Over 15 hours on Saturday, two longtime friends and self-professed mall rats rented a car and drove a total of 256 miles to visit 16 shopping malls in the Philadelphia area, South Jersey and Delaware.

Mike Fenn and Jon Slosser, both 45, grew up in Delaware County during the golden age of malls. In the '80s and '90s, Fenn and Slosser viewed these social hubs as formative temples of commercialist bliss in an era before U.S. monoculture was fragmented by the dawn of the internet.

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"I like to say that the '80s nostalgia seems to have lasted longer than the actual '80s decade did at this point," Fenn said before Saturday's adventure. "We were video game dorks growing up. We just hung out at the mall. That's what we did. We were used to malls bustling. We'd hang around and go to the old Electronics Boutique and Hot Topic back when it was more gothy — all those kinds of stores."

The trip served a few purposes. Fenn and Slosser are both huge fans of Kevin Smith's cult classic "Mallrats" — which hit theaters 30 years ago in October — and they wanted to honor a dear friend and fellow mall rat who died from Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2020. They also set out to bask in their memories while comparing them with the uneven state of malls in the region, many of which have been extensively redeveloped or fallen into a "dead" state with a smattering of stores still open.

Memories and surprises

Fenn and Slosser started around 7 a.m. and continued until 9:40 p.m. At each mall, they took photos and recorded a 360-degree video inside the food court — or what remained of it. They brought along an action figure of Jason Lee's "Mallrats" character Brodie Bruce and documented the entire experience on Fenn's X and Bluesky accounts. Some of Fenn's posts recall mall features that have changed over the years and present photos of Brodie with memorable quotes that read as mall gospel. 

The route went as follows: MacDade Mall > Springfield Mall > Booths Corner (technically a farmers market) > Christiana Mall > Concord Mall > Exton Square Mall > King of Prussia Mall > Plymouth Meeting Mall > Montgomery Mall > Willow Grove Park Mall > Neshaminy Mall > Oxford Valley Mall > Franklin Mall > The Shops at Liberty Place > Fashion District Philadelphia > Deptford Mall > Cherry Hill Mall > Moorestown Mall.

At the former MacDade Mall in Holmes, Fenn lamented the way his old stomping grounds — built in the late 1960s — was redeveloped into a "bland" shopping center in the years before the pandemic. While attending college, Fenn once worked at a tobacco shop there and recalled the camaraderie between mall employees, who sometimes bartered goods from their respective employers.

"We handled every single vice, so it was an interesting mix of characters," Fenn said. "One of our regulars was this woman — she smelled like absolute urine just every single day. One particular day, it was so bad that the mall security guard kicked her out. He was like, 'Go out and get a shower.' It's not a story you're going to find on Amazon."

One of the key takeaways from the tour is that the better a food court is, the more likely the mall itself will be busy. At places like the Neshaminy Mall — now reduced to a single StirFry 88 eatery at the food court — Fenn and Slosser said the mostly vacant building was "near silent" and "painfully empty." One of the former storefronts is now the home of a church group. The mall was sold last year to a New Jersey-based developer, but no redevelopment plans have been announced. 

Provided Image/Mike Fenn

A church group operates out of a storefront at the Neshaminy Mall in Bucks County.

In Bucks County, Fenn said the Oxford Valley Mall's more vibrant food court translated to plenty of foot traffic across the layout.

"The mall that surprised us both was Willow Grove," Fenn said. "We had been led to believe that it was in dire shape like the other malls in the area, but nothing could be further from the truth. After driving around for 5 minutes looking for a parking spot in its filled-to-the-brim aisles, we made our way through the carousel entrance. Families and their kids were gathered in clots around the carousel, squealing with glee as if they were at an actual amusement park."

Provided Image/Mike Fenn

The action figure of Brodie from 'Mallrats' is shown against the backdrop of the Willow Grove Park Mall in Montgomery County.

In recent years, many mall owners have had to resort to chaperone policies to contain teenagers. There was a stretch of a few years when hundreds of teens would periodically run amok at area malls — including in Cherry Hill and Deptford — to create made-for-social-media flash mobs. The trend was one of the clearest generational signs that "third spaces" often function primarily as backdrops for online clout and influencer culture. 

