Business Insider on dead malls in the Retail Apocalypse with assistance from Dan Bell and Radiohead

I found a shiny object from Business Insider that gives another take on Vox on America's dying malls as failed third spaces — Reasons Why Malls Across The US Are Closing Down More Than Ever.

The American shopping mall is in a crisis. One of the largest malls in Pennsylvania, the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills, sold for just $100. We explore the variety of reasons why malls cannot keep their stories afloat and are becoming vacant wastelands.

Hey, a mall that sold for $100?  I've seen something about that, Dan Bell's DEAD MALL SERIES : The $100 Mall : The Disaster of Pittsburgh Mills.


Bell provided some telling details about the mall and its sale.  It was built in 2005, so it was already late to the party.  No wonder it never filled up and eventually failed.  Good luck to Wells Fargo and getting its money back; they'll need it.

Bell also showed a Payless store closing down.  I'll have to cover Payless in a future installment of this series.  Fortunately, Retail Archeology has a video about it, which I'll post when I write that episode.

Finally, Dan Bell mentioned Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees," so I'm going to post a video of the song.  Here is Ramin Djawadi's cover from the "Westworld" Season 1 soundtrack.


I couldn't resist referencing "Westworld" while Season 2 is airing.

I'll have more on Business Insider on the retail apocalypse with an emphasis on stores instead of malls tomorrow.  Stay tuned.*

*For my readers who expected me to write about "both the drop in life expectancy as well as the falling birth rate," which I promised in a footnote to Anthony Bourdain's and Kate Spade's deaths call attention to rising suicide rates in the U.S., Saturday is still this week.  Look for it then.