Today I spent the day with my Grandchildren who live 2.5 hours North of us. We met them half way in Saginaw, Michigan. Saginaw is a city of 46K, and has all the accouterments of a city that size including malls, which, is where we met up with our daughter and the grandchildren.
The first thing that hit me was how empty this large mall was. That was followed by being shocked by how many venues (storefronts) were unoccupied. The next thing I wondered is how any of the stores which were still operating could make enough revenue to stay open.
I don’t get out, in this kind of context, often and so all of this was a bit of an education for me. I can remember the days when malls were hopping. I even worked as a night security/janitor in a mall once upon a time in my college days and cleaning up at night was busy work because the mall had had so much traffic during the day.
Of course that was before online services basically gutted the shopping mall model.
However, while the traffic at the mall was slight, it remained interesting and I found myself wondering if malls now doubled as circuses. While at the mall today I saw a clown. I don’t think the person intended to be a clown but I don’t know what else you would call what I saw. This clown made me do a triple take to make sure I was seeing what I had seen with the first take and then the second take.
This was, I think, a blond hair male of about 23 years of age, who stood about 6 foot tall… or would have stood 6feet tall if he had not had on 6 inch black platform tennis shoes. His blond hair had been spray painted with streaks of pink and he wore a tight black t-shirt with black tights. Over his t-shirt and tights he wore something that approximated a blue ballerina tutu, or maybe it was a short mini-skirt. I was desperately trying not to stare. Across his shoulders he carried a hiked up back pack that was shaped like a pink kitty cat. This is not the kind of thing I see every day. Bring in the clowns indeed.
The circus like effect was augmented by the fresh pile of dog crap that lay in the middle of one of the walk ways. I mean, if one goes to the circus one expects animal droppings. The problem here, beyond the obvious, is it seemed like people delighted in stepping in it and smearing it all over the mall.
There were of course the various other freak shows you find at a circus. Bearded ladies, and the tattooed woman, and ears with giant holes in them. In one store the employee working behind the counter had a kind of pea-green colored hair with one of those upside down horseshoes in her nose, accompanied by boldly colored eye shadow and screaming colored lipstick. I must admit, I found myself asking, “What was it that found those who interviewed her for the job compelled to say to themselves; ‘Yep, she’s what we are looking for as our face to the public.'”
I’m not done yet.
There was a store dedicated to sell clothing for women who are of ample size. Nothing wrong with that…. except when you advertise your product by putting a life-size photo of a very large woman on your store front window as regaled in a bikini that has far less cloth than she has flesh. I must admit I found myself admiring that model, if only for her courage. It had to take a great deal of courage to submit for that photo shoot knowing a photo that looked like that was going to be the storefront window display for this company chain. It brought back memories of 
There were some encouraging aspects. I saw a Tim Keller book on the “we really want to give this away because nobody will buy it” priced table. That was a balm for my soul. We saw a sign for sale that said, “Christ Alone is our only Hope.” I think it was buried behind the other “a witch and warlock live here” signs, and the “He ain’t Heavy, He’s my Mephistopheles” signs and the “We get drunk every day here at 5pm,” signs. BUT it was there.
I bought a scarf for my daughter. The check out clerk scared me. I tried to be extra polite because I didn’t want to give her a reason to snarl at me. I’ve had plenty of experience with angry pit-bulls and I care not to have any further experiences.
I thoroughly enjoyed seeing my grandchildren, but they are growing up in a very different world than the one I grew up. May God protect them from our current insane culture, and may he give me the equilibrium to never see any of this as normal.
Bret, you need to get out more often. It’s a disaster out there. This is the landscape of what Kinsey and Marx hath wrought. As a minister that doesn’t want to become a nostalgic boomer fossil, you need to see this more often. Imagine being an employer. You could have the most in demand product at a 300% profit margin and still end up broke simply because you can’t complete transactions faster than your overhead expenses accumulate. Those entitled unskilled unintelligent fragile snowflakes that were being promised $15/hr by Bernie in 2016 are now being promised $50/hr by lefty politicians of both parties.
You asked: “What was it that found those who interviewed her for the job compelled to say to themselves: ‘Yep, she’s what we are looking for as our face to the public.’ ”
Answer: It was the rest of the applicants. The one they hired, whom you scratched your head about, she was the best of the lot.
4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
5 Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
8 And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
9 Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
The is nothing left of our nation. I’m not a black pill guy but daily I’m tempted to be one. Whenever you are on vacation, next time don’t hunt for a solid church. Rather go to the nearest hipster PCA Church or even a mega-church. You need to see what the Lord sees when he looks over our nation. That remnant? It could easily be less than one half of one percent. IMHO, this was ordained as an eye opener and you need to mix with the masses more. The only sane people left are the farmers and about 1/3 of the non-boomer gun culture and maybe a welder or two and none of the women. BTW, around here in South Carolina, about 35% of the white girls have out of wedlock mixed children. The Lord is calling you to do a tour of the devastated land. This famous quote from baseball player John Rocker is 32 years old. It has only decayed with compound interest since then.
“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”
Asked about playing in Shea Stadium again he said: “I would retire first. It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.”
Graham,
Years ago I quite attending church while on vacation because of seeing what constituted as Church while on vacation. I refuse to go to these clown shows and sanction, by my attendance, their existence as churches.
In terms of getting out more … well, “No, thank you,” if it is only going to be more of the same that I witnessed yesterday. I don’t need to go to the dump everyday in order to appreciate not wanting to live in a dump.
I agree with John Rocker … why would I want to go to Shea Stadium every day?
Thanks for your friendship. It is helpful to me to know that there are likeminded men still around.
Bret
Once again, you nailed it! I pray daily that my children will see this society for the cesspool of evil filth that it is and turn far from it. “Going out” these days is akin to visiting a “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” museum, where the oddities becon us to stare in bewilderment. Doing so does provide a good opportunity for teachable moments, though it grieves my heart that their future is a world that has normalized men in dresses, ballet dancers that look like Hulk Hogan, and a language that no longer resembles English.
Sigh
Indeed
I echo Graham, if you get out more, you’ll see that the mall was an accurate representation of mid- Michigan.
About 7 years ago, my son was in a stroller, so we walked the EL football game to see the band. It was the mall.
As for the attention seeking dude, raised by a single Mom no doubt. Or a Kellerite Dad wanting to be winsome and not break the relationship bridge.
I wonder which school the kid teaches at?
You mentioned a remembrance of busy malls. When was the last time you went to one? That made me remember when Fairlane Mall opened in Dearborn. Clean, nice, nice dressed women shopping there. Mostly white crowd. By the 90s it was trash, with Detroiters being the main crowd. We warned my Mom to stay away by 2000.
I go to the Lansing Mall every so often. Although, it has been well over a year since I’ve been there.
Bret