About a year ago I went on a tangent and subscribed to a bunch of magazines. They’re usually really cheap at Amazon, and I thought I could use a few more obligations in my life… What the hell was I thinking?
Now all of them have expired, and I only want to continue with two: Wired and Entertainment Weekly (aka The Crapper’s Companion). All the others were almost completely ignored, including two past favorites, Rolling Stone and Esquire. So, I’m going to let them go.
Do you subscribe to any magazines? During the pre-internet days I loved them. In fact, one of my favorite places in the world was a good newsstand. Whenever I was traveling, I’d try to find the best newsstand in the area, and would devote at least an hour to checking out all the great stuff there. I was convinced that stores in different states had wildly differing inventory.
I especially liked the ones that carried British music magazines, like New Musical Express and Melody Maker. They were always about three months out of date and very expensive, but I didn’t care. They’d come all the way from England. One time I bought a British music mag (Sounds?), and it had an Adam and the Ants button attached to the cover. I about shit my pants with excitement.
I also liked the stores that were a little extra-hip, and carried some of the old punk zines, like Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll and Flipside. Some of them even carried a few wildly exotic titles such as Boston Rock – which was excellent.
In general I was fond of Rolling Stone, The Record, Spin, Trouser Press, Creem, National Lampoon, Mad, The Sporting News, Baseball Digest, Esquire, a couple of baseball card mags (Sports Collectors Digest and The Trader Speaks), Factsheet Five, and probably ten other titles I’m now forgetting.
I even subscribed to the Village Voice for several years, when I was a teenager. I loved to look at the ads for all the punk shows that would be happening during the upcoming week. It all seemed impossibly faraway, almost like a different planet.
And sometimes I’d go rogue, buy something completely off the wall, and see if I might find something interesting inside. Like OMNI, or Psychology Today (I ain’t shittin’ ya). And I’d occasionally dip my big Fritos toenail into comic books. I liked the war stuff, like Sgt. Rock, G.I. Combat, and The Haunted Tank.
But now… I have a hard time working up a halfway decent give-a-shit about any of it. Now all the decent music magazines cost about twelve dollars, and have a full-length CD taped to the front. Funk dat. And even the mags that are delivered straight to my front door are usually ignored for six months, then tossed into the trash.
Oh well. At least Wired and Entertainment Weekly still get my blood pumping a little. Do you subscribe to any magazines? Which ones? Do you actually read them, or is it just six months and out? Tell us about it, won’t you?
The decline of the magazine has also ruined the shopping mall for me. Years ago malls weren’t such a bad place, because they always had a bookstore or two — with a large newsstand. But not anymore… They’re all gone.
And there are no decent record stores in malls either. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, places like National Record Mart would have a kick-ass cutout bin, and it was like a treasure hunt for me. The cutout bin at NRM in the Huntington Mall yielded the first two Undertones albums, two early albums by The Jam, and the original double-album Nuggets compilation. All absolute classics, for something like $2.99 each.
Now it’s just FYE and shitholes like that. I won’t even walk into those places.
There’s nothing at the mall for me now… It’s all clothing stores for women and/or teenagers, and places that apparently sell underwear to middle-schoolers. WTF? I feel like I’m committing a federal crime just walking past those places, with their life-size posters of 14 year old girls in bras and panties in the windows.
Sure, you might find a store that sells scented candles, or baseball caps, or vitamins. But who gives a crap about any of that? I don’t.
The food courts aren’t even any good nowadays. Back in the day they had Orange Julius and Chick-fil-A, but our mall just has the standard fast food joints, and a horrible Chinese swillateria. Oh, and that place that sells thick-ass slices of stuffed pizza for six dollars a throw… No thanks.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that the internet has taken the place of magazines, newsstands, record stores, and shopping malls for me. I still can’t get a Chick-fil-A sandwich through my computer, but it’s only a matter of time.
What do you like about shopping malls? Anything? What stores do you actually enjoy visiting? What about the food? Didn’t it seem better during the 1980s?
Also, please tell us about your magazine habits, circa 2011.
