Ode to you, Lincoln Mall
Posted by Patrick on Tuesday, October 26, 2004Oh Lincoln Mall, what the heck hath happned to ye?
During a short pit-stop before attending our Woodworking class, I stopped by the Lincoln Mall. Once the staple of small-mall-ness in the area when I was growing up (not counting the somewhat-larger Auburn mall), the Lincoln mall is now a ghost-mall with more abandoned stores than open stores. Many, many abandoned stores.
Walking through the small is straight-up eerie. Sure, Tuesday afternoon isn't excactly Christmas Eve at Walmart, but there should be more than 5 people walking in the mall. Five! Five and one of them was a security guard! What are they securing?!
The Waldenbooks is gone. Gap, gone. Generic overpriced CD store, gone. KB Toys, gone. Newport Creamery gone. Hippie-love pseudo bong-shop, gone. K-mart! Gone! Poor K-mart. You feel bad for them, they're vanishing like so many Caldor's in the wind.
What's left you may ask (since you're not going to go)? Two weird guys in a messy Radio-shack, a Dunkies, some weird Native American/role playing/fake relic shop, a Nascar theme shop, and there's a store called "Pay Half," which I think is the dollar-store equivelent for clothes. Better apparal exists at the Salvation Army.
There were three kids working in an empty Foot Locker. Three! That's like 0.68 employees for everyone in the mall! No one was buying shoes. Clearly Lincoln Mall Foot Locker is a front for some kind of organized crime, well hidden in Ghost-mall.
What's cool about the Lincoln Mall? Not much, but it does have an Ocean State Job Lot, occasionally cheap gas at the Stop-N-Shop gas station (not today though; $2.09!), and it's got this wide-open parking lot, with limited light poles (should you feel the urge to safely do donuts without smacking poles or pedestrians), and there's a Papa Gino's with sit-down waitress service!
With competition from Emerald Square in North Attelboro and Providence Place, it's tough to imagine a bright future for the Lincoln Mall. It's also hard to imagine a world without the Lincoln mall (unless you live in Matterson, IL). Yet how does it exist? Customers must bring in money for this place to stay open, yet there's no one there.
No one except for the Lincoln mall ghosts.
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