Mallrats We Ain't

We don't do malls.

As we live in New Jersey, a state somewhat synonymous, and certainly well-peppered, with shopping malls (covered, plaza-style, outlet), it may seem quite incredible that the three of us basically never set foot in one. Truly, we have no need (ok, except for when I need to get something from the Apple store; having converted Jim to Macs and with Charlie lovin' his iPod, such trips are an occasional necessity) (though truth to tell, I bought Jim's laptop online).

It was a happy moment for Jim when he realized that, instead of having to endure shoe salespeople measuring his feet, commenting on the state of his socks, and trying to sell him loafers he'd never wear, I could get him black slip-ons in just the right size courtesy of OnlinesShoes.com (am now getting Charlie his shoes from there too). Charlie not being too thrilled about going to stuffy department store dressing rooms and trying on pants to see what fits (really, who has fun memories of that?), I'd just as well order his clothes online. We've yet to have to return anything and I can always make sure he has things in the right colors.

Malls---and bigbox stores---are places Charlie is happy to do without visiting. Rob Walker in last weekend's New York Times Magazine commented on the demise of such American shopping meccas as malls and mammoth warehouse-sized stores like Walmart's, BestBuy, and the like:

Talk of American infrastructure tends to focus on inadequacies: roads that need to be repaired or widened, bridges fortified, electrical grids updated. All the more striking, then, that America’s retail infrastructure — its malls, supercenters, big boxes and other styles of store-clumping — has come to be characterized by rampant abundance. This has been a decades-long trend. But it has taken the economic downturn, with chain stores liquidating, mall tenancy slipping and car dealerships scheduled for closure, to focus popular attention on the problem with our retail infrastructure: there is too much of it.

And really, may there be less. Target is the only such store that Charlie will sometimes go into (and, lately, he has been disinclined to). Malls and bigbox stores have all the trappings that are likely to cause terrible sensory overload (fluorescent lights everywhere, disorienting floorplans, shelves and stores of stuff in overabundance) in anyone. Charlie is certainly very sensitive to sound and light. He has pretty much zero interest in any consumer goods on sale at any mall and even less in "malling," hanging, and being appropriately "cool." For him (ok, for us), the mall is a place to be suffered through, and left as soon as possible.

(So generally when I make my trips to the Apple store, Jim and Charlie drop me off and go for a spin to get sodas.)

Charlie seems much more to prefer stores that are built to human scale: bodegas, delis, 7-11s and the like (like a local independent bookstore---yes, they still exist here in the Garden State, chainstores be d*****d). There're many fewer shelves with a manageable amount of items to survey. The exit is easily found. The ceiling is not sky-high and everything is just a little more........personable.

I know of families who practice taking a child on the spectrum to a mall, so that they can be desensitized to the mall environment. But why not redesign the built environment to a properly human scale that doesn't wreak sensory havoc; that is simply more humane?