EMPTY AMERICA: Minneapolis

Minneapolis/St. Paul is on the way to Seattle, another goal. Also, Chicago to Seattle is a drrrriiive.  A lot of North Dakota and Montana. A lot.


Minneapolis was a nice stopover. It’s a beautiful city. Moreover, it’s the home of the Mall of America, the largest mall in all of North America. Probably the world, but I’ll let Google answer that for you. I had to see the mall empty.


It’s hard to capture the feeling of an empty mall on camera. It’s all indoors and out of sight. The outside is just a facade as everybody knows the true mall joy is in the food court and amusement park rides and whatever other excess lies inside America’s Biggest Mall. I went there once, for a minute, and said “Yep. It’s a Mall. But really big.”


The shock here was the wide open parking lot on it’s north end. The rest of the mall is parking garages and it’s own Metro stop, but to see vast, unfilled parking spots stretching for acres leading up to the main entrance let me know that, yes, the virus had even halted the epitome of American consumerism.


Sure, this is a tourist spot and a go-to if you’re visiting the Twin Cities, but how many people forced indoors and into online shopping habits are going to carry that over to their day-to-day lives when this is all over? It’s convenient, everybody’s gotten or getting used to it, and it sure beats hustling for parking spaces and jockeying for sales racks on a weekend. Are we officially going to see the full-time shift to online shopping? Will malls become (if they haven’t already) empty husks signaling a time when a “day at the mall” was a signal of a lazy Sunday, a busy holiday season or just a cool teenage hang? What brick and mortar shopping experiences will survive?


The downtown of Minneapolis was just as empty. The gorgeous, sun-dappled lakes with their walkways and open, crisp air were actually quite busy. It felt like cabin fever might be taking hold and people are saying “forget the fear, I need some fresh air.”


Minneapolis has plenty of it. Probably, like most cities, moreso now.