So... Alright - Mall Thoughts

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Geoff thinks real hard while walking the mall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing Tim's new savory pinwheels. The perfect flaky and flavorful snack for those on the go. Like me, who's recording this while snacking. Ooh, delicious. Try the roasted red pepper and Swiss, or caramelized onion and parmesan pinwheels only at Tim's. At participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. So here we are, another week. I guess I got a few more of these to go and then well, I will communicate to you.

Same thing we've been saying in ANMA and then F***face, I'll communicate to you the future of Saul, right? When I have a handle on what that future is, know that I've had a lot of time to think about it over the last few days. Ah, hell, I guess it's more than days now. It's been a couple of weeks. And it's something that I definitely want to continue, although I will say it'll probably adopt a format similar to last week. Less edited, less prepared, more just kind of me. You know, just going through shit in real time with you, because not only do I not have a lot of free time in my life right now to do research and go down YouTube rabbit holes or

Instagram what Wikipedia rabbit holes see that's a moment. I probably would have edited out previously Not now But I also I just don't have the idle Thoughts, you know a lot of that stuff comes from you just being being bored somewhere And then letting your mind wander. And I've got so much to fucking focus on right now. Like, man, it's. Yeah, it's it's it's a bit overwhelming.

It's so it's so funny how everything lines up. You know, you've you've heard me talk a lot. Over the last few years about wanting to maybe at some point make a make a move up to Michigan and then of course you you know all these things are converging in my life at the same time my company's ending and you know Millie's about to go off to college out of state probably and and they'll just be less ties here for me in Austin. My wife has a business here. That's a pretty big fucking tie.

All of my friends are here. My cousin is here. I do have a lot of ties to Austin. I've been here for 30 years. And if everything goes right, even though my company is ending, there will be a new company of some sort, or at least a new company of some sort, you know, or at least a new production of some sort or a

continuation that will hopefully turn into, you know, a real tangible thing. Austin is no longer when I moved here. When I moved here, Austin was the kind of it was kind of a magical place. And I think it's what drew so many people to Austin. And I guess it still is probably just in a different way because people are still just as drawn to it, if not more than ever. But when I came here in the 90s, I came to an Austin in 1994, I came to an Austin that I was immediately being told was no longer special. And that if you like it now, you should have been here 10 years ago. And I feel

like that's the cycle of Austin. I feel like we talk about that on the AMA podcast, Gus, and I do a lot. But you're always like, no matter when you move to Austin, you moved here 10 years too late. Even if you moved here in 94. I've met people that moved here in the 80s that just talked about how everybody just told told them how great it was in the 70s and they should have been here then, you know? So it's like maybe that's every city but I don't think so. I think it's just something to the DNA and the vibe of Austin is that it's this, I don't know, I almost want to say like an experiment but I don't know who would be putting on the experiment, but it's just this constantly growing, changing, morphing, evolving.

Little hippie cowboy outlaw. Art music enclave that has now become the 10th largest city in the world since I lived since I moved here. So I guess there's nothing little about it. It's just a major fucking city in America now. And it feels like it. But I digress and get get off topic. Oh, anyway, it's but when I moved here, it was you could live here. You could be in a band and work at a coffee shop or bartend or.

I don't know, work at a call center like I did. There were so many call centers in Austin in the 90s, man. It was like call center country everywhere you looked. They were handing out call center jobs like candy. But you could do you can work over those places making six, seven dollars an hour or pick up a couple couple shifts as a bartender rent a room in a house like a legitimate cute craftsman style house in a neighborhood like Travis Heights or Hyde Park or University or maybe not Terry Tom, but you know like some West Lynn Clarksville

Cherrywood Eastside French legation Holly any of those areas for like 350 bucks a month, 400 bucks a month. And play three shows a night or write your novel or whatever creative thing you were working on. It tended to be music a lot back then, I feel like. And and it was just, you know, I've said this before on podcasts But it was called the velvet ditch because it was easy to fall into and then once you fell into it it was way too comfortable to climb out of and

