Warren Mall | The Grey Ghost | a demolished dead mall vintage gem in PA | ExLog 59 

You all rock. Thanks for watching. Let me know if you want to hire Megaforce for your birthday party. Stay tuned for merch... Catch up on the full Expedition Log Series! Support the Expedition Log on Patreon, if you like! - www.patreon.com/salvatoreamadeo Second Channel! - ru-vid.com Join the discussion on Discord! discord.gg/g4tKbpu My Website: www.salvatoreamadeo.com Facebook Page! - facebook.com/QuiteStudios/ ExLog Series Playlist - ru-vid.com/group/PLeveLKZSrsW5yrdr5vZa1-7oq_g-EuzZt Twitter - twitter.com/salvatoreamadeo Instagram - instagram.com/salvatoreamadeo Subscribe to and follow everyone on the DMOD Seal: Faded Commerce - ru-vid.com RetailPocalypse - ru-vid.com The Vintage Spaces Channel - ru-vid.com Unicomm Productions - ru-vid.com Ace's Adventures - ru-vid.com/show-UCYfArGrC66A-vdS45DS7Qrg Jonrev's Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/7323354@N05/ Jonrev's Site - jonrev.com/ The Caldor Rainbow - thecaldorrainbow.blogspot.com/ The Neon Explorer instagram.com/theneonexplorer Rustbelt Expeditions instagram.com/rustbeltexpeditions

"Once malls finally open up... go pay your local mall a visit... sit in the conversation pits and make a memory... and just feel the space." ... "Malls are temporary, just like mostly everything in this world. At some point, we have to let go, and that's OK. But the memories we have of the things that touched our lives are what we should keep most sacred. Go enjoy the things you care about, when it becomes safe to do so, because ultimately everything becomes a grey ghost." Great sentiments, Sal. You're talking (mostly) to an audience of people who LIKE MALLS, and it's good to remind us that on the other side of the pandemic we will (hopefully) be able to go enjoy them again, and that we shouldn't squander the opportunity because this could be as good as it gets, and our local mall might end up on your ExLog list sooner or later. You hit the nail on the head with your description of small local malls being the ones parents liked because they could quickly go in, get what they needed, and leave, vs. the larger ones. Of course, as a tween and teen (and later), I always preferred the larger ones, as there was more to do and more to see! What I've been doing during quarantine. Taking tech classes and watching heritage seminars online. Ordering myself a new computer for the first time since 2012. Renewing old acquaintances via email. Budgeting. LOTS of budgeting, as my team was laid off a couple weeks before COVID-19 hit. Organising things at home a bit, enabling me to find things I haven't seen in 5+ years!

It breaks my heart to see any mall demolished. it's as if with every brick that is shattered, a memory is destroyed.

As kids we never thought the familiar and comfortable things we experienced would change.

Great video! I hate seeing the dead plants. 😣

Sal, I felt like I was right there with you. Thoroughly enjoyed it, excellent as always!

Your videos are so calming, I love them. The calm atmosphere helps a lot with my anxiety 😊 I can’t wait for the border to reopen so I can go visit my parents and go spend an hour or two eating pretzels and drinking coffee in the quiet little mall across the street from them On a different note, bon-ton closing feels so weird to me. I never liked the store but my great grandma used to work there decades ago?? And so that was her store of choice and she’d always bring me and my mom shopping there and we could never get her to stop cleaning up displays or putting clothes back on their proper racks. So even though I never liked it there, knowing I’ll never get to see gramma picking up after other customers and chatting with the older cashiers who’ve seen her doing this for years. It’s a weird feeling indeed.

I wouldn't have thought to use "The Blue Danube" as the music for such a video, but it worked well! I think it helped capture that sense of dignity in the passing you were trying to describe. Well done.

My son (he's 6) and I really miss the mall right now (Tysons Corner). He loved sitting in Tesla's and playing with Legos. He also loved eating a slice of pizza at the food court. Today we drove thru Chick-Fil-A and he ate a cookie, it was his first time out of our neighborhood in about 2 months. Our poor kids!

Its amazing that when these malls were built there was such an optimism and excitement as every brick was laid. That often followed with a time of bustling commerce, social activity and profitability. Then time ran out. Renovations were too little and too late, followed by outright neglect. Stores left, the gates came down never to be lifted again. Finally the wrecking ball, to make way for a new chapter. Perhaps one that could be brighter and make new memories. The one sad truth remains though, that things will never be the same...

