Funny how the retailers in my area are complaining about sales slipping, but especially, they seem to be puzzled by the dwindling interest in malls. Malls were once a place where one could power shop – that is, ram through three hours of shopping in half the time or less. Malls keep everything conveniently close together for the time-economizing power shopper. Malls usually have good stores and discount chains with good prices, which is the key reason for my wanting to shop at malls.

However, I am coming to deplore malls. Recently, I was reminded how much I hate malls, and why.

I made the mistake of thinking I could get some necessary shopping done on a Saturday evening. But malls are no place for adults anymore, because they have been overtaken by listless, wandering, bored kids. Obnoxious, tasteless, skanky, hyperactive kids who do nothing but hang out – usually in groups – and drive everyone else crazy. I haven’t been able to stomach the malls, in years, because of this problem. It’s a suburban mall problem that won’t go away. The ghetto wannabees come to the malls to drag their baggy-pants asses up and down the shopping lanes, four or five aside, visors on sideways and upside down, and they don’t move for anyone. The upper-middle class, spoiled, suburban brats get dropped off by Mommy and Daddy to hang out for hours with friends. The mall is their babysitter. I see them being dropped off, as young as 11 or 12, alone with kids their own age. The parents just want to get them off’a their backs, and the kids are more than happy to lethargically hang out all day.

The young girls – little girls – look like whores and skanks in their crop tops, plastered make-up, hip huggers hanging off their ass, lavish hair styles, and their come hither walks. It’s Bratz with flesh and blood.

And it’s because kids are BORED STIFF nowadays. A generation raised on video and TV stimulation, life is a constant test of ‘What can I find to amuse me?” for these kids. So they go to the mall because they are incapable of finding something useful or constructive to do. They are incapable of sitting down to read a book. They lack the ability to be creative with their free time. These kids are filled to the gills with attitude. It must be the glorious self-esteem boosters they’ve received from the public schools. They are unpleasant and totally disrespectful to adults. For the kids who don’t fit into this category, they have little competition from their mall-creeping peers.

I look for stand-alone stores, outlet shopping, ritzy malls – anything with an environment which will keep away the bored and irksome teenage riffraff.