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| - If you're like me, you're reading reviews not to make a decision whether to visit, but only to check in on poor old Chris-Town, like you would an elderly relative. Sure enough, most of the commenters grew up with Chris-Town and are at least a little saddened by this withered husk, this pathetic, atrociously-named sad sack of a former mall that is Phoenix Spectrum.
Oh, I remember the good times, too. Chris-Town was probably the first mall I ever went to, back when malls were a relatively new idea, I suppose. (Come to think of it, I probably saw some of my first movies at the old UA theater out front, before it became a better place to watch gangbangers make out with their underage girlfriends.) I remember going to Dillard's with my grandmother, hiding in the circular clothing racks, running my hand along rows of impossibly silky blouses. I remember Santa Claus, and the sand castles, and the excellent pastrami at the Miracle Mile deli. I remember how it used to smell when the doors would whoosh open and you'd walk in out of the heat -- like a combination of clean tile floors and cool breeze and birthday cake.
Miracle Mile beat its retreat long ago, of course. The once-mighty Dillard's became Dillard's Outlet, a gigantic, disheveled storage shed for hundreds of piles of failed clothing, which was picked over by masses of morbidly obese, ThirstBuster-clutching vultures, and then eventually went the way of the sand castles. And the smell? It's closer to gym socks, fryer grease and despair.
And desperate is exactly how I would categorize most Chris-Town shoppers these days. The clientele, along with the facade, has aged disgracefully. This new, sweaty mob of bargain hunters barges ahead blindly, wielding their strollers like cow catchers, each accompanied by an entourage of saggy-diapered, Kool Aid-mouthed gremlins. Which is hardly a surprise: with Wal-Mart, CostCo and, more recently, Super Target as its chief ballast, it stands to reason that Chris-Town's main loyalty would be among those looking to spend as little as possible on the greatest possible quantity, and there is plenty of that to be found in the poverty-line neighborhoods nearby.
It's senseless to compare, as some have done, Chris-Town with Scottsdale Fashion Square, or even Metrocenter. Those are still malls. Chris-Town is just the bones of a giant -- a concisely depressing reminder that one can never go home again.
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