That really exemplified Austin for a long period of the Austin or of my experience in Austin and See, that's probably something I would have cut out and and edited out and we've done another take on too But that is not the Austin we live in now Austin's become a very expensive city very competitively expensive city and Which is fine, you know, I'm not complaining but when you start to look at like Your career and whether you're on the back nine yet or not and how much more earning power you have not complaining. But when you start to look at like your career and whether you're on the back nine yet or not, and how much more earning power you have, and how much longer you'll be able

to do this thing. And it's not a guarantee that you know, I mean, the one company I just had failed. It's not a guarantee that the new thing will be a success. And I have a lot of faith in it. I have a lot of faith in in the people that I'm that I'm working with, my best friends, the Erics and the Gavins and the Andrews of the world and the Knicks, of course. And I really do think that we can roll this into something

that sustains us, but that's a theory. And until that theory turns into a paycheck, everything in my life is kind of up in the air and in turmoil, which is to in my life is kind of up in the air and in turmoil Which is to say that you know It really kind of puts the idea of a move into focus and certainly no decisions have been made Like I said, the the most important thing here is that my wife still has a business in Austin and if I were to start a new business, it would be here in Austin, I assume and so

It kind of kind of fucks with you. Then I went to... We did an episode of ANMA yesterday. I guess it already came out. Because it comes out a day before this does. But we did it at this place called the Sign Bar. And... Eric had been wanting to take us there for a long time. It kind of sounds like if you've ever been to Vegas

and you've been to the Neon Graveyard, kind of sound... Kind of like that, you know? Where you go through and you see all these old signs from from the you know Vegas of yesteryear and it's it's really kind of sweet and and and fun and cool and nostalgic and you learn a little bit of history and and I wonder if I lived in Vegas my whole life if I would feel differently about it because That's essentially what the sign bar is. It's out on the outside of town and it's just all the sign bar is. It's out on the outside of town and it's just all the neon signs or store signage from all of the businesses that I've loved over the last 30 years that have closed down and they've just become set dressing for a bar. And you walk in and it's instantly kind of comforting and nostalgic and really cool.

For like the first three minutes, you're like, oh, this is so awesome. I'm surrounded by so much of what I love about where I am. And, you know, so much so many memories. I can look in pretty much any direction and see a restaurant or a bar sign and then think or a store and then instantly recall two or three or four times I was at that place and you know, experiences I had there and then you realize pretty quickly it goes from like that three minutes of being very cool to just feeling like you're in a fucking graveyard.

And you realize that the last 30 years of Austin has been a femoral and it's gone. The majority of it is gone and you're just standing in the carcass of it being like while people drink around it and Take Instagram photos and it actually became kind of depressing and that In some way helped I think Because I'm trying to figure out trying to figure out, you know, how do I unwind? Or how do I reframe my my my relationship with Austin?

It's the only place I ever picked to live in my life. You know, I got drug along To wherever my parents wanted to move when I was a kid and then wherever the army wanted to send me and then when I got Out of the army I got to choose for the first time at 23 where the fuck I wanted to live and I chose Austin Texas and it was the best decision I've ever made and I've been here for 30 years and I assumed I'd be here forever But now I just don't know it's, and it was the best decision I've ever made. And I've been here for 30 years, and I assumed I'd be here forever, but now I just don't know. It's expensive and it's hot and it's crowded, and I am a different person in a different place,

and I want different things out of where I live. And I am definitely receptive to moving, but I also have such an affection for this place that it's really fucking with me emotionally. And by the way, I'm not saying I'm moving I this is all just theory, you know, I got a couple years here to figure all this out probably before I make any kind of changes I'm far too Careful with my life changes I think which may fly to the contrary of the image

I've presented on camera over the last 20 years, but um, you know, I take this shit pretty seriously and I don't want to Move my life on a whim or for no reason not at 48 at least and anyway, it just goes to say that like I'm reframing my relationship with Austin and and that actually kind of helped I thought because it really reminded me that Well first off that, well, first off, that all that shit just exists in your head and memories anyway, and seeing it all just displayed kind of non- to fill space on a wall in a bar.

It just kind of reminds me of how not important a lot of this shit is at the end of the day. And we tend to romanticize, you know, our lives and the places we live and our past and and. And it's really just fucking it's really just painted wood on a wall. And I can't really stop trying to look any deeper than that, I think. And but then I was fucking I decided to go to the mall this morning. I was going to go for a bike ride to get ready for this episode and figure out what I wanted to talk about. And we still haven't gotten there, by the way. I that wasn't what I want to talk about. I've just been rambling.