And I’ll be back tomorrow.
Have a great day!
Now playing in the bunker
Read Crossroads Road on your Kindle!
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters!
Hello?
I thought I would be first. And I wasn’t even trying!
I have some issues of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll. The other day I was looking at issues of CREEM on Ebay. One guy was trying to sell one for a 1,000 dollars. I had a letter in CREEM magazine once upon a time.
I like Mojo – but I seldom ever get to the store to buy it. I was a big magazine kid when I was young – Circus, Hit Parader, etc.
I have have about 8 feet of magazines – old issues of Rolling Stone, Circus, CREEM, etc.
Mojo is really the only great music rag left. I use to subscribe but it got too expensive and took my like 3 days to read. And Jeff, I miss the cut out bins too!!
I still subscribe to the Skeptical Inquirer and the Funny Times, though I’ve just allowed Scientific American & Technology Review to lapse.
Rolling Stone mag delivered to my office. My far right wing, conservative boss absolutely fucking hates it.
40 years ago Rolling Stone was the shit. Then Wenner went full Chavez and it lost its attraction for me. Or maybe I just changed my politics.
As a teenager I subscribed to Hot Rod Magazine. Then switched to Car and Driver. I subscribed to Guitar Player for a few years.
Then I discovered computers and had a subscription to a shareware magazine that came on CD. The programs were mostly crap though. Then Computer Shopper, a magazine that weighed more than a Stephan King novel.
I have no scripts at this time.
National Record Mart used to be Mecca for me…I had hundreds of vinyl LPs. There used to be a record store in Athens, OH that was the top floor of a building…The RPM? I don’t remember. There you could find obscure Euro releases from Beefheart or Zappa or the original Rare Bird. Pretty heady stuff for the time. I miss all that. Now it’s downloads and CD’s. Ain’t the same. Not at all.
The St. Albans mall kicked arse in the late 70s, early 80s.
NRM was great, the game room with real pinball machines, a Radio Shack where the employees knew about resistors, diodes and transformers and how to put them together.
Malls are far beyond my tolerance levels these days.
I had a subscription to Car and Driver back in the early 90’s for a couple of years. That’s also about the last time I was in a mall. Or had a land line. Or an erection lasting more than 4 hours.
I was into car magazines also – Hot Rod, Car Craft. I don’t have any of those now.
Also – Mad, Cracked, Dynamite, and comic books.
I HAVE to work the term “swillateria” into my vocabulary. Thanks, Jeff!
I miss Ranger Rick.
Ranger Rick was awesome, I had a subscription throughout my elementary school years!
I LOVE magazines. But the ones I like are upwards of $15.99 an issue!! Absolute robbery. So it’s not often I get one. The only one I get via subscription is Romantic Homes. All about antique stuff I love. And I have had a few ads for my jewelry in there too.
A few years ago we suddenly received a subscription for Rolling Stone. We had no idea who sent it, if it was a gift…nothing. It lasted for the usual year then it stopped. Didn’t renew but it was nice for the time we had it.
I remember my dad used to get Playboy back in the day, before the earth cooled. My mom tried to keep them hidden from everyone…including my father. But every now and then I’d find one in the baffroom on the sink by the terlet. I guess dad forgot to put it back in mom’s hiding place. Good poopin articles, I guess.
Malls seemed much better back in the ’80’s when you could go to Aladdin’s Castle (or whatever) and waste ten dollars worth of quarters playing Pac-Man, Defender, Zaxxon and stuff like that.
I used to take my mom to the little mall in our town and drop her off at Gold Circle (which was,strangely enough, the anchor store), then I would wander off to Camelot Music and Funway Freeway and Bressler’s Ice Cream!
I somehow over the last year received free subscriptions to both Rolling Stone and Entertainment weekly. I was a huge fan of Rolling Stone back in my younger days but todays version is a bunch of left-winged swill.
I enjoy EW and just recently renewed it for a year. Didn’t think I would like it when it first came but it is perfect for on the shitter.