Funding for that fountain ran dry.... puns....

Thank you Sal always enjoy a view of American culture you show us here in the U.K. . Due to health I’m in cocooning . You give me an access into the outside albeit vicariously . Thank you xxx

Excellence. You help us to remember our childhood. Walking through the malls, the music, the sounds of shoppers, stores open everywhere and struggling to carry all of our bags plus an orange julius. The highlight was the arcades and carousel, hard to find anymore. Sears used to have the best snack bar with popcorn and coconut bon bons. Mervyns had the greatest variety of clothes and shoes and Arthur's toys was just so much fun! Miss those days😊

Speaking of TARP, when the feds loaned JPMorgan Chase $29 billion to acquire Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve was given Bear Stearns portfolio. The only real asset was Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City, which was already dying. So a dead mall in Oklahoma City was the collateral for a $29 billion dollar loan. It's still there and very closed.

I love your videos, they have gotten me through this rough time of boredom. I'm a home body anyway so, it's not that bad. I appreciate all you have done to entertain me in my short time as a follower. I still have a lot of catching up to do. You absolutely have to do self-care, it's so important for the mind, body, and spirit. As an essential worker, self-care is a vital part of my life. Do what you love but still stay safe and mindful. Thanks again for your time and effort.

These videos are perfect for this coronavirus stay-at-home time in history: Hauntingly evocative of the heyday of the malls that we all experienced That piped-in mall music that seemed so normal then sounds eerie and grotesque now. The research and back story really make these videos legit. In the future they could certainly be used in business- or anthropology- classes. It was interesting to hear the theory that Amazon & online shopping didn't kill the malls. Megaforce had me laughing and cringing at the same time, especially the expressions on the faces when that flying motorcycle flew into to cargo plane.The wings on the cycle were moronically un-aerodynamic! All 'sponsor segments' are surreal.

As always- perfection! Please don’t forget us when you become famous! ❤️

Oh my goodness, how did I miss this? You did my childhood mall! Thank you, I'm excited to watch this!

thank you for grinding out the weekly content sal, its honestly my favourite part of the week when you upload a new log. the visual aesthetic of your videos and the reverb you add to the songs you choose are perfect and i love it so much. thank you for keeping us entertained in lockdown

I so look forward to these videos every Friday. Thank you Sal for uploading these for us every Saturday.

Hey I know this’ll end up falling on deaf ears but I want to say I’m glad you did this mall I grew up in Warren pa actually less than 4 miles away from the mall I remember when I was a kid (around 5-8 years old) I remember going to the mall with fondness and going to Kmart with my mom to go grocery shopping and always trying to convince her to get me some pizza from napolis or to go to EB Games. I remember taking pictures with Santa and the Easter bunny and throwing countless coins into the fountains to wish for toys from Santa. I remember buying our artificial Christmas tree (which we still use) from Big Lots. As I got older it seemed to die with age till it was just Bon Ton where my brothers and I would get last minute Christmas presents for my mom. I remember asking my mom when I was 12 why the stores were closing and she told me about how the owners kept raising the prices on rent. They raised them so much that the stores either moved to Warren Commons down by Walmart (like GameStop, RadioShack, and Kay did before the first two ended up closing for good) or closing in general it’s a tough thing to see the place where you have memories from when you were a child die but that happens

Love your channel please don't ever stop what you do means a lot to so many people.

Once again, thank you Sal! I love your videos.

Sal, you say that is not Amazon that killed the malls. I agree, it was us, our parents and grandparents that killed the malls and American business in general. We sent our business off-shore. We wanted to buy the cheapest junk available instead of Canadian or American made product. When things get back to normal are you still going to buy off shore cheap junk or will you look at labels and try to buy to buy American made product?

Love your series Sal. In the 90s I was a lone security gaurd at night in a Westfeild mall in Australia, I was so bored I used to get wasted and wander though the mall exploring its hidden places and staring at the architecture, once I thought I saw a mannequin blink its eye.Its bizarre to be the only person in a mall (in a good way) So I share your love of malls and their atmosphere, hard to put into words....thanks Sal

dude.. this is one of the VERY BEST dead mall videos on the entire You Tube! You did an awesome job filming and putting this together with some fabulous narration, that was both a history lesson as well as much needed entertainment during this stupid lockdown! GREAT JOB!!!!

