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Attention! Completely remastered episodes of the Dead Mall Series are now being archived in 4K at ru-vid.com/show-UCfCM_TfrSDMkkMpKuLNWuXA. The remasters have gone through an extensive AI Enhancement process as well as proper sound mixing and colorization. This Dead Mall Series Remastered project has been made possible through viewer support on Patreon. Go over now and watch in glorious 4K. ENJOY!
You should check out kaleidoscope Mall in Des Moines, Iowa. It's a small mall, but I think checking out the rest of the skywalk system would make the trip worth while. It's a series of walkways that go through buildings in the downtown area and was once bustling but is now dead and basically abandoned.
JCPenney that you were inside of at the end of the video is in absolutely horrible shape today and much like the Ames in Baltimore. It can never be used again.
I try never to copy anyone but I will say that most of my inspiration and drive to do better each video comes from Dan and he is the reason I started documenting these malls
Hey Yo, while Dan's Dead series is always welcome and top notch, please give respects to where it's due. Ace's Adventures is stellar and focuses primarily on dead malls across America in detail. Give him credit, he's awesome.
@@craftsmanceramics8653 Isn't that okay to be inspired by someone? As an artist, I find it hard to keep going and often get blocked until I might be inspired by seeing many different stylistic applications from other people. I don't see a thing wrong with that.
@@ghkillah1995 As a professional designer myself there is a big difference between 'being inspired' by someone and 'shamelessly ripping someone off' down to the same exact stylistic choices.
@Mark C That's a really good question. I recall reading about one that was repurposed into a community college. Some malls have become more office space oriented, like having various government agencies (employment, etc) in the malls. I think a few have started to put in housing units.
@@CharacterInYourReality1127 - "Vickie's" does tend to close in malls like other retailers, it's B+BW and GNC that usually stand out in "dead malls" as being one of the last to leave because of both chains LONG-TERM LEASE policy....
The thing that really sells this series for me is the audio mixing. The sound effects and off in the distance music really just adds such incredible ambiance to an already particular vibe. Sometimes I can't tell if you've added in something or if you're using raw audio. Your videos put me in such an otherworldly place. Truly one of my favorite series on RU-vid
I had a 1990s Sears 💳 . After 2yr then sent me a shiney sticker to attach saying I was a "preferred customer" 😘... I mainly ran up charges renting vehicles.
The Vaporwave community should make a shrine for Dan Bell. I believe he was insanely important for helping spread Vaporwave awareness and his dead mall series just works so well with the aesthetic. A true gift to the Vaporwave Community. Love you Dan Bell
man i just wish we had the technology to put on a VR headset and see exactly what a mall like this looked like at the height of its popularity. suuuuuper fascinating.
Yeah especially when he does the "funny edits." Dan Bell has an "interesting" sense of humor. I mean you've seen his other hit series Another Dirty Room; (especially whenever Rick gets involved) so yeah...
DBradshaw25 they’re supposed to set the atmosphere of a bygone era. Malls are an inherently 80’s thing, and these malls are the last remnants of that period of time. Basically the introductions are poking fun of that “great 80’s” nostalgia people have for places like this... idk I feel like I’m tryna explain it too much. It makes sense if you get it, but if you don’t already understand I probably can’t help you🤷♂️
@@JeNn0mic0n Yeah, I could live forever _without_ seeing any of those Sleeze Palaces. (I watched the first one and that was one more than I needed!) Stay safe.
@@JeNn0mic0n Yeah no mistake, I kinda do like his ADR series; but I think the thing that got ME hooked on Dan Bell in the first place is his "Dead Mall Series" (that and also the fact he comment on some of my older videos in the past -- before I've even knew about Dan Bell.) He'll pretty much still be considered the "Dead Mall"-guy. After all; I think he was the one who made this a bit mainstream (as well as maybe even *v a p o r w a v e* ). Glad to see he's still doing it and also adding more variety to his channel.
And it's one of the BEST. That shot with the "I thought it was someone" in the back of the empty store was CLASSIC. And his reading of the, "What brings you?" board, followed by that devilish laugh, was awesome. The transition between malls (that's Greensboro, NC) is just wonderful, too.
I remember as a kid in the 90’s my parents would go to the mall all day long on Sunday. We would mall crawl every store. Discovery store, imaginireium , Cinabon, mrs fields cookies, museum store
Remember the DIsney Store if you had one in your area. We had them in our malls here in Columbia,SC. As a kid my parents used to have me go in there a lot. so sad all the dead malls in my area now. 3 dead malls and its expecting to grow. I miss the 90s
@@growingup15 ahh Disney stores, one of the malls near me (that is still operating) had one when I was little in the mid 90s, but it was gone in the early 2000s. That mall almost died but it came back to life (unless the pandemic killed it, haven't been up that way in awhile), but anyway, I went into a Disney store recently (like last year), and they're so expensive now, it sucks.
Worked at Governors Square in Tallahassee Fl. The mall walkers were horrible. It’s nice to think that the majority of those hideous people are dead by now.