I can only think of two magazine subscriptions that I’ve ever had:
-Consumer Reports. It was a total rip-off. They never evaluated any of the stuff I was ever in the market for.
-Model Railroader. It was a great magazine, but that hobby is designed primarily aimed at folks who have a money tree growing in their back yard. Yeah…I’m not one of them!
Oops…take out the ‘designed primarily’
Stupid delete key!
Model Railroader: I think you need to be a widower with no children as well.
I used to subscribe to two different railfan-interest publications, and regularly picked up DISCoveries, Goldmine, Filmfax/Outre, Psychotronic, and Big Reel from the magazine racks. The internet has taken the place of pretty much all of them, info-wise. I’m not even sure any of those publications exist any longer. I still pick up Shock Cinema if I see it, as well as occasional literary magazines like Glimmertrain and Ploughshares (so sue me). I understand the internet has pretty much wiped out the porno-mag business, too; the smorgasbord of perversion that used to line one wall of a local liquor store seems to have been reduced to four or five titles, although it could just be that particular business cutting back…
As for shopping malls, I’ve worked in a number of them, so I try to avoid them as much as humanly possible. In fact, even setting foot in one causes me to instantly start gritting my teeth.
Somehow, for reasons that totally baffle me, we are receiving Redbook and Prevention. Yeah, wrap your head around that combo. AND Redbook is sent to my husband.
I used to subsribe to Wine Spectator but they’re impossible to get rid of. It’s like sticking the 10 Commandments tablets in the trash.
And if I’m sitting in a waiitng room, I usually grab a HiLights. And get very pissed off is some kid filled in the answers.
I still have, in pristine condition, a load of Creem, Crawdaddy, Rock Scene, Circus, Rolling Stone and Pop Scene from the mid-seventies up until the mid 80s.
I HATE malls. The last time I was in one was April 2010 looking for a dress to wear to a wedding. I walked out empty handed. Oh, except for the chicken sandwich off the dollar menu at McDonalds.
Oh and in addition to Prevention and RedBook, Beloved has a life long subscription to: Bass Masters, American Hunter, NY Hunting and about 17 other related periodicals he never reads.
Madz… I absolutely HATE the mall too. Too many teeny-boppers and strollers. I’m not a typical chick shopaholic…unless at a flea market for vintage jewelry and antiques. Trying on clothes is a chore. I get disgusted if the first thing I try on doesn’t fit. Usually I just say fukkit and go without.
In fact, I have to make my way to the mall this week for something to wear to a wedding too. UGH! I am dreading it. No one makes clothes for women with a figure….that means boobs and a butt. Everything is made for the 13-25 year old. Dressing them like street walkers. One of my favorite quotes: “I’m too young to be old and too old to be young”. Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes.
There is a local chain called People’s News (yes I call it the communist bookstore. See what I did there?). They have rack after rack of magazines and newspapers. Many years ago I bought magazines there. Biggest seller in the store now? Scratch off tickets. If you forget and stop in for a pack of smokes you will be stuck behind a group of oldsters trying to decide what scratch off to buy next. I think some of them stay in there for hours. And the lot will be filled with 80’s Cadillacs and Buicks with the driver head down scratching furiously at another loser.
What pisses me off about People’s News are the flotsam and jetsam who are too poor, or whatever, to have a checking account, and pay all their utility bills and buy money orders there. That shit takes forever! Of course, it wouldn’t happen if they didn’t offer the service.
As a kid, I couldn’t wait for my Popular Science to arrive (yea, I started geeking out early in life). The only other mag I was serious about was Popular Photography. Mom got Readers Digest, and Dad got U.S. News and World Report. I current buy P C World at the newstand, although I know that subscribing would be cheaper. Other junk I get is a Quarterly alumni mag from Marietta College and Western Illinois University. Acura sends me a well-produced and beautifully photographed quaterly on the woderfulness of owning an Acura. Triple A and The Diocese of Wheeling send out newspaper-style mags every month or so, and of course, newletters from the Moose and the K of C.