And it's fucking Austin does this thing in March around South by when it just becomes the most beautiful place on earth. Everything is green and the weather is like 75 degrees and slightly breezy and just sunny enough to just like give your skin a little tingle and it just it feels like heaven on earth and then the entire central Texas landscape gets covered in wildflowers, Indian paintbrushes and of course, blue bonnets and whatever those yellow ones are. And those fucking bright red ones that look like the ones from Minecraft whose name I can't remember. Not Indian paintbrushes. They're different. And everywhere you look is

just like a painting, you know, like a Renaissance painting. And so I was just driving to the mall today, and driving down Mopac and goddamn, it's like, you just want to get out of your car and roll around and it looks so soft and pillowy. And, and you're like, God damn it, Austin, you sucked me back in, you tricked me, you son of a bitch. I think it's just so hard to think about leaving this place because it's at times so beautiful. I it's it's just so hard to think about leaving this place because it's at times so beautiful.

And it's provided so much for me. But then again, in about three weeks, it's going to start getting into the 90s and and I'll be fucking miserable. So we'll see. I have no doubt that it'll be a long, hot summer for us all in Austin. So if you're new to the city, buckle in. So I went to the mall. Instead of going for a bike ride today, I, uh, I sprained my ankle the other day sitting down. Just I just walked into a room and sat down on a sofa and somehow in that process turned my ankle.

And it doesn't hurt a lot or anything, but it's kind of stiff. And I just I didn't feel like putting putting a bunch of miles on it on the bike today. So but to clear my head and to get ready for this, I decided to go to my, I guess my my backup, the mall where I hadn't been in probably since around Christmas. And or maybe that one time we went to try to figure out some stuff for face for a game. And it was fucking awesome. First of all, I I cannot recommend mall walking enough for just clearing your head.

Well, first off, a lot of it depends on what you're doing. I was I was listening to politics. I was listening to like news radio, political news radio. And I did a full I got there, you know, 45 minutes for the mall opened me and all the old people. And I did a full loop of them all. And realized I hadn't had a single thought other than just being vaguely pissed off and angry because I was just

listening to people bitch about politics. And so I switched to music and then it was like a whole different world. So a lot of it depends on how you go into it. But throw your headphones in and listen to some music might I recommend I did some little bit of research today bounced around listen to some music. Might I recommend I did some little bit of research today, bounced around, listened to a lot of music today. I've determined that I think Lana Del Rey is the best mall walking music. It yeah, give that a shot.

If you ever next time you're in the mall with some headphones, listen to some Lana Del Rey. I highly recommend it. I also had a ton of insights walking around the mall like. Old people are over sketchers and sketchers must be miserable because every time I turn on TV, I see some old ass athlete pretending to want to slip into a pair of sketchers and talking about how comfortable they are.

But every old person I saw at the mall today, virtually every not every single one, but almost every old person I saw at the mall today walking around with me, by the way, so much faster than I am. I there is nothing more embarrassing than being lapped by like two women that are four foot nine and four foot 11 respectively, just shock white gray hair, just shuffling past you like you're standing still happened to me a hundred times today. But they're all wearing Hoka shoes. So I just wanted to say, sorry to

sketchers. I know you really, really clamoring towards that, that old person demographic. But I think Hoka has you they have got a spell on old people because they are decked out in the Hoka What else did I discover today? Oh, you know one thing that's nice. I realized I was walking around the mall today I don't want to go to a single store there was not a single thing I wanted to buy or that I had any interest in not even any like vague interest in like you sometimes like

For a long time, even if I didn't have anything to do with them all, I'd go in and I just see what new vans were out, you know, and look at a couple of different color ways or maybe browse. I don't know, I was going to say the bookstore, but I don't believe there's been a bookstore in the mall for a long time. But I don't even want that. Like I said, I just I had I had zero interest to walk into any

store and I found that to be very liberating. It really helped me look at the mall as a whole. And and with that, I decided to to provide some mall awards, if you will, for at least my mall, Barton Creek Mall in Austin, Texas, best store design, put a lot of thought into this one. Did a full loop just paying attention to store design. And it might shock you. But I think the best design store in my mall, aesthetically. Warby Parker, I have no desire to buy glasses from Warby Parker,

