MCF LI 2: Let's Go to the Mall!

When you're a kid, and you live on an island, there are only so many options for amusement. It's even worse if you live on an isolated part of the coast with no movie theater, and little more than stationary stores, bike trails, and pizza places for diversion. Granted, the beach is an option for a few months of the year, but may also require adults to drive you if it's beyond your limits. The beach might only be five miles away but it may as well be fifteen like the nearest mall. At least, that was my experience growing up on Long Island. Some kids were more fortunate, and lived near malls or movie theaters. I was nearly in high school before my town finally got a theater, and we've never had a proper mall. The central hub for all mall activity in my neck of the woods was Roosevelt Field.

Historically, the Roosevelt Field Mall was once an airfield, from which Charles Lindbergh launched to fly across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. To me, it was always a mall, and a hard one to get to if my mom or dad weren't able to drive my friends and I. It took twice as long by bus, due to the convoluted bus route, and I was at least 12 or 13 before my mom even conceded to let me take public transportation with my friends. These days, there are far better options for movies, infinitely preferable to the old theater, but as a kid it was the place to be. I vividly remember my dad taking my friends and I to see Gremlins there.

While the mall was fun for kids to travel unsupervised, it morphed into something undesirable when shopping with one's parents. I often remember my mom dragging me to Alexander's or Woolworth's. The highlight of the Woolworth's in the mall that set it apart from the one in my home town, was an adjoining diner with an entrance both from the store and the mall. If I behaved, I got to have a sundae.

The mall has changed and expanded quite a bit, especially in the last decade or so. Stores have come and gone, and the entire structure was renovated to add a second floor and a massive food court shaped like a blimp, with the counters at the base of the structure. One of the things I miss about the mall from my childhood is the Petit Mall. Before the changes made in the ‘90s, there used to be a separate section of the mall, an older structure that felt tacked on and didn't match the rest of the place. There was a hair dresser shaped like a cavern, with a rocky exterior. The rounded sign posts conjured images of Paris, and is the closest I've ever been to France. The Petit Mall had a certain mythical quality as well, as I couldn't always find it. The entrance was at the end of one of the main hallways, and tucked in a corner. There was a period of time in which I vividly remembered being there with my parents, but when with my friends I could never prove it existed. Now, it no longer does.

The mall is not always about shopping. Sometimes it's just a place to fill time. I've spent more than one lunch hour as an adult wandering through various malls with my coworkers, looking in game or book stores before settling in a food court. As Roosevelt Field grew, other locations became preferable. In high school and college, a friend and I often hung out at the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa. There were fewer crowds, and it boasted not one but two arcades. One offered the best air hockey tables while the other had the rare six player version of the first X-men game as well as Captain America and the Avengers. It had a great central fountain with a round walkway on the second level overlooking it. While the current design of Roosevelt Field boasts similar aesthetics, back in the early ‘90s it set Sunrise apart and made it more modern. They also had a much nicer theater built into the mall, though I only saw a few movies there, including the historic Star Trek®: Generations, one of only four films from that franchise that I've seen on the big screen. I haven't actually been out to Sunrise Mall in well over a decade, but during my early college years when I was first driving and had more freedom, it was often the destination of choice.

Long Island is a mecca of malls and strip malls for shoppers and Mallrats. While Roosevelt Field and Sunrise Mall figured most prominently in my life, there are a few others of note:

• I've only been to the Smith Haven Mall a few times, but it's my understanding that its the center of Suffolk County the way Roosevelt Field is for Nassau.

• At the other end of the spectrum is Green Acres Mall, a somewhat dangerous locale that I've only set foot in once or twice, accompanied by friends from the area. In college we'd often go to the nearby freestanding multiplex where we caught such films as Street Fighter, ID4, Desperado, and Last Man Standing. What I remember most about the last film is members of the audience attempting a dialogue with Bruce Willis, pointing out that he'd popped more caps than the type of gat he carried could discharge without reloading, and thus his movie was playing all of them. On an unrelated side note, I should mention that this was the first theater I ever went to that had metal detectors in the lobby.

• My other childhood favorite besides Roosevelt Field was the Broadway Mall. It had more quaint shops lining the halls between the larger department stores, a great ice cream counter with the best waffle cones, and most importantly a long, dark arcade. It seemed pitch black from the outside, but once one stepped into the darkness, eyes would adjust to the bright screens. I loved the cacophony of explosions and electronic music. It was there that I was first exposed to the wonders of animated games like Dragon's Lair, Cliff Hanger, and Space Ace. I marveled at the overwhelming odds and piercing music of Gauntlet, which sang out and beckoned amid all the other machines. Sadly, the current Broadway Mall no longer has this arcade or any other, and an attached Target, a multiplex adjoining a modern food court, and a neighboring IKEA are its main attractions now.

• Finally, Long Island's newest mall is the Source, originally constructed as an addition to Fortunoff's. Major points of interest that are no longer there include the Virgin Megastore, the Rainforest Café, and Jillian's, which is now a Dave and Buster's. It has a great food court with a huge window overlooking Long Island, as well as a few other restaurants including a Cheesecake Factory. Stores of interest for me include Old Navy, Circuit City, KB, and an exterior-accessed Cold Stone. The mall has also recently put a miniature golf course on an unused section of lawn outside their parking garage.

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Even when we have nothing to buy, when there's nothing to do, we shop. Browsing through merchandise, eating a variety of food, watching movies, observing people and admiring architecture are all attractive qualities of the mall. When it's hot outside you can shop at dozens of stores and enjoy air conditioning, and in the winter you can stroll through a tropical environment, past waterfalls and fronds. As malls are redesigned and connected to neighboring structures, I joke about Long Island becoming one great mall. Looking at something like the Mall of America in Minnesota, which boasts its own amusement park, over 500 stores and 2.5 million square feet, there's definitely precedent. The days of making a pilgrimage to the mall may be left in my childhood, as the expanding malls will make pilgrimages to me.

Previously, on MCF LI:
MCF LI 1: Fire Department Parades