Macy's closings one more sign of vanishing social life

Back in the early 1970's, the wonderful humor group Firesign Theatre had a newscast on one of its albums that included the following exchange between two "happy talk" anchors:

"Well, Patty, last year, the world ended."

"As we know it, Hugh."

(both laugh)

You might have to be under the age of 60 to believe this, but the world -- at least the one we grew up with -- is coming to an end.

I know starting out this way makes me sound like a grumpy 70-year-old, which at the moment is what I am. Still, what sparked the idea was news that Macy's will close 125 of its stores between now and 2023, most of them in "lesser-performing malls" around the country.


Since stores such as Macy's are anchors that draw foot traffic into malls, it's entirely possible that numerous malls will actually go out of business. A 2017 study by Credit Suisse projected one in four U.S. malls will close in the next two years.

Why? And who cares?

The first question is easy. Online shopping, particularly on sites like Amazon, has ripped huge holes in balance sheets. And with Amazon getting more and more user-friendly, it isn't going to get any easier. You can actually order clothes from Amazon, try them on when they come and send back what you don't like.

For the most part, anything I order from Amazon arrives in two days and I never even have to leave the house. That means a lot more to me at 70 than it did at 30. In my 30s, which was essentially the decade between my two marriages, most of my days off from work were spent in malls.

Some shopping, a restaurant and one or two movies.

Most of the books I bought back then were purchased at Waldenbooks or B Dalton, two mall chains that no longer exist. They were mostly replaced by larger, standalone Barnes & Nobles or Borders Books. Borders folded nearly 10 years ago, and no one knows how much longer other bookstores will survive.

So why does it matter?

Well, jobs for one thing. Most retail jobs aren't actually elite, but they are jobs.

American Embassy Vienna

But it's the social aspect that concerns me the most. I used to go to the movies at least once a week, but in more than nine years in Georgia, I have been to the movies three times. More than 90 percent of the time I go out anywhere, it's for groceries, prescription drugs or a doctor's appointment.

Sure, things are a lot different now than they were in 1977, but that year I was 27 and there were four times a week my first wife and I socialized regularly. We were part of the American Embassy community in Vienna, and nearly all of our socializing was within that group.

We were in a bowling league on Mondays, we saw a movie at the Marine House on Wednesdays, Happy Hour at the same location Fridays and I spent Saturday afternoons in a poker game.

An abandoned mall

I think I socialized more in two weeks than I've done the last two years.

It's easy to see the dropoff if you look at Christmas shopping, The weekend after Thanksgiving used to be hellishly crowded at the malls, but not something like 40 percent of Christmas shopping is done online.

Eventually, we'll all just stay home.

And tumbleweeds will blow through the parking lots of where the malls used to be.