The Behind the Scenes Secrets of Shopping Malls Scatterbrained

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Hello and welcome to Mental Floss video! Today we’re going to talk about shopping malls. You remember malls, right? They were the places you used to go before everything got delivered directly to your door. They had carousels, gumball machines, and that one store that had a unique smell and sold band t-shirts.

Let’s get started! I want to introduce you to a man named Victor Gruen. He grew up in the early 20th century in Vienna and later emigrated to the United States, reflecting that he brought with him an architect’s degree, $8.00, and no knowledge of English. Gruen went on to design dozens of American shopping malls. His malls became known for two things: they were some of the first with roofs and they had two stories. As Malcolm Gladwell once put it, Victor Gruen didn’t design a building; he designed an archetype.

However, there were slight differences between what Gruen intended and how malls ended up looking. He once wrote that he was creating a shopping center, not a selling center. He viewed these places as community gathering spaces with art and landscaping, preferring his malls to include outdoor areas. Eventually, he wanted them to include housing, libraries, and medical centers. In fact, later in life, Gruen expressed regrets about malls, stating, “I am often called the father of the shopping mall. I would like to take this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all.” He had grown to dislike malls, particularly finding the layouts confusing, which was the opposite of his intention. He wanted people to easily access what they needed, but his successors had other plans. They designed malls so that shoppers would have to walk a greater distance, seeing many things to buy along the way, often forgetting what they originally came for.

It’s not just the layout that contributes to this experience; elements like fountains, music, and lighting all enhance the mall atmosphere. This phenomenon was named the “Gruen Effect,” where people actively seek out malls to stroll through without a specific purpose.

Quick list time! Here are some facts you may not have known about department stores: Macy’s was founded by Roland Hussey Macy, who reportedly got a red star tattooed on his arm after getting lost at sea. He later used this tattoo as the logo for his store. Another famous department store founder is Barney Pressman, who pawned his wife’s engagement ring in 1923 to start the first Barney’s, which notably does not have an apostrophe in its name. Maxwell Kohl of Kohl’s built his fortune with grocery stores before diversifying into department stores. Halle Berry was named after a popular department store in Cleveland, Ohio.

In the mid-1980s, you could buy glacier ice from Bloomingdale’s, which was 35 ounces of ice chips from a glacier in Greenland. If you happen to have some of that lying around, you might want to return it, as those glaciers aren’t doing so well. Speaking of unusual department store merchandise, here are some items featured in the infamous Neiman Marcus holiday catalog over the years: a Boeing jet, a camel, a $100,000 chicken coop, and a replica of an X-wing Starfighter from Star Wars, to scale, of course.

Sam Walton, who founded Walmart, worked at JC Penney right out of college. The CIA used Vietnamese spies to gather information about the Viet Cong, and instead of money, they sent them Sears catalogs to mark which products they wanted. There’s a famous legend about someone who successfully returned snow tires to Nordstrom, even though the store doesn’t sell car parts. While Nordstrom is known for its generous return policy, several executives say this story is fiction. At Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, the shoe department takes up so much space that it has its own zip code.

Now, let’s back up to before Bloomingdale’s was selling glacier ice and highlight some mall history. From around 1100 BCE to 600 BCE, public buildings were established at the Agora in Athens, which served as a community space and marketplace. Centuries later, around 110 CE, Trajan’s Market opened in Rome, featuring shops and apartments. Fun fact: the Main Street was named similarly to the Latin word for “drink,” so there may have been some festivities happening.

Jumping ahead, over a thousand new markets emerged in England during the Middle Ages, and in the 1880s, department stores began to rise in popularity in the United States. From the turn of the century through the 1920s, shopping centers popped up across the U.S., including in California, Maryland, and Missouri. These were technically malls as we think of them today, usually clusters of stores with parking for car access.

Victor Gruen’s first indoor mall opened in 1956, known as the Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota. In the 1980s, chain restaurants exclusive to malls were invented, like Cinnabon and Panda Express. That same decade, the New York Times published an opinion letter referring to malls as a modern substitute for Main Street. By 1987, there were a total of 30,000 malls in the United States, and about 50% of all American retail dollars were spent in them. Ten years later, malls were among the top three tourist destinations in 12 states. By 2008, the Dubai Mall opened, currently the largest mall by total area in the world.

However, if you’ve visited a mall lately, you know that things aren’t entirely rosy. With the rise of online shopping, malls have lost some of their appeal. Looking ahead, experts predict that one in four U.S. malls will close by 2022.

For now, we still have plenty of malls, and people are definitely using them during the holiday season to shop and do something even more important: meet Santa! Here are some little-known facts about the mall Santa gig. Estimates vary, but during the six weeks of the holiday season, your average mall Santa meets about 10,000 kids. The typical shopping mall has two different men acting as Santa. There are actually Santa distributors, like a company that matches Santas to malls across the U.S. Malls have different requests, such as for Santas of various ethnicities or bilingual Santas. Generally, a natural beard is required. A rookie Santa earns about $10,000 per season, while veterans can make around $30,000.

It’s important for Santa to stay updated on the latest holiday movies and toys, as kids often have extensive questions. One man who has worked as Santa for decades mentioned that he goes through toy catalogs every year to stay current, much like professionals in other fields.

December is probably the worst time to find parking near a mall, so let’s talk about some ways to make it easier. If you often forget where you parked, use a Maps app to drop a pin for later access, or take a picture of the nearest sign or landmark. There are apps that help you find available parking spaces or even book a spot in advance.

If your phone is out of storage and you can’t fit another app, mathematician Joe Pagano shared a trick: the average mall shopper is there for 120 minutes. If you find a section of 20 full parking spaces, it should only take about six minutes before one opens up.

If you’ve lost your car in a crowded lot, there’s a hack for that too! Holding your car key up to your head can increase its range. If this is a consistent problem, you can even open the key and add a little extra wire to the antenna to boost its range.

Thanks for watching Mental Floss video! Please let me know any mall parking hacks you’ve learned over the years. And don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for more fun videos!

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