Jeff’s description of his mall sounds like ours. No more NRM or Camelot, but we have a FYE, which is useless. Still have our Chick-Fill-A in the food court. I only hit the mall 3 or 4 times a year; once for Christmas shopping, all done in 45 minutes, and a few trips to Penny’s for jeans.
Grand Central Mall used to be cool with all the plantings and waterfalls and even real ducks in a pond. Now all that is gone replaced by body piercing kiosks and places to buy Chinese made Indian jewelry. It’s sterile and depressing.
I agree. Since Glimsher took over, it’s boring. I’d forgotten about the ducks. It was cool to watch them and hear them quacking all over the mall.
Grand Central was the coolest in the 80s. Hey Greg, Chuck…I found my Slick Six demo tape. Unfortunately I don’t have the capabitity to put it on a CD. If one of you guys email me at jthancock2005@gmail.com and give me a mailing address, I’ll re-record it on a couple of cassettes and send them to you guys.
check your email.
I used to like to just look envioulsy at In-Style, Bazarr, and assorted other (somewhat) high-end fashion extravaganzas. Don’t know why: never could fit nor afford the wares.
Ah, yes…good old Readers Digest. Used to read religiously when a kid at home. There was always a Time or U.S. News & World Report around too. Now, I get (god -forbid) Martha Stewart’s Living. Thought I’d try it, but nahhh. Good lordy! Who wants to make cut outs of crap for non-existent gatherings, with hand-decorated food.
If I go to the mall, I go to one store (the anchor store, like Boscov’s) so I don’t feel compelled or overwhelmed to roam aimlessly, looking to buy non-necessary crap. The malls around here in “Merlin” (aka Maryland) have gone to the bow-wows. Foreign gip-joints selling homeland crap, all run by our fellow brethern overseas. Those are the ones that are quickly closing.
susan
Exactly, how many cell phone covers can you buy? I can’t figure out how those kiosks are making it.
They’re fronts for drug dealers. Just walk up to one of them and say..
“John has a long mustache”
If they reply…
“The chair is against the wall”
.. you’re gonna score a rock!
A good bit of my record collection came from Camelot Music back in the late 70s-early 1980s.
Haven’t been in a mall for years, do all my shopping on the internet. Don’t subscribe to magazines anymore either – my mailman likes me much better now! Used to subscribe to about ten a month, cooking, home, antiques, Have about 8 boxes dating back to the mid eighties stored in the garage attic, many of which were never opened. I keep saying I’ll go through them some day. Yeah.
Used to read National Lampoon until it just wasn’t funny anymore , probably when P J O’rourke left .They had a funny photo thing with what looked like Gilbert Godfreid and a naked breastly gifted woman ,when that went away so did I .
We have subscribed to Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated for about 15 years. Must be read and tossed before next issues arrive
Also subscribe to:
The Week – it’s all my pea-brain can handle of current affairs.Must be read and tossed before next issue arrives.
Vanity Fair – takes me an entire month to read
Mental Floss – letting subscription expire
Smithsonian – letting subscription expire
ESPN – letting subscription expire
National Geographic – maybe keeping
Mother Jones – keeping
I all of a sudden started receiving Vogue. WTF? I’d read it but it is so full of stinky perfume fillers it goes right in the mail.
I don’t like malls.
The bunker cam pic is nice. How often do you get those kind of pictures Jeff?
I meant the WVSR classic pic.
I still get Entertainment Weekly, but it was a free subscription, where I traded airline miles for magazines. I like it, but when it expires I probably won’t renew. I like getting them free!
The closest to a mall visit I get is to an anchor store with an outside entrance.
Most of my magazines came from the newstand. I used to subscribe to Computes Gazette, The Transactor, and All Chevy, everything else was as interest demanded.
Overall though, magazines lost their lustre a long time ago for me, when articles started to get recycled, advertising seemed to begin to take up larger page area and the tech just wasn’t in the articles any more I said funk that.
