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denizens of Earth, 90210. The mall as I knew it began to shift and change. People started flocking to them for different reasons, in turn causing the malls themselves to cater to certain beings and a specific type of commerce. Thus began the new age of the mall and its three different specificities.
    First, there is the Dirt Mall. It was once the poor mall, but as the need for money outweighed the needs of the few, the major outlets slowly moved away from this once fairly interesting place. As the big chains moved out, however, the “locals” moved in. This gave rise to what you would consider the “trinket trade.” I’ll give you an idea of what I mean. The mall I used to go to when I was a kid was a hop, skip, and a jumped ignition from my Gram’s house on the South Side of Des Moines, Iowa. It used to be a cobbled combo of the usual suspects: JC Penney, Sears, Target, and a bunch of other norms in between, like Claire’s Boutique, a record store called Disc Jockey (where I once worked), Spencer’s Gifts, Game Shop for video games, and so on. It was a regular mall with regular people—it was great fun. I was once nearly arrested for going there with no shoes on because apparently “attempted use of alleged Athlete’s Foot” is considered a misdemeanor in Des Moines. But I never held that debacle against the place, nor was I angry at the mall when I was fired from the record store for having long hair. I was cool; things were fine.
    Anyway, years later we got signed; I went out on tour and didn’t go to that mall for a long time. When I did step foot back inside,I was fairly put off by what I saw. Gone were the chain stores and other shop fronts. In their places were stores that offered Chinese throwing stars, jade statuettes, and whole professional kits for crochet. There were shops offering New Age “medical” attention, encouraging the customers to invest in “the healing power of pretty-colored stones and herbs.” Some of the spaces weren’t even occupied; they were just empty, giving the mall the feeling of being inside a mouth that was losing teeth at an alarming rate. The most high-profile places were the Animal Rescue League and a bank. There were
three
separate play areas for children, all of which had the same vibe a traveling carnival gives off when it’s the last day and the carneys desperately just want to pack up and go home. Nothing about the mall was inviting; it was like a ghost town after the gold was gone. This was the birth of the Dirt Mall in Des Moines.
    As I said, though, there are three kinds of mall now, and my town has an example of them all. The Dirt Mall is on the south side. But there are two malls in town that fall under the second category: the No-Other-Alternative-Here Mall. This is the mall you go to when you can’t find what you’re looking for anywhere else. You don’t really want to, but fuck, what are you supposed to do? You
have
to have that sweater vest! It’s not even a choice at that point—it’s a fucking challenge. And if going to the No-Other-Alternative-Here Mall—or NOAH Mall—means you get that sweater vest, then by god and clean jeans, you are
going
to the NOAH Mall … and hell’s coming with you.
    There are, in fact, two NOAH Malls in my hometown, and both started out on very different ends of the spectrum. One was in fact another blue-collar mall at one time and had gone through multiple fluctuations fiscally in its years of wear and tear; sometimes it would trend poor, and other times it would flex toward flush. It had steady business, however, and held asmuch ground as it seemed to give. The other mall had at one time, ironically, been the rich mall. It was located on the west side and the lifeblood that ran through its veins over the years had been the wealthy of our little side of the Midwest. It was upper class, snobby, and
reeked
of Drakar cologne. Over the decades these two monoliths of money had duked it out even though each one knew who