PUZZLE BEAR SCARED THE S**T OUT OF ME

Thank you so much for your weekly uploads Sal, Such a good start to my Saturday mornings. Awesome as always. Stay safe from the UK.

Love your videos. The scenes and storyline make you stand out. Keep it up!!

my local mall open in 1969 and it still has a lot of vintage planter and a fountain in it from that time. My mom and my grandmother use to take me there for close shopping at the JC Penny's or the Belk, I also remember gone to the sears with my dad all the time for tools/car battery. Sadly the mall is all but empty now with no anchors at all only a dollar store, bed bath and beyond and a great American cookie place is left is left inside

Explosions, Lycra, bad wigs, flying motorcycles and good guys always win, yeah Baby, go Mega Force. Warren definitely was in the time warp of the 70s. I can relate to the local mall of my youth which was very similar to Warren. Totally agree with you and a great observation of how manageable smaller Grey Ghosts were. That green/yellow hallway looked like an interrogation space, very creepy. You did another Knockout Production, really loved it. Great job Sal, be safe.!

One of these days I'm going to see a movie that I love be one of the "sponsors" for Sal's videos. When that inevitably happens, I don't know if I'll feel ashamed or a sense of immense pride.

I find it so interesting to see the amount of these dead malls in the US, and the way you speak of going to malls in such a nostalgic way. I live in Australia, our malls here are actually so busy it's ridiculous. Full of kids hanging out, families, people seeing movies, grabbing food in the food court. I don't see them closing any time soon. Some days especially weekends it's hard to find a carpark, or a table in the food court. Obviously depending where you are and which city you are in but generally most people still go to shopping malls to shop, eat, socialise etc etc.

Nostalgic, depressing, thought provoking ... all at the same time.

Holy shit man. I grew up in Warren and went to this mall all the time. Great work on the video! It was nice to see the mall again!

Thank you for another fun adventure. The Megaforce ad was hilarious 😂 made my day I needed a good laugh. Keep up your awesome 😎 vids ❤️ from 🇬🇧 ❤️❤️💋💋

Keep making these videos. They are the best on you tube by far.

Very well put.Another great log

Sal, thanks for all your work on creating these. As this pandemic plods on your videos have been a very welcome respite reminding me of the world that (i've been told, at least) still exists outside of my house.

16:17 Wow the sound of that gate going up took me right back to my mall store manager days! Keeping from losing my mind by building a miniature post-apocalyptic abandoned house during quarantine. Love your thoughts on the need to enjoy the things we love while we have them. Made me think of that old Kansas song, Dust In The Wind. Another great video, thanks again!

What a great video!! It's very sad to see the state of the mall....I have a lot of fond memories of the place. One I remember most clearly is sitting on the benches with my best friend, playing a GBA game we bought at the EB Games while we waited for my mom to finish getting her nails done at a salon. And getting discounts at BonTon because my friend used to work there. I used to frequent the Bath and Body Works as well. I got my ears pierced at a little stand outside the Claire's...I had forgotten how large the mall was, as for a good 15 years, only the wing with the BonTon and Label Shopper were easily accessible. Thank you for sharing this, it means a lot to me to revisit these memories!

I’ve been waiting for this one for a long long time, great video Sal.

37:50 Damn that was deep. Didn't think I'd be in tears watching a Sal vid lol. Watching your videos has been helping my mental health working 2 essential jobs. I don't even know what this quarantine everyone talks about lol. On a serious note thank you Sal for doing what you do.

These malls and certain stores are truly a big part of CULTURE. These things are important. Ty Sal.

I enjoyed this video very much. Thank you for sharing this.

Thanks for everything you do for us. I've been playing video games it seems to help

The Grey Ghost in a graying rural community. Yet, with Covid-19 being more prevalent in densely packed urban areas there are advantages to living in a more spacious rural area that the young may consider. I saw your San Jacinto Mall visit Thursday night and it really hit home as I went there during high school and college.

I miss this mall so much. Aladians castle and napolias pizza was an absolutely perfect way to spend a day lol. Thanks for this nostalgic video.

