Let’s All Go to the Mall
Keith Milford of the terrific Malls of America shares a short video of Phoenix’s Metrocenter circa 1990 (you can tell when it was videotaped because that lame-o “Baby I Love Your Way/Freebird” song is playing in one of the shots). I visited Metrocenter only once as a child, but it was amazingly clean, white and big. Some of that amazingness has been preserved in the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. My favorite part of the video is the shot of Goldwater’s with its textured gold brick wall on the mall’s entranceway. Goldwater’s was a mainstay on the Phoenix shopping scene, a swanky destination which unfortunately got bought out by Macy’s in the ’80s. I loved those gold bricks.
Safe to say Metrocenter isn’t the bastion of beauty anymore in Valley-area malldom.
I just happened to drive past MetroCenter yesterday. Even the big box stores on the periphery are gone. The place is empty. The anchor stores in the mall itself are boarded up. I used to work down there seven years ago, and used the bank, comics store, Trader Joes, etc. Now I avoid the area if I can. It’s creepy.
I haven’t been inside the mall proper in years. On rare occasions I’ll go to the stores around the outside of the mall.
My mother still calls it Goldwater’s…