For the first time since moving back to Oklahoma City five years ago, I recently visited my old 90s-era stomping grounds of Penn Square Mall and was both shocked and saddened to see how much it has changed the past 20 years. I spent so much of my life there, first as a teenage mallrat who lived within loitering distance of the place and then as a sworn employee of Suncoast and then as a manager first at the Regal Cinema and then when it became the woefully begotten Dickenson Theater.
And as far as my time as a seasonal Hot Topic stocker, that's probably best left forgotten.
I used to live, eat and breathe at Penn Square Mall, fully a part of the mostly sad mall culture that surrounds it—insider discount trades, constant endcap discussion, regional manager horror stories—but, to be fair, I was also a consumer who would do most of my shopping there whenever I had a break. As I wistfully walked through these air-conditioned halls of commerce, it was nostalgically startling to see how many of the places I frequented were long gone, the stardust dreams of long-filed Chapter 11 suits and much-maligned close-out sales. Here’s the five things I probably miss the most about Penn Square Mall…
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