Very interesting video you have put together Sal thanks for sharing it with us and i hope to see more of your awsome videos please stay safe.

This Mall is one of the most incredible malls you have filmed, Its amazing how the beautiful brown tiles and old planters escaped renovation or change, love it, I could easily sit there for hours and stare at it all, hard to explain if you dont get it

Another great Video Sal! thank you A fitting Nickname for a Mall that is just a Ghost Now! I kept remembering that Yellow Tile around the Plant Box..takes me back to The look of the Malls long ago. and the Wonderful Skylight for Sun upon these plants. These sitting areas were always nice to sit for a bit. You make me laugh with "The Stink Eye" comment. Yes This Mall was Open for Pizza, Nails And The Bon Ton...so sad at the end. That bathroom and refrigerator, I found myself plugging my nose with you lol. As always you zoom in on The Great Decay and Spider Web catchings of beetles and dragon flies and the End to The Grey Ghost..a scene quite fitting. Take care hanging in there Sal. Looking forward to ExLog 60!

Great video Sal!👍

I cannot believe you grew up in Ocean County as I am a Monmouth/ Ocean County resident since 1976. I grew up in Atlantic Highlands and moved to L.B.I. in 2002. Love your channel, keep up the amazing work. Ever feel like reminiscing about the Route 18 mall, Woodbridge, Menlo Park, Route 1 Flea Market let me know as I have many memories.of them as some pictures of the places from the 80's. Stay safe, Happy New Year.

Warren mall is one mall I always wanted to see...wish I had. This is the first I have heard of it's unfortunate fate.

I grew up in Warren in the 80s . My favorite part was radio shack and the record store. Kmart was cool and I bought a 1carat diamond ring at Kay jewelers. Many fond memories of the mall.

I have fond memories of that mall! It was beautiful. Sorry to see it’s demise like so many others. Ironically I now work beside Monroeville mall. No staying at home for me!

During “these challenging times we all find ourselves in,” I’ve been staying kinda sane by driving my car once a week on empty Southern California freeways. I also drive around the vacant parking lot of South Coast Plaza. This is my mall, always bustling, gross sales revenues of $1.5 Billion, or $555/sq ft. But I love it so much now, seeing the behemoth just floating there without a single car in the lot. Your videos and my empty SCP are huge comforts to me somehow. Peaceful and rational.

thank you...great video!

3 things to say: 1) At first I thought you and Ace both went to the mall at the same time. Turns out it was just a coincidence that you two just focused on the same mall in your uploads. 2) When you entered the Aladdin's Castle, the guy beside the Kmart looked like he was cool with that. He wasn't gonna snitch on you. 3) @24:27 is that the lady and child you were talking about?

Love your vids, dude!

Another excellent ExLog! As always, your attention to detail and knowledge of these malls is amazing. Thanks for giving us an escape from the pandemic for even a little while. It's always unfortunate to see the downward spiral of the societal institutions known as Malls, but your astute observations pay homage to their place in our history. As a non-mall related side note, here are a couple of my observations. First: It's nice to see in your sponsor movie (Megaforce) that the actor from Xanadu (Michael Beck) had other mega-movies 😜 ... of course there was also "The Warriors" (1979) where he leads a gang from Coney Island. Second: It is sad as I watch this in November of 2020, that your intro referenced the decline of Covid in May, and then the behavior of people since then resulted in a massive explosion of cases in 6 months. Hopefully we will get our act together to change the course of this disaster before even more of the fabric of our society is destroyed.

I can smell that bathroom through the video 🤢

As a 32 year old millennial, i love the old stickers on the electrical boards. Love your stuff Sal! Come to Los Angeles!

A city can look like its static and that's it's never changes but if you look on it over time you can see that the city is very dynamic and constantly changes faces.

Fantastic!

Great video and great words of wisdom! It brought to mind the Salisbury Mall (in Salisbury MD) which was relatively small but perfect for a kid/preteen like me in the early 90s (but a murder did occur there unfortunately!). Aesthetically, it also didn’t change that much from when it first opened. Unfortunately it was demolished in 2007. You would have loved this mall. Oh, and when you opened that fridge, I was like, 🤢 😆

This mall was to area kids like the Thunderbird mall was for me. There was a mega mall that was closer, but my grandmother lived by thunderbird and we used to take her shopping whenever we visited since she did not drive. So, I have many fond memories of the thunderbird mall. It was just 1(very wide) hallway long, and you could see most of the mall from the entrance. The 3 main tenants were Kmart, Herbert's, and jc pennies. Kmart is now split between a tractor supply, an Aldies, and a Harbor Freight. Herbergers is now Hobby Lobby (I avoid this place now) and penny's is a Dunhams.