So glad you used the Pines mall footage! This was the mall of my childhood/teen years in the late 80s/early 90s, when the mall was new. All my new school clothes came from this mall and I had some of those weird, awkward high school dates here. The food court used to be great. This was the only place to buy the latest music (on cassette tapes!) and "alternative" music was not yet called "New Rock." If you wanted to see a movie, this was the only place to go (literally). They had an arcade off the food court with a claw machine that would steal your money. My 15th birthday party was in the Garfield's restaurant. This mall, believe it or not, was exciting and fun. You could spend all day here easily. Pine Bluff was rough then. Some of the highest per capita crime rates. But it didn't stop us from going out and having a good time, just made us more aware of our surroundings and grow up knowing the world wasn't always a safe place.
Wow, I literally just put into Google search "pine bluff" and the first result is " CNN 1 officer dead, another injured after shootout in Pine Bluff, Arkansas - 2 Hours ago" Makes me wanna head on down to Pine Bluff, maybe we can all meet at the mall!
And a Walmart that closed back in 2002-3 next to the pines then they and the Blake St. Walmart both moved to Olive St. as a supercenter and more stores are built as a shopping complex near the interstate plus service stations and eateries are built there too and I admit people in that town hated that they built the store a little far out near the interstate. JCPenney is closed and Dillard's is now a small clearance sell Dillard's. 🥴😢 Hopefully Saracen will bring it back to prominence.
I love all of these malls. If I lived in any of these areas. I would frequent the mall. It doesn't make sense to not use these shops. I would go and just hangout. I would get food at their food court. I would get exercise there. I would be one of the mall walkers. I would purchase any and all of my stuff at these stores. Shopping locally is good for your area. Don't ever stop doing it. It gives townspeople jobs. It gives townspeople a place to go. Its a good place to see others. It's so wasteful to not use these resources.♏
"I'm not sure when I was here to film this mall. Of course I have quite a large archive of malls I shot that I haven't released yet" DAN. HOW DARE YOU TEASE US LIKE THIS.
Opening music: Lupus Note - Sunset Day, Becker mall intro: Forever Sunset - City Lights, City Dreams. Sun certainly setting on these two melancholic malls.
@@adamjensen2304 To be fair, that is not true, he always does. In this case, the two tracks are not under copyright or license so are free to use without credit.
Imagine being one of the few remaining stores open and seeing Dan Bell. That’s like seeing the grim reaper. I love the vapor wave music and commentary!
I know you get a hundred comments, but the riverfront mall in Amsterdam NY would be a great video. It's stuck in the 1970s, and has a really interesting history.
Grew up going to The Pines mall in the early ‘90s; we’d shop, dine, and catch movies at the theater that used to be there. But by the mid-‘90s, the mall became dead and not the safest place to be. we stopped going there and instead would make the longer drive to the Little Rock malls. The mall still looks the same as I remember it; I remember getting food from the Shanghai Express restaurant. Back in those days, the food court was packed.
I recently had my first dead (well, more like dying) mall tour at the Hot Springs Mall earlier this month. It's so surreal to be in a mall where there's just huge stretches of closed stores and stores that are open but about 3 remodels behind schedule
Dying malls almost have more of a "backrooms" feel than totally abandoned ones. Plenty of signs of life, without the life to go with it. Fully lit and 'operational' stores, without a soul in sight.
What brings me to the mall? To be depressed. Because of the fact the mall nearby where I live is half dead and I end up getting hit with nostalgia each time I walk around it.
Me, too! I feel a sad rush of nostalgia again---after his long absence from the strange yet familiar tiled spaces. At 80, I remember when the whole mall "thing" started, right about the time I graduated high school (1958). In fact, my girlfriend worked in a sandwich shop called Corned Beef Corner, in one of the first ones in our nearby Big City and I worked in one of the anchor stores (one of the very few Marshall Field's satellites) after graduating. They were all open malls in those days, so winter wasn't much fun. (Some malls had what the Brits call "hoarding," temporary walls with windows they used to enclose the sidewalks, which had overhanging canopies.) Dan, as he's said, has a file bulging with dead mall explorations he hasn't edited and posted yet. Wish he would. I really miss the food courts in our huge mall up on The Hill above our port city. I get really hungry for a hot sub from Steak Escape---and wonderful ice cream shops. Yum! C'mon, Dan, give us a "fix" from time to time---please. Stay safe.
No way. The Dionne Warwick yukking it up intro actually sucks your mind back in time to that moment, and if you were born in a time after she first uttered that cackle, she keeps your soul.
As someone who did, indeed, live through this wonderful period (my Mom LOVED to take us to all the malls in Baltimore and Pittsburgh), I'm glad that this gives you a sense of something important lost. These places were, in many ways, very cool.
This happened at the mall in Burlington, WA. It had been going downhill for a while, but the shooting there didn’t help. It closed when COVID and they decided not to reopen. It was a ghost town just like this. Decent movie theater though.
I love the videos, but man, these used to be fascinating as we watched our culture change, but with the pandemic forcing so much more change so fast, it’s honestly kind of depressing more than anything. People keep talking normalcy, but I don’t know that we’ll ever return to quite what we had before all this started.