but it's a very simple storefront, very well painted. It's a real pretty kind of grayish blue kind of gives a I don't know, kind of a like a classic, almost like British bookstore, but with big open windows. And then the back had a really nice, like painted mural that was nonsense. And and then just like well well well lined walls of of of well placed sunglasses, glasses, I guess. And I think that's what they serve, right? It was it was full of glasses. So I think that's and I think we've done ads for them before. Anyway, by far in a way, I thought the best design mall not cluttered, not

too empty, not too like blaring with the bright lights. It was just really well designed. Next, next one, a big surprise store that I was like, holy shit, I can't believe I'm seeing this in a mall. Scrubs Boutique Warehouse, you know, like those store, if you if you live near a hospital or you spend a lot of time around a hospital, you'll notice that I say because central Austin is full of hospitals and there's like four or five, like all within like maybe six or seven miles. And so there's like scrubs outlets where you go to buy like, you know, your your hospital scrubs. There's there's whole stores for that.

Totally makes sense. And they're always near the medical pavilions or medical centers around Austin. Didn't expect to see one at the mall. Didn't think that people would travel all the way to the mall just to get scrubs. But they were open and they seemed to be doing good business. So I guess more people think to buy scrubs at the mall than I certainly would have. Biggest surprise merch I saw, I think, Scarface. Yeah, Scarface is back.

I really, that was like, that was the thing in the 90s and then into the, I guess into the mid 2000s where like, you would go to the grocery store by my old house and there would be Scarface rugs and you would go to the mall and hot topic and it would be 1000 Scarface t shirts and I never understood why Scarface resonated in that way. It's a good movie. Don't get me wrong. I haven't seen it in 20 years.

I'm I have no idea if it holds up, but I never thought it was that good to begin with. I didn't think it was like the movie that would launch a fashion, you know, Mecca. And then it kind of died out. And it really felt like, at least to me, that Scarface was like seeding the crown to Deadpool. And then suddenly there were like Deadpool stickers on every Jeep in town and Deadpool towels at Barton Springs and you like a billion Deadpool T-shirts at the mall, just everywhere you looked, it was Deadpool.

And I thought, oh, I guess Deadpool is the new the new Scarface makes sense. Scarface is getting a little long in the tooth, considering that movie came out in like 82 or something and And it's flipped again son of a bitch in Scarface, man. You can't keep it down I gotta wonder though because I saw so I saw Multiple stores selling Scarface shit with like teenagers in the pictures wearing the Scarface clothes teenagers in the pictures wearing the Scarface clothes. Do the kids today that go to a hot topic or a journey's or wherever the fuck they go to buy a Scarface T-shirt, do they have any idea that was a movie? Or is it just a flake, a fashion?

Is it just like buying the hundreds or, I don't know, world industries or some other fucking look at me bring out old escape references like world industries. But you know, you get what I'm saying, right? Is it just a fashion brand to them? Do they do they think it's any different than? I don't know, the Union, L.A. Or do they understand that it's a film?

And certainly they haven't seen it, right? Like, I can't imagine a bunch of. understand that it's a film and certainly they haven't seen it, right? Like, I can't imagine a bunch of. Teenagers in twenty twenty four wanting to watch a. I guess action movie, drug movie from the early 80s, when the world was very different and things worked very differently. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it'd be a novelty.

I just I would imagine much like I sometimes I'll see my kid wearing a band T-shirt and I'll go, Oh, I didn't know you like that band and she'll go, Well, oh, I know. I just got it. A good one. You go, Oh, got it. It's just fashion. Just fashion. Got it. It was different when I was a kid. Everything you wore meant something, you know, because you were like desperate to you were desperate to to to display your identity in any way possible. And I think kids just aren't that caught up in that today, which I guess is a good thing, probably.

But anyway, I assume. Let me know, are you young? Do you have a Scarface T-shirt? Do you understand like what the original reference is? Or is it just cool fashion to you? I don't know. What else did I do? Oh, best window display.

Some store called Altered State and they spelled altered dumb. Like it was an apostrophe instead of a vowel. But I got to say the their window design, it was like it was like a giant golden like spigot and then like flowers were coming out of it. Not like, you know, terribly original, but it was done well. And they put more effort into their window display than literally any other store in the mall. And so I thought that was pretty cool.