I did buy a Car Craft this year though, as my roof , and bumper is in an article. The authors website has a great shot of my car, but according to him since the article got bumped a few months it lost some pages and my car (and a couple other guys cars) went with it. Bastards. That didn’t help change my views of magazines any.
I’ve read National Geographic cover to cover every month for at least 20 years. I’ve had Rolling Stone for the last 5 or 6. I mostly skip the musical aspects and look at the skanky women and read the political stuff. You should do it too, Jeff – you might learn something. I also regularly read my periodic issues of FAIR, Extra! and The Washington Spectator so I can keep up with what our evil corporate overlords are plotting next. I barely flip through my monthly missing from the American Philatelist Society (‘cuz I don’t really have time for my stamp-collecting hobby at this point; maybe ever again 🙁
My stepkids got me sucked in to a whole bunch more magazines last fall. ESPN The Magazine: barely read it (unless it’s about scandal); Reason magazine: thinly-veiled right-wing bullshit and a mistake on my part to have ordered it; Harper’s: some interesting articles here and there and the scattershot format allows me to pick and choose.
Missive – not missing!
National Geographic is excellent, and surprisingly inexpensive!
The only two magazine subscriptions I still have are Mental Floss and Archaeology. I read both from cover to cover when they arrive, so I plan to keep renewing them indefinitely.
I should probably re-subscribe to Entertainment Weekly because my grasp on current pop culture is getting pretty tenuous.
I get Cook’s Illustrated, nothing else. Used to get Brewing Techniques, but they went out of business years ago.
I try to stay away from the mall.
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I used to get Cook’s Illustrated – it was a gift from my Sister-in0law. Great magazine.
No subscriptions here. But I do read second-hand Smithsonian magazines and get Ceramics Monthly from the library.
On a side note, here’s something for Bikerchick:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19217_6-things-nobody-tells-you-about-owning-motorcycle.html
I subscribe to “Philanthropist Monthy”.
I get Diabetes Mismanagement, Knitting mags, Bead and Button and a crochet magazine cause I like crafts dammit!
Now my passion is silk ribbon embroidery so I have to see if there are any mags for that..
OH and my cross stitch pattern habit from Heavenandearthdesigns.com (check it out if you ladies like to cross stitch..) is alot like a magazine subscription..except I pay every month.. haha
i like getting catalogs.. don’t judge me! 😉
Lori: The magazines I love to see for my jewelry and crafts are from Stampington Publications. Check out http://www.stampington.com. The magazines are expensive but they are beautiful and have great ideas.
Hey, Bickerchick, I didn’t know you made jewelry and other miscellaneous crafts. You shoulda come out to the Yart sale at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts this past Sunday! I was there in a booth with my pottery. But I guess rocking and rolling in a camper was fun too. This is your official heads up for next year. :o)
Btw, I left you a link up above to check out.
Bickerchick? Whoops. Sorry. I meant BIKERchick. :p
Gretchen: LOVE the link on motorcycles. AND every bit true! Especially the spiders. JESUS. My boyfriend left my leather jacket in the garage and I freaked out for that very reason.
Yep, I MAKE all of my jewelry by altering vintage/antique jewelry into something wearable and current. See my link.
Shit! I didn’t know you created pottery pieces! If we were in town and knew about your boof, I would have stopped by for sure. I would love to see what you do!
I would think spiders would have been the dealbreaker for you.
Lurve your creations, especially the goth ones (like the birdy necklace). You should get yourself a boof next year too so we can be neighborly. I’m working on getting together a webpage (and Etsy page). Trouble is, I only know Frontpage2000. Which essentially means I’m the dipshit driving the Flintstone car on the shoulder of the Information Highway. But I think I’d rather be dragged over tacks and dipped in rubbing alcohol than take a web design class with a bunch of pimply hipsters.
