For 1b, I was told to just post the other contents without the Shorthand story, so that is what I will do.
The Bangor Mall is the site of many of my childhood memories. I can remember attending the in-mall trick-or-treat as a toddler, getting family Christmas photos taken year-after-year, making myriad trips to Macy’s, and hitting up the RadioShack with my dad. Virtually none of the businesses I remember from back then are still there, and much of what’s left is in unfortunate shape.
The mall has actually been in the news a few times this year, sadly for the reasons you might expect given the lead-in. Its owner is a New York real estate firm notorious as an absentee landlord for aging malls across the country, and what on their part has been years of neglect has recently turned to actionable negligence as parts of the building start to seriously decay. One wing of three, long missing an anchor store and effectively vacant, suffered roof failures this past winter due to lack of cleaning and repairs, and has stood condemned since January. Meanwhile, the overgrowth and extensive damage in the parking lots outside has for over a decade served as a testament to the concerning state of the overall facilities.
When I recently began visiting the mall again, it was simply to get saline for my piercings, but what I was seeing outside of Hot Topic et al. quickly became much more interesting than what I was buying inside. Apart from the general ghost mall aesthetic one might expect, the more desolate parts of the Bangor Mall also tend to harbor a variety of interesting stowaways. A number of insects, weeds, and their flowers inhabit the expansive parking lots, along with a host of inanimate characters: filled shopping carts, half-eaten fast food. Inside, a similar rogues’ gallery of objects litters abandoned storefronts, dimly lit and just barely visible to shoppers. It is true that I take fewer photos of people, and more of objects, than I really should; however, when it comes to this mall, I think the non-human aspects of the place may well speak stronger.
