Neighborhood Addition

You know something is up in your neighborhood when there is no bookstore in the mall. There is also problem when you only have one store that sells clothes that you could potentially wear on a job interview. The mall near my house is home to various shoe stores, weave sellers, hoochie wear and a Macy's. That is a problem.

Another sign of the problem should have been my mother's reference to it as "the shoot'em up mall". Yes, more than one person has been shot there and sometimes more than one person in the same month. I don't feel like that is a normal occurrence outside of war zones and to my knowledge I do not live in a village that is under siege by rebel forces, but I could be wrong. It would not be the first time.

All of these things should have been signs to me, but recently something has happened that has made me question my surroundings and the mall in particular. No, it is not the fact that the workers there are so ghetto that a sales person in the kids shoes store called a customer the b word in front of her kid and followed it up with "Did you hear what I said?" Although in retrospect, that too should have been enough. No, the final straw for me was actually the result of disappointment. There has been an abandoned ToysRUs right next to the mall since I moved here. They recently began to work on it and I got excited about all the things it could be and hoped that it would be a sign if things changing and improving. I spent weeks speculating on all the possibilities. Was Toys going to give it another shot? Was it going to be clothes? Maybe, an actual book store or a department store that doesn't sell clothes and perfume made by rappers.

Unfortunately, I was wrong on all counts. It was to become none of those things. As I drove by the other day, the writing was literally on the wall. It had become a police station. I know I should feel a greater sense of security, but really it did not. There was already a small police station in the back part that was expected size for a mall. This just made me feel like this mall area was so bad that we needed to bump up police presence to level seen in some small towns.

Looking for a bright side, I figure, maybe better stores will come since it shouldn't be to hard to get those pesky shooters and shoplifters taken care of.