Anything in a frame is art: this is the loophole Mickey took advantage of this weekend in Short Hills, NJ, at the Wentworth Gallery in The Mall at Short Hills. There was an exhibition/sale/lecture of Mickey’s art, and if it did not turn into a fancy drum circle, then maybe we don’t know Mickey very well at all.
As a wee TotD, there were two important malls: the Livingston Mall, and The Mall at Short Hills. The Livingston Mall was comfortable and straight-forward and solidly middle-class. It was (still is) shaped like this: ‡. Up and back loop around the first floor, escalator, second floor, done. The anchors on each end were Sears and Macy’s, nothing fancy, and there were three record shops and a bookstore and a Nathan’s Hot Dogs. When I was real little, there was the Superhero Shop, a closet-sized comic store with a mural of the Hulk and Spider-Man painted on the outside glass.
In the winter when the snow came, the plows would make piles twenty feet high that turned black and scabrous almost instantly; they were packed so tightly that they lasted until April.
Livingston wasn’t a hotbed of crime, but a mall attracts all sorts of ne’er-do-wells, and the police chief made it his personal mission to cut down on the pilferage and nonsense. This led to him being run over by fleeing suspects’ cars in the mall parking lot on three separate occasions. (I’m not making that up. I know I make a lot of shit up, but not that. It was a town joke forever.)
In recent years, though, the mall has shifted its focus a bit further down the socioeconomic scale: there’s a Dollar Store, and nine places to buy baseball caps, and those kiosks staffed by pushy foreigners selling knock-off perfume and cell phone cases. Last I heard about the Livingston Mall, two youngsters had bumped into one another, leading to an argument. This led each to call his friends for backup, but–as said friends didn’t have cars–the gang members all got on buses to come to the mall to fight. The cops caught wind and put up a roadblock. (This also actually happened.)
Always something to do at the mall.
That would never happen at The Mall at Short Hills. Here’s the simplest, but most telling, comparison: the Livingston Mall had a Kay-Bee; The Mall at Short Hills has an F.A.O. Schwarz. It’s a different tone. Quieter and more refined, and also there are snipers on the roof picking off poor people before they get in the door. The Mall at Short Hills is very cold inside and has no smell, except for tightly defined radii around the cookie place and the perfumeries. Music does not boom; no one ever, ever runs. There is Van Cleef & Arpels, and Neiman Marcus and Gucci; John Mayer would like it there.
It’s so fancy that there’s no food court.
So if you were wondering why there was an art gallery in a mall: well, now you know.
Ha! My dad grew up in Livingston and I went to the Livingston Mall (and the Morris Plains Mall, where I saw Return of the Jedi) many times with my cousins in the mid 80s. On special occasions we would go to the Short Hills Mall, which seemed very swank in comparison, and it is there that I encountered my first crusty Deadhead (and first white person dreadlocks) in like 1985. My mom bumped into a friend who’s son was about 5 years older than me and was decked out in full lot gear from head to toe and reeked of patchouli. When we were walking away my mom leaned in and said “did you smell that? that’s what pot smells like”.
I worked at B. Altman & Company the western-most anchor store (NOT B. Dalton) at T.M.A.S.H. from August of 1984 until basic training called me away a couple of years later. Altman’s was the greatest job I have ever and will ever have. It was one of the original stores from the days before they connected the satellite anchor stores to make a mall. there. Wikipedia will tell you all about B. Altman… I personally run a Facebook group for our employees but, most have been dying off. I score and obit here or there and post it… a group destined to have no living members, as Altman’s shut its doors at all their locations in the mid/late 90s.
Livingston Mall. Ahh the Superhero Shop (this is how I found this site (Net searched the Livingston Mall Superhero Shop). 1. It was directly across from where my family and I would get our haircut. 2. I loved G.I. Combat/Haunted Tank, Our Fighting Forces featuring The Losers, The Unknown Soldier, and Weird War comics, so I hopped on the #70 bus and rode it to the mall, every now and again from Irvington (When that town was a nice place to live …filled with respectful folks mostly of Italian, Irish and German descent). I do recall taking an friend up on a bet that I couldn’t walk home from that mall… he lost that bet, lol (Thanks Tele-pages phone book for having the map in it… I was able to walk a bee line home through S.O. and Maplewood rather than follow S.O. Ave to Irvington Ave. and home) Oh and I loved to spend money in the Livingston Mall arcade… I would play Dragon’s Lair there or at the arcade at Willowbrook… (I still have the gaming magazine with the cheat sheet in it somewhere). That and Thayer’s Quest were my games… this would have been in 1985. Food at the Livingston mall would have been from Roy Rogers. They had some kinda western burger with ham on it, if I recall correctly. Spencer’s was another big draw. Willowbrook reminds me that it was 16.1 miles from that mall to my house. One Sunday Morning my gf dropped me off at that mall’s bus stop and leapfrogged with me all the way home… as I ran it (At this point it is probably no surprise that I was a triathlete in Hawaii in the late 80s, right?)
Hit me up if you want to talk Jersey mall stuff and JFYI my mall memories also extend to the Ledgewood Mall when Grants was a thing before Jamesway and all the NYC ppl moved that way (I can tell tales of hunting, hiking in iron mines, and fishing the lakes, sandpits and on the Black River for days…
Back to malls…. Going to Willowbrook and Melo Park was a treat… Never went to Paramus… if I was up that way I was going to Campmor for Appalachian Trail and Catskill hiking gear… We also frequented shopping centers like Essex Green. I recall going to Great Eastern in Union before it became the much loved Union Market Place… now a Home Depot (at least 20 year ago it was). My Family shopped at Two Guys in Union and Florham Park and the stores that followed Two Guys’s chapter 11 (Bradlees and Caldor, I believe). My family also liked those catalog warehouse stores like Arthur’s in Springfield and Consumer Distributor’s in South Orange… if anyone has one of those catalogs, message me via this forum and would gladly take it off your hands if it is a mid 70s to early 80s copy. Cheers folks! Keep shopping and keep those memories alive. Thanks for starting this thread/post/blog. Nice job taking us all down memory lane and keeping our minds young.
that’s a fine bit of Mall prose. I was transported. Could go for a hot dog (mustard & relish) and a malted right now from Snoopy’s.
the Plaza. the concept brought to the shores of Lake Ontario by early Spanish explorers. 1963 or thereabouts.
Is that on Harwood?
yep, the “old mall”. there was the SmokeShop which had a Rube Goldberg-type contraption/conveyor belt of Hot Nuts. Candy, fake vomit, fake dog turds, switch blade combs, 99 cent kites etc……plus an old coke cooler and an astonishing & informative selection of Men’s Magazines. Nelson’s Hobbies was a hangout during my phase of doing models every 6 mins. and of course The Becker’s.