The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Shopping Tombs


Belden Village Mall, Canton, Ohio

 


Dixie Square Mall, Harvey, Illinois

 


Muscatine Mall, Muscatine, Iowa

 


Hawthorne Plaza Mall, San Diego

 


Felicita Mall, Porto

 


Miracle City Mall, Miracle City, OH

 


Marketplace Mall, Syracuse, NY

 


Columbus City Center, Columbus

 


Rolling Acres Mall, Akron

 


Crestwood Mall, Missouri

 


New World Mall, Bangkok

 


The Highland Mall, Austin, Texas

 


Westminster Mall, Westminster, Colorado

 


Westgate Mall, Nairobi

 


Granite Run Mall, Middletown Township

 


Hammerhead Mall, Filly, Montana

 


Old White Gold Mall, Cebu City

 


Richland Mall, Ontario, Ohio

 


Dixie Square Mall, Harvey, Ill

 


CenterCity, Englewood, Colorado

 


Azalea Mall, Richmond, VA

 


Wilderness Mall, Reading, UK

 


Omega Plaza, Novosibirsk, Russia

 


Tri-State Mall, Clayton, Delaware

 


Capitano Mall, Vancouver

 


Arkadia Mall, Nile Front

 


Hawthorne Mall, Hawthorne, California

 


Fiesta Shopping Center, Sonoma

 


Undercliff Mall, Meridien

 


Metro North Mall, Kansas City, Missouri

 


Greengate Mall, Greensburg, Pennsylvania

 


Windsor Mall, Louisville

 


Cloverleaf Mall, Chesterfield

 


Northland Mall, Detroit

 


El Con Mall, Tuscon

 


Rehoboth Mall, Rehoboth

 


Cumbernauld Town Centre, Cumbernauld, UK

 


Eastgate Shopping Center, Indianapolis

 


Randall Park Mall, North Randall, Ohio

 


Crestwood Plaza, Seattle

 


Seminole Mall, Seminole, Florida

 


Archamps Mall, Archamps, France

 


Weifang Mall, Weifang, China

 


White Flint Mall, North Bethesda

 


Red Bird Mall, Dallas

 


Penhorn Mall, Dartmouth

 


Bannister Mall, Kansas City

 


Apollo Plaza Mall, Monticello, NY

 


Duck Creek Plaza, Bettendorf, Alabama

 


White Flint Mall, North Bethesda

 


Capital Hill Mall, Helena, Montana

 


Battle Mall, Santa Barbara

 


The Quad, Whittier

 


Jefferson Square Mall, Joliet

 


Raleigh Springs Mall, Memphis

 


Plaza Shopping, Niteroi, Brazil

 


Jamestown Mall, St. Louis

 


Westridge Mall, Fergus Falls, Minnesota

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, yes, I remember that you met him now. He can talk a little now. I saw him being interviewed on TV here. It was difficult, but he was elegant. Agree about ‘Stavisky’. A film out of its time, I fear. ** Kettyawn, Nice. I love basements. We had a giant concrete one in the house where I grew up, the size of a very large one-story house in and of itself. It made a great haunted house attraction. Yeah, the vast majority of my books are in LA. Suckage constantly. Okay, yeah, your writing career trajectory’s further detailing warms my heart. My head too? Sure, why not? Of course it’s cold here as well. And lit up. My kind of world. ** Tosh Berman, Yep! There are actually several bio books about Belmondo in French, including a memoir penned by the dude himself. Not sure about Delon, but there must be something. ** Bill, Hey! Are you back in the grind? I think I might have missed ‘The Favourite’ in theatres here, but, yeah, I want to see it. Hm. Kevin … oh, the launch for his book! I just got