Hello! Local to the Becker Village Mall here! It is indeed QUITE bad, the border that runs through the entire inside perimeter of the mall is often just referred to as a walking track. good cardio! The mall itself has gone though several changes in management , leading to a whole lot of nothing being able to stick. I do not remember which manager specifically it was, but one of them didnt want certain stores there because it would 'attract the wrong crowd'. So it's basically doomed. During the late 90s / Early 00s it was honestly very fun, lots of fun shops and outlets. Some timestamps for memories sake : 17:09 : This was an arcade ! I believe the name was Jackpot . it was VERY fun and was the place to go 17:25 : K-Mart ! Rest in peace to a legend Directly next to the arcade was a locally owned pizza shop called Giovanni's at 17:42 . It was the BEST place to eat in town, good eye Dan. other things of note were TONS of clothing outlets, lots of fun community activities, local food, and a pet store. Also that JCPenny? It's closed. Lots of great memories here. Sad to see such a waste of entertainment and space. The parking lot is HUGE and i would say , legitimately, maybe 1 percent of it is used at any given time. Definitely has a killer aesthetic inside though, its a time capsule.
Becker Village Mall has been dying for close to 20 years now. I went back there when I was visiting family in the early aughts and it was almost completely empty. And yes, that was a pizza parlor. A darn good one, right next to where the Tilt arcade used to be, which was a Gold Mine arcade before the merger.
If I'm not depressed,I am now after watching this. What's happening in retail today is so sad. I worked in Wanamakers for 27 years in display; started in 1977. Going to the main department stores in Philadelphia was an incredible experience every time,back in the day. My mom would dress us up on weekends n with pop would go in to town shopping and playing I. The toy departments. It was a special experience and during the Holidays was the best. Sadly today kids will never have the excitement we had in 60s n 70s. Progress is great but sometimes it sucks 😢💜
Your answer to “why you go to the mall” (to be scared) is actually my LEGIT answer if someone asked me that because for some unknown reason I have nightmares about malls almost every night. I don’t know why I have them since I rarely ever went to the mall and if I did I had a good time if I stuck to the arcade, KB TOYS, and radio shack🤷🏻♀️. But today I decided to try and use your videos to help me lesson my nightmares if not get rid of them completely. 🤞🏻wish me luck.
This series gives me so much nostalgia for the 80's even though I was born in 95. I often wish I could have been born in like '78 so I could have experienced some of the 80's and got to experience that aesthetic and the rise of personal computing and got a head start on that. But also so I could experience the world and life before social media ruined everyone's lives and turned them into extremists in one form or the other.
Many malls near me such as Bridgewater, Palmer, and Lehigh Valley are doing quite well near me. But the Phillipsburg Mall, which he did a video for nearly five years ago has recently closed for good.
I was born in 1970 so I remember when "Shopping Centers" were decimating Main Streets across America. By 1980 most Downtown department stores had about thrown in the towel and either moved to the Shopping Centers on the outskirts of cities or just went out of business. Lots of smaller retailers had done the same thing and in the mid 80's most small and medium sized towns and cities across the Midwest had Main Streets that looked like a Neutron bomb had gone off. My parents generation was nostalgic for the 40's and 50's when Main Street was the place to be and the Gen-Xers are nostalgic about malls. I look at the death of malls not so much with nostalgia(we lived almost 50 miles from the nearest malls and they were a weekend only thing) but as Karma biting 80's consumerism in the ass. It's just too bad that everyone is jumping on the Amazon band wagon as Main Street retail is what keeps a community healthy. As an aside I DO miss just having a phone on the wall in the kitchen, no GPS, no ATM's, no spy cameras everywhere and decent movies and music.
@@seththomas9105 I dont get it that was before the internet shopping boom by a few decades what exactly would of killed off the downytown shopping centers back then? Your comment confused me I was born in the 90s so if you might be able to elaborate on you comment that would be cool
@@coolelectronics1759 Before the mid to late 60's there were no malls to speak of and most all retail business was on "Main Street" USA. Private mom and pop or chains like Woolworths or Sears or JC Penny were in large department stores in the city centers. Shopping malls decimated the city core or Main Street in the 60's and 70's. Just look up any videos on RU-vid to see what I mean.
Dan, Please list the music you use in the videos! Music List: Racing Hearts- Mattie Maguire Dreaming Out Loud · Middle And End City Lights, City Dreams · Forever Sunset Red Revision - Lucky Man (Instrumental Version) Central Park Summer · Nickolas Jones I think I am missing one that starts at 7:23 but that is the best I can do.
Yeah if you can call Pathmark (a grocery store for those of you who don't know) an anchor. Or at the end AC Moore & Toys R Us. The only redeeming thing is Agean Pizza.
Is that why Roosevelt Field is always so crowded (at least pre-pandemic)? I have a ton of friends who worked there and they said it was the only good mall on the island
9:36 that little girl slips and probably hits her face on the big fish. I had to run it back five times to be sure but it was the best laugh I’ve had in 2020
Somehow this one just hits a little different. I think the videos just really hit home to me of this life we were all supposed to have, both jovial and clueless.