Love your videos Sal! I am from and live in central/south Jersey and a bit older then you and when I was a kid the malls were staples for sure. Deptford, Echelon (Voorhees Town Center) were our hot spots, there would be cars lined up full of kids getting dropped off on a Friday night. Good times!

I remember that early 80's movie. there was a video game based on it that was just as bad. BTW, I do like the weekly videos. This mall like a lotta others you've shown remind me of malls I've been to when I was younger. I still like going to malls for things, even just to hang out a bit n see whats new.

You'd never know it but this place used to be packed on a Saturday afternoon really not that long ago. Kmart was my first job when I was 16 but grew up coming here. There was an arcade across the way from Kmart and I spent many hours in there. Thank you so much for this video. Sucks what it's turned in to.

I am glad that these malls are being properly documented. I have not been to any Northeastern State besides North Carolina in my lifetime. I can at least contribute to the Patreons of a handful of creators including your channel. For me, things are business as usual during this economic crisis. I am blessed to have an essential job that has been going. Texas is almost fully open for business as of this upcoming Friday. Fingers crossed that a treatment for the sickness happens soon.

I enjoy all of your videos, Sal! This one was awesome as always - except toward the end because those bugs and that spider really grossed me out, LOL! But seriously, your videos and Ace's videos have been a great history lesson for me. I can't wait for the Garden State Plaza reopens here in NJ because I'm gonna go give it some love! I hope that maybe you and Ace and I can hang out sometime and talk about malls! 👍📸✏📺😎 together

I see some of that vintage 70s-80s dark aesthetic you were talking about, in your most recent videos. The dark floor tile. The dark brick planters/sitting areas. ETA: Also the streetlamp style lighting.

Wow I lived In Jersey Too In Farmingdale and went to both malls you talked about !

Great video again Sal

Sal, in New Zealand 🇳🇿 we have eliminated the viris and everything is opening up again -99%back to how things were, however, your recent expeditions have really reminded me of my childhood and youth, a child of the 80s and 90s where the Mall was our focal point, where we met up with friends, hung out, played in the arcades, went to movies...... last weekend I feeling sentimental ( and free to drive 😂) so took a long drive out to the suburbs where I grew up and went to visit the old “Galleria” a big mall back in the day, surrounded by miles and miles of affluent middle class homes with young families. What a sad sight it is now - the families have grown up and moved away, and the mall is definitely in its death throes, superceeded by the massive malls that are only a 30 min drive away. I was quite moved when I think back to what it used to look like, fountains and trees, glass elevators and buzzing 7 days a week. Today it’s a ghost of it’s former splendour, the movie theatres are gone, fountains removed, the trees have been taken out and it’s filled with dollar stores...... and other cheap places where you wander around and wonder who actually buys this crap.... the whole place needed a good clean, it was filthy, with virtually no one shopping. Sad. Keep up the good work, you are capturing a way of life that is quickly disappearing into history, and in the future our grandchildren will look at these clips and wonder what the people were like, how did they live, and what drew them to these monuments of late 20 century consumption. I suggest you consider collecting examples of these malls in their heyday. It would be great for future generations to see not only their fall, but to see snapshots of that golden era of retail.

A funny bit of trivia: the Warren, Pa. climate includes many snowy days, on average about 3 snowfalls a week during the winter. One particularly snowy December, there was measurable snow on 28 out of 31 days. Typically in any year, the snow would get ahead of the mall's plowing, so the parking lots would simply be white, packed snow. No one could see the parking lines, so people would just do their best to make rows--and the parking rows would become humorously crooked, narrow, and irregular.

Hey, I grew up in New Jersey, and the Ocean County Mall was my local mall too. I visited it many times through the 1980s, 90s, and 00s. But as time went on, I found fewer and fewer reasons to go there. The stores I liked closed down. The arcade there is long gone, and the fountains were removed. I have not been there in years now, and I sometimes find myself thinking of how it used to be.

