This is a weird place. It looks really neat, but it isn’t very neat. Downtown is cool with lots of interesting buildings, but there’s nothing to do. I’m staying downtown, but even so, it feels like there’s nothing here. In Philadelphia, there were dozens of restaurants within a tenth of a mile downtown. Here, I need to broaden my search to a half mile to find a dozen restaurants. I feel like the Mall of America must have the effect of draining all activity and commerce from downtown.
I went to the mall, and it is a nightmare. It’s somehow less impressive than I thought it might be, and this is coming form a person who is generally unimpressed by malls. It’s basically two malls stacked on top of one another, built around a small amusement park which happens to also have a roof over it. Weirdly, despite being maybe the most famous mall in the US, it still has all the same problems as any other mall: loads of empty storefronts and others that are occupied by ridiculous low-rent stores like “Got Kilt” the kilt and edgy fashion store that sounds like it was ripped out of a Simpsons episode.
I met one nice person. She told me how to get somewhere and even went a bit above and beyond by telling me about some other things around. A mulletted man at the mall told me the pandemic was over after complimenting my mask. Another man asked me if I was ready to rob a bank. I don’t think I like the people in general.
I’ve walked around quite a bit and still I’ve only found one or two places I wanted to go in. That’s never happened in any of the other cities except maybe Salt Lake City… and I found it more interesting than here.
Besides being downtown, I’ve also ventured to the warehouse district and Uptown. Both of them were pretty boring. There was one street in another neighborhood that I don’t know the name of that, again, looked cool but wasn’t.
I’m ready to get out of here.