My unnatural love for Highland Mall

Life's rough for Highland Mall. In the last couple years things have been pretty bad, JCPenny is gone...Dillard's is gone...and there really isn't much of a reason to go there.

Even without reason though I love going there, in fact I went this morning. For some reason I love this mall. I think a lot of it has to do with it's age. Walking down past the different store fronts and kiosks you can see that the mall has been there for a while. It has been through a lot. The mall opened in 1971 and was Austin's first suburban shopping mall.

It smells like a mall is suppose to smell. It has elaborate stair cases and escalators that come down on cheesy fountains and shrubberies. The food court isn't cluttered with fast food chains like every other mall but it's instead full of goofy little food places that you've never even heard of. There's even an ice cream shop with a giant fake ice cream sundae on top. Highland is a sad empty piece of history that for some strange reason makes me very happy.

And I don't dislike Barton Creek Square, I just feel like it doesn't have the soul that Highland has. Highland feels like a mall that Zach Morris and the gang would come to, and I love just being there. A lot of analysts are predicting the mall will be demolished sometime in 2010. That's too bad.