The Mall of America

When you build a shopping mall with 520 stores over 3 floors taking up the area of a small town (4.2m sq. ft.), how do you ensure that enough shoppers visit it to make it profitable?

1. Put an amusement park in the middle of it, and an aquarium in the basement.
2. Build it next to an airport so that people can fly in from other cities to do their shopping.

Minneapolis's Mall of America, opened in 1992, was once the largest enclosed mall in the world. It receives 40 million visitors a year. Walking around it, you will encounter some store names 3 or 4 times. There are even a number of Mall of America merchandise stores selling souvenir t-shirts, mugs etc.

The heat produced by the lighting fixtures, other appliances and visitors/staff means that the air conditioning has to be used even when it is freezing outside. There is a light rail service linking the mall with the city and the airport, but it does not appear to be well patronised; there are ample parking spaces (20,000) and a large fleet of airport taxis.


There are plans to extent he mall from 520 to 900 stores.


Apparently guns aren't allowed in Mall of America.

Cornhole

It's a cool Friday afternoon in Menomone, WI and it's the last day of term at Stout Lumberjack College. On footpaths all over town, cornhole boards, beanbags and crates of Miller High Life have been brought out onto footpaths, and the hours whiled away aiming said beanbags at said boards.





















I have taken the Greyhound bus from Chicago to Menomonie to visit my buddy Jeff. (I had been told to expect some unusual company on the bus so, when I asked the guy next to me where he was from, I was not in the least bit surprised when he pointed to the sky and said 'up there with God'. Nor was I taken aback when he proceeded to rant incomprehensibly for the next two hours. I could have done without the overpowering smell though. Fortunately he got off in Milwaukee and his replacement, a 95 year old, was much better company; he even offered to buy me dinner at the layover!)

Over the weekend we join some of Jeff's friends at a cabin on Lake Wissota. And what do we end up doing? Playing cornhole. Of course.

1575 Michigan Avenue, Chicago

The express train of globalisation does not even allow time to paint over the old signs of the businesses and buildings it consumes along its journey. I wonder what business Frankel & Giles used to carry out at their premises at 1575 Michigan. Music store? Fishmonger? Or maybe they sold doughnuts...