Apache Plaza
January 27, 2008 2:09 PM
- played 42 times
Ode to a doomed shopping mall.
I grew up in Minneapolis just a few blocks from one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the world. It was state-of-the-art at the time it was built (1961), a
mid-century modern building curiously named
Apache Plaza. When I was twelve, a tornado hit the mall and ripped part of the roof off. I vividly remember the surreal sight of department store products (teddy bears, golf clubs, skirts, etc.) strewn on people's lawns throughout the neighborhood. They rebuilt, but the mall never completely recovered. By 2003, when it was bulldozed, all but the most stubborn businesses had jumped ship, and it became an bleak, echoey
post-apocalyptic scene, with solemn mall-walkers taking over the corridors.
I wrote this song over a decade ago, but dusted it off and recorded it after seeing the generic new urbanist crypto-mall that was put in its place. It ended up falling into a Penny Lane-ish nostalgic mood. I trying to create faux muzak in certain sections, and pictured the vocals delivered by guys dressed like a barbershop quartet standing in the main atrium next to the Galaxian machine.
posted by umbú at 2:10 PM on January 27