what you can. Lean into things that make you happy, whether it's a favorite food, favorite people, favorite podcast, whatever. And I'll keep pumping out the content as best I can. But until next week, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you again to everyone for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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