I hate our mall. The one closest to me is one of those malls where what used to be nice fountains are now riddled with a bunch of fake plastic shrubs. Over 50% of the shops have closed down and replaced with stores called ‘Rainbow’ that sells discount clubbing outfits and ‘Streets’ where they spray paint t-shirt for you. When you walk by it’s just some big dude that oddly resembles ‘Big’ from the show ‘Big and Rich’. He just glares at you when you walk by. There’s a clock store that is completely empty everytime you walk by it. Just the one employee and thousands of clocks….an indian art store full of statues and dreamcatchers. And yes Jeff, that one crappy Chinese place in the food court. In our mall there’s Wok, Taco Johns, Sbarro, some shit hole where they make ‘authentic Chicago style food’ which is basically just a bunch of pimply teenagers who hate their jobs and slap a an Oscar Meyer on a peice of bread and call it a ‘Chicago Dog’ and Great Steak and Potato, which is the only place I actually enjoy the food. There are a few good stores in the mall, but I try to avoid it at all costs. Whenever I have to make a trip to the mall I seriously sit and ponder the journey for like an hour to think of a way to avoid it, but sometimes you just can’t. It has a nice very air conditioned theater attached to it, so sometimes we have no choice but to enter that shit shack if necessary.
I’m not really a big magazine person, but I love Game Informers and LTD Commodity catalogs. I like the occasional Cosmo, Self or People when I’m in the mood.
Brittney, you are probably too young to remember, but there was a skit on Saturday Night Live many years ago that featured a Mall like yours. They had a store called “Puppy World” that only sold puppies…but had problems getting rid of the dogs after they grew up. There was also the “Scotch Boutique” that only sold Scotch tape…the 39 cent small, and the 69 cent large, economy roll,
Hm…I don’t remember that skit, but I dearly love the old SNL’s, back when it was still funny and had Chris Farley, Steve Martin, Dan Ackroyd, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman, Chevy Chase, etc…. They were all in different time frames for the most part, but they were all great. I wasn’t even alive when most of them were on it actually, but nonetheless. I can get into some old stuff. WC Fields, the Marx Brothers, and of course, Three Stooges!
Lol, it was actually ‘Rob and Big’ not Big and Rich.
Loved Ranger Rick! And I went right from that to Rolling Stone and Rip-Off Press, thanks to a college-aged relative who stayed with us during an impressionable period in my young life. Regularly stopped by the headshop for (screens and papers) my copies of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddies’ Cat, Wonder Warthog, Mr. Natural, Cheech Wizard, Interview, Mother Jones, The Utne Reader, et. al. Subbed ‘Heavy Metal’ from 1973 to 1995, by which time it wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on; but the damn company just kept on sending them to me for years long after I’d stopped paying for it. Oh, how I miss those dear dead days back in the ’70’s, though, when the art was sublime, the aliens were truly alien and the French was badly translated…
Last magazine I subscribed to was Reader’s Digest. Good magazine, entertaining and all. But…if you are a longtime sucscriber such as I, they jack up the price each year. It got to the point where they wanted $30 a year, year were offering a year’s subscription to newcomers for $12.99. And then they changed the format, AND changed the weight of the paper on the cover.
Too much for me. I let it lapse, and then started getting calls from Reader’s Digest Central Operations…offering me better and better deals on my subscription. Shit, I think on the last call they might have even offered to PAY me to get their magazine.
Malls. My daughter can go into any Mall and have that same gleam in her eyes that I had walking into a Mall when I was her age. I guess it just takes some growing up and maturity to realize what shitholes most malls are. Granted, there are two types of Malls” Shitty, and Shittier. If you go into a Mall that has a store that sells swords, and Dungeons and Dragons paraphenalia…you are are in the “Shittier” Mall.
P.S. Jeff, quit interrupting me with your daily updates…I’m right in the middle of a REALLY great book! Pass the beer nuts!
Men’s Health is good to read while eating a chicken curry or two. I used to read National Geographic. Now I’m at college I have little time to read anything other than coursebooks.
I’ve recently subscribed to the Facebook group called Bookface-
‘bookface is the new place for people who do not attend `book clubs`,and read about one paragraph at bedtime before waking up three hours later with their face stuck to page 2.’
Kinda sums up my reading habits at the moment!
