I was driving to the local super market type place, right past the mall, and I will be damned, probably am, that the sucker’s parking lot is full, I don’t understand, to me these are like dinosaur bones propped up in a museum hall to be gawked at, well, apparently I am wrong, Jersey is a bastion of malls, apparently, to me they just remind me of the past, days gone by in another life, sort of the internet before there ever was one, one giant complex you could walk into and find everything you could possibly imagine, clothing, sure, that was always the first corridor and all the gateways, but then the big open space in the middle, shoes, electronics, the music store (remember those?), food, pottery and cookware, and inevitably a thousand more clothing places, pane windows filled with reflections of all the wide eyed consumer faces, spaces laced with escalators, little vendor carts with baubles, custom t shirts or hats, cheap jewelry, mobile massage parlors of sorts with water somehow, sometimes there would be a car on display, yes, very much like the internet, no Ebay, and then of course, the crowning jewel, the creme de la creme for me, the arcade, the shining city in the sky, the arcade, home game systems at the time just could not shine and mesmerize in those days like the live ones, Atari Tank against sit down Afterburner II? not even a contest my friend, the coin etiquette, placing that coin up on the ledge in line, pledging your intent, planting your flag as it were, “I’m next”, this quarter says so, and that was the law of the land, a true sugar rush as quarters or tokens hemorrhaged out of your grasp, Gauntlet? I probably paid off the programmers mortgage… TMNT 4 player, The Simpsons one too, learning all the tricks to trick the change machine, photocopied bills, bills with fishing lines attached, not saying I did those things, I just ‘heard’ about them, ahem, let’s move on… all before the internet, this was the gathering place we had, as strangers, the mall, so distant that all seems ago, I still can’t believe it is here, flanked by chain restaurants like guardhouses, also packed this eve, Olive Garden? with all the amazing or just above average Italian places in every nook and cranny, around every other corner, this is not the Olive Garden state people! I guess never ending pasta bowls are a panacea for ills, or just a place so generic it covers all the wills from the grumpy old to the fidgety new… back to the mall, I thought retail was dead, Jersey didn’t get the memo apparently, I honestly can not remember the last time I stepped into this place… but like many things my experience does not the truth make…