I thought I would shout out altered state. I assume it's a clothing store. I didn't pay that much attention. Interestingly enough, though, while I was there, I did pay attention. I mentioned, you know, seeing some teens wearing or like early 20 somethings, whoever, wearing everybody under 30 looks the same age to me now, wearing like Scarface clothes. I decided today I was thinking about it.

Do you ever because I wasn't interested in anything, I got I got the thinking and I was walked I knew I was going to walk them all like 10 times because I wanted't interested in anything. I got the thinking and I was walking. I knew I was going to walk them all like 10 times because I wanted to get some good exercise. Do you ever stop to think like what the mall is trying to sell you? And I'm not referring to like a Michael Kors bag necessarily or like which pair of Jordans or like what flannel shirt lucky brand wants to sell you. By the way, man, what a store that I swear to God,

if you wouldn't be able to tell, if you walked into a lucky brand store in 2012 or 2024, there would be no difference. That place, they just must rotate fabric. Like they just rotate, they must just rotate patterns. And it's like the same fucking clothes. And this year it's like, this year it's Gig'em, this year it. And it's like the same fucking clothes. And this year it's like this year it's gig them. This year it's like it's a soft flat, whatever.

I swear to God, that place is just lost, stuck in time. But if you look at what they're trying to sell you as a night because they're trying to sell you an ideal. Right. So I was looking at I decided to pay attention to all the photos that had people in them, not necessarily the merch on display, but the photos that were selling the merch. And I noticed pretty quickly so many similarities. There were outliers, of course, in all situations.

You go by the the wedding store and everybody is out, you know, taking photos at a wedding, clearly. Or you go by the skate shop and maybe there's a kid skating in the city, right. But for the most part, most of the stores, if you if you just kind of looked at all the photos in the abstract. I was kind of fascinating. I noticed here. Here's well, here's what I noticed. Almost everybody photographed, whether it's jewelry or a handbag or a pair of shoes or pants or a shirt,

almost everybody in an advertisement at the mall is in motion like effortless motion. Harris flipped. It's always caught perfectly. Nobody is still though, like every shot has somebody moving left or right of frame. They're always, the head is always cocked in a whimsical way. It's almost always shot in nature,

almost always shot out in nature. It's definitely outside. There's nothing, nothing is shot out in nature. It's definitely outside. There's nothing, nothing is shot indoors right now. And that got me wondering, maybe, maybe this is seasonal, but it didn't seem like particularly spring based. There weren't people getting ready to go to the beach or it didn't seem to be focused in that way. A lot of the clothes actually, I thought were interesting too,

and a lot of things I saw were flowy, soft materials. I didn't see a lot of denim. I didn't see a lot of tight fitting anything. Everything seemed to be real loose, comfortable, cozy. Almost everything was shot at magic hour. It felt like everything had like a hazy or golden tone or vibe to it. Very like, I don't know, it kind of kind of reminded me of how things looked in the 70s a little bit not not fashion wise,

but just like the quality of photography and film in the 70s, where everything was kind of hazy and golden and just like a little bit overexposed and sun, like sun kissed and it was, it was wild. Just wild how that aesthetic jumped from, like I said, from clothing store to shoe store to jewelry store to purse store to like whatever it was like it really if you take a step back and you look at it, you really you realize that that is what they're trying to

sell you. And what they're trying to sell you is what you want to buy, right? Like, if you ever think like, what am I into right now? What do I what is Jeff like right now? Who am I right now? Just go to the mall and walk around because the mall knows who you are and they're telling you who you are, right? They're they're subliminally convincing you to buy all of the shit in their stores and they're doing it with this photography.

So if you take a step back and you notice the thematic similarities across the board, you realize that must be what they're trying to sell people is what people subconsciously want right now. So what you want right now is apparently to be outside in flowing cotton clothes. Looks like it's probably 65 degrees. You've got a hat on. It's a little bright. You're wearing sunglasses.

Your hair that's not in the hat is caught in the wind. And you're on some sort of a hike right now. And you're wearing a lot of like gentle earth tones. And man, are you smiling and happy. So congratulations. Now you know what you're into. Now we all know what we're into. I guess.

All right. Well, I know I just said all right before I was going to say all right. I guess I guess I just say all right.