Mall World

If you're a power shopper, you'll love Mall World, where hundreds of massive shopping centers cum communities blend into the ultimate living experience — provided you've got the cash.

Parallel History

In 1982, Minnesota’s professional baseball and football teams, the Twins and the Vikings, moved from Met Stadium in Bloomington to the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. Losing the two teams was a huge blow to the City of Bloomington, but it gave the city 78 acres of land in a highly accessible location. The stadium was located only a mile and a half from the airport… there were four major highways intersecting the property. It was a prime piece of real estate for development.

Four plans were developed for the property, and two were eventually merged to create the Mall of America, a massive complex with 520 stores on 78 acres and 2000 housing units ranging from apartments to townhouses.

The idea was wildly popular and the Mall of America reported 37 million people visiting a year. Soon, other malls cropped up around the country, each more wildly oversized and integrated than the last.

In California alone, the city of Ontario is the mall. Los Angeles’ Century City isn’t a business zone, it’s a massive mall. San Francisco has a mall in it that’s 12 stories tall and roughly 56 square miles in size. It includes schools, housing and every other bit of civilization that people expect. You’d never need to leave.

In fact, some people can’t. While each mall employs roughly 12 to 18 thousand people, many spend too much and are required to stay to pay off their debt. A scandal in the mid-90s revealed some subliminal advertising processes that were bilking consumers of their money, but that has since been rectified.

The Zimmerman Telegraph

Apparently Zimmerman wanted a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger doll, but it was out of stock. His telegram, sent to various malls around the country, yielded negative results.