Although many of the malls in the region were busy on Saturday, Fenn said he and Slosser didn't sense the same degree of community they saw when they were younger. Fenn has the impression that kids today won't want to hang out at malls when they get older and more independent.

"I look at my 6-year-old nephew. We take him to the mall on occasion, but he's not going to have that same experience," Fenn said. "He's not going to clamor to go with his friends and wander aimlessly. They'll get what they need and leave. With us, we saw other mall regulars and became them ourselves."

Interactive spaces stand out

Mall culture has been in decline since the rise of online shopping made it much more convenient to browse wider selections on the internet and engage in retail therapy from the couch. 

"Clicking through Amazon and seeing the things that the algorithm finds for you just doesn't compare to the mall's sights and sounds," Fenn said. "You get to yak with a human behind the counter and get their recommendations, not from an AI. You lose even being able to try stuff on at apparel shops."

Some people still like going just to get exercise walking around in a climate-controlled environment, but even that is partly a response to having uncrowded space to roam around. Strolling past vacant storefronts can feel like entering a reverie that's simultaneously peaceful and sad. 

The number of U.S. malls has plummeted from more than 2,500 in the 1980s to about 700 today, and a forecast cited by the Wall Street Journal projects there will be only about 250 left in another decade. Fenn said the trend of redevelopment with shopping centers surrounded by apartments and townhomes makes financial sense, but the reimagining of mall real estate also seems to point to a future of narrowing options meant for wealthier shoppers. Former neighborhood malls — places that were never really destinations — have been left to languish until they can't keep the lights on anymore. 

"It's weird to see what malls have become," he said. "One trend is that to succeed, malls are trying to go super upper class — places like King of Prussia and to a lesser degree Cherry Hill. The other direction they're going is, you know, dead. It's been interesting witnessing that and honestly — a little emotional because you have these places with these memories locked into them that couldn't possibly have been formed anywhere else." 

Provided Image/Mike Fenn

The Deptford Mall in South Jersey is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Provided Image/Mike Fenn

Philadelphia's Shops at Liberty Place in Center City is shown above.

The former Granite Run Mall in Media — where Kevin Smith once envisioned filming a "Mallrats" sequel — was torn down in 2016 and turned into a mixed-use community with luxury apartments surrounded by stores like T.J. Maxx, Michaels and Boscov's. Chester County's Exton Square Mall, another failed target for Smith's dubious "Mallrats" follow-up, is expected to follow a similar path in the coming years after ambitious redevelopment plans took a key step forward last month. 

Fenn said the Exton Square Mall's food court now has only two options left. He ate a cheeseburger at the Cousin's Burger there. Slosser had a slice of pizza at Cafe Riviera in the Concord Mall in Wilmington.

Provided Image/Mike Fenn

The Concord Mall in Wilmington, Delaware, is one of the 16 malls Mike Fenn and Jon Slosser visited Saturday.

At the crowded King of Prussia Mall, hailed as one of the largest and most upscale malls in the country, Fenn said he was pleased to see buzz for the upcoming Netflix House entertainment venue and restaurant opening in November. The daylong tour underscored the continued appeal of interactive attractions and useful stores. Fenn and Slosser saw a few indoor Nerf gun areas, a bunch of arcades, a county services store at South Jersey's Deptford Mall, and even STEM-focused classrooms filled with robots made by kids at the Exton Square and Springfield malls. 

Fenn and Slosser each took a total of about 25,000 steps — equivalent to about 11 or 12 miles — and rode on 14 different escalators on Saturday. Fenn said the day was a unique, educational and exhausting experiment that now has him thinking more about the future of malls than the past.

"I think a lot of them have to do more of what King of Prussia is doing with Netflix House — the interactive environments," Fenn said. "Netflix is obviously online, but it's creating that need to say, 'People, leave your house and come here to interact with it in real-time.' It's too early on to say if virtual reality will succeed, but I think the malls that survive will have to adopt something like that."