Hate malls, like magazines. Subscribe to The Week, Road & Track, Car & Driver, Autoweek, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Spin, Esquire, Interview… probably forgetting a few, and “Hair, Shoes and How your man is terrible Monthly” x 3 (or 4) get delivered in my name but are for the Mrs.
Anyone remember Invictus Records and Tapes in Beckley? Totally kick ass back in the 70’s.
I recently opened a kiosk at a mall. I got a spot next to these two goth chicks who demonstrate that thing that looks like you’re jacking off somebody. They’re totally into it and I find myself again wishing I had two dicks. I have a booth that will re-stripe your cat while you wait.
I subscribe to Reader’s Digest, Popular Mechanics, and Oxford American. I also get the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue every month.
Fuck malls. Our mall does have a chic-fil-a, but it’s also overrun with shitty chinese places. They attack you as you’re walking by, trying to give you a piece of shitty meat on a toothpick. And there’s a Ben & Jerry’s that I never go to because I don’t want to support some goddamn snail or endangered whatever every time I buy a scoop of ice cream.
There’s also loads of fucks in the middle of the mall that accost you when you’re walking by. They hawk dead sea lotion, wigs, teeth whitening, and there is even some orientals that lay people down on chairs and massage them right there in the middle of the mall. Down at the end of the mall they set up the carnival freak shit. Bungee jumping type things and a pool of water where people pay to be zipped into a plastic ball and roll around. And there’s a hurricane machine where people go into a booth and subject themselves to 200 mile per hour winds. It’s not really like a hurricane though, because there isn’t any debris in there. I’ve always wanted to run up and toss a bag of bolts and broken glass in there while someone is in it.
I used to like going to Brookstone. But they’ve gotten real pushy and salesmany. You can’t walk around in there without someone getting in your face and saying, “Can I help you find something?” Really? Does anyone really go in there looking for something specific? Do they ever have someone say, “Yes, I’d like a rectal thermometer that has a compass on it and that I can also flip burgers with.”
Trouble with those thermometers is you end up with meat up your arse. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if that’s your thing, of course.
I saw a guy in Walgreen’s one time complaining that the rectal thermometers were “too small to do anything”.
Was he hawt?
I still subscribe to Trail Rider (the only halfway decent offroad motorcycle mag still in print). Grew up reading Dirt Bike when Super Hunky was still running the show, and Trail Rider still runs some of his old columns. I used to subscribe to Maximum Rock’N”Roll for years too, but let that lapse sometime after Tim Yohannon died. Our first record was actually on the cover waaay back in the late 90s.
Can’t stand shopping malls, and if I get taken to one at gunpoint I always find a restaurant with a bar and hide there, buying overpriced pisswater beer. Almost all shopping is done via the ‘net.
Failed mall stores:
Katz Oriental Stir-Fry
Brown Julius
Mr. T’s Creamery
Anderson Cooper’s Secret
Show-Me State’s Lube and Oil
Anyone here from New York – specifically Yonkers or thereabouts that knows of “Cross County” the frist (and possibly only) outdoor mall?
(And for those of you who are – phonetically: Yonkahs)
used to go there in my youth – mid sixties – there was a pool hall there where you could drink beer ,smoke and maybe play pool at 15 years old !
I know exactly where it is, but I’ve never set foot inside. It’s one of the landmarks on my secret toll-free route from NYC to upstate.
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Mental Floss and The Week.
People’s News used to have such a great inventory of porn…for a place that didn’t have sticky floors.
Best joke I have heard by a standup comedian in a while: The internet has made masturbation so much easier. I used to jerk off to the Sears catalog when I was a teenager. Now I just get on my computer and go to sears.com.
Okay…ya had to be a kid back in the 60s or 70s to appreciate that one…but it is funny as heck!
Used to take the KRT bus up to Charleston and spend hours in the Arcade News reading Creem, Hit Parader and Circus. Loved all the old music mags. NRM and Budget Tapes and Records for vinyl purchases. Now only subscribe to Rolling Stone, mostly for the investigative journalism articles. Their music coverage is the pits. Gaga on the cover every other week.