Also Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure with the Metrocenter Mall in Phoenix standing in as the San Dimas Mall

I was born in 92 and during the 90's-early 2000's that mall used to be packed. The dealership across the parking lot had vehicles in it and there were also boats and ATV's as well in it for display. Also, the Bonton and K-mart locations are still empty.

Thank you for continuing to make these videos. Watching them have helped me stay sane. I'm not able to donate right now, but still, thanks. Also that Megaforce trailer was awesome! 80's action movies were so cool!

I enjoyed this video, as I always have, even, or perhaps especially when you came down to my area and covered one of our malls (Military Circle). This time, as you discussed the idea of Grey Ghosts, and things that have come and gone, I have to ask if your choice of music at the end was tied into this. To some people of a certain age, The Blue Danube brings up 2001: a space odyssey. More specifically, it brings up the part of the movie with Dr. Floyd's trip to the moon. Call it a early branding attempt, but the sense was that Pan American, the airline whose name was on the shuttle, would lead us into space, just as it pioneered routes to the Caribbean, South America, and across both the Atlantic and Pacific (the latter the more famous achievement). It, of course, didn't turn out that way, no one who followed Trippe was able to fill his shoes, ultimately leading to Pan Am's demise. It's terribly off track, but that is what came to mind with this.

This was fantastic, Sal. E

This makes me sad. My family lived minutes from this mall in the early 2000's. That was far from it's heyday, but I have fond memories of taking my now adult children there to see Santa and for Harry Potter release parties.

Hey Sal. We have a couple down here in Tampa if you want to come down to check them out. One is East Lake Towne Square or what it's referred to as now as Netpark Business Center. The business center is the actual mall, but all stores have been replaced by certain companies (I work in the Terminix call center inside). There's also University Mall located near the University of South Florida. The anchor is a movie theatre called Studio Movie Grill where you get full service dining while watching movies. There's other big name stores there, but Sears, JC Penney, and Burlington have all been shut down.

3:22 that's Edward Mulhare! He played Devon Miles on Knight Rider-one of my all time favorite shows! 😊 In fact, I think this was the role he played right before he started Knight Rider. Cool! 😊

Megaforce FTW! Scary part? I was 10 years old when that came out.... Back then, couldn't figure out "why the Army guys were dressed in leotards". STILL don't get that. I find your statement about COVID 19 at the beginning very prescient- Malls in general were on Life Support before the pandemic. They're probably doomed (along with a bunch of other businesses) if this pandemic gets worse. It's bad enough here in Massachusetts where the stay at home order was extended till June 1st.... So much for getting back to work. BTW, love the video, as always- are there ANY Ponderosa's open anywhere anymore?? Annnnd yes, I was all about a roll of quarters and a Mall Arcade along with an Orange Julius (which I learned to make later on)! Oh, and I live within a mile of the Connecticut River, so I've been doing alot of fishing and hiking. Also started my own vegetable garden.... Cannot wait to make some homemade Marinara sauce!

You mentioned Ocean County Mall.... Lots of construction going on out there. When we goto the mall, we go to Freehold Mall.

Your intro reminds of the reel to reel movies in grade school, with the warped muffled music, except for the odd dead fly whipping past.

Good one Sal as always 👏 keep safe out also

Sal, this is Glennie. That first part (through 6:46) was so DELICIOUSLY HORRIBLE. Thank you.

This place was sad to visit even 20 some years ago. I went to IUP, and shopped there a few times, it was already a time-capsule back then.

I've been trying to learn new things during quarantine. Been trying to get better at cooking, bought a HAM radio and been messing around with that, and have been riding my bike a lot.

Man, I was a projectionist in Philly back in the 80's and actually ran Megaforce! What a campy film but fun! The title track by the group 707 was cool too! Featuring Rocky Horror's own Barry Bostwick!

this place is a part of my childhood and this video hurts me so much

The last waltz of the Warren Mall.

I had the Mega Force Atari game!! Thanks for that memory!!

Noooooooo not Kohan! My heart just sank 😢

Breaks my heart seeing these vintage malls destroyed. I so hope they saved those awesome light posts.

I've been working (grocery store) and sleeping, watching your exlog videos, and some twitch streams.