Traveled out to Adam and Geraldine's for Thanksgiving. There was a time when New Jersey did not consist of endless malls. There were endless strip malls along rout 1 and 9 in the 1950s and 1960s but with their endless billboards and garish neon advertising signs, they were generally perceived as being ugly. That great radio entertainer, Jean Shepherd, used to refer to them as " creeping New Jersey".
There was the Garden State Plaza along route 4 but we seldom went there. Sometimes, when a lot of shopping had to be done, we would go to Sears in Hackensack. Generally though, why travel so many miles and take so much time doing so just to get an item or two that was only marginally cheaper at one of the big stores? And so, my parents would go to Epsteins Department Store in Pompton Lakes for our clothing needs. On the way there in Midvale was a great German bakery and a German butcher, Farm View Pork Store in Pompton lakes. A fine old fashioned hardware store, Jacks hardware in Haskell on the way to Pompton. At the butcher and the baker, we could spend some time in amiably yacking with the owners in German. After a hard day's shopping, you could reward yourself with a stupendous ice cream cone at The Milk Barn (recently demolished to increase the size of the parking lot of a Ford dealership), a world class facility of its kind. A great and cheap Italian restaurant, La Casa Roma, was only a few miles away. So what is the attraction that these big box stores in malls hold out for everyone? The quality in these little stores was generally much higher but the prices were not outrageously more. There was a personal element in shopping in a small local store that is totally absent in the mall experience.
Here in New York we still have the personal element as part of the shopping experience. My little C-town supermarket makes excellent Hummus and babaganuj. When he is not busy, the manager is usually at the entrance, greeting everyone who comes in. When you compliment him about something regarding the store, he positively glows.
There is one cheering aspect to the raising of sea levels with global warming. Many of these ugly malls will be under water.
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