Ahh... the hours I spent playing at the Springfield Mall. We would spend easily a $100 a weekend when I was 13 or 14. Lots of play time at the arcade. Across the hall was a skate shop that sold RPGs. So money was spent there too.
I knew my childhood had died when i came home from my mission and the skate shop was gone.
But that used to be the cool mall. The nice one.
Now it sucks royally.
Now, the arcade's still there. But when half the machines are some form of DDR, well, i just don't get excited. There's a new games store, but WotC has decided to stop selling any non-d20 rpg material. (wankers).
But not just that, it's so ... so... ghetto now. The fact that it can't even support Kemp Mill, the only music store with prices lower than Sam Goody (motto: "The Microsoft of Music Sales!"), that was one sign.
Another was that at least 15% of the store locations are empty.
I finally realized that my mall was the craptastic champion when I passed a section of wall where the paint was peeling, kids had drawn on it, and the basic paint was matte violet. erg....
so I also noticed that the entire parking garage, the ENTIRE PARKING GARAGE floor, all of it, was coated in those little bumpy gray lumps from spit out gum.
Man, I was here when they MADE that parking garage. when it was booming.
Now my mall sucks. So my childhood isn't just dead, it's been shredded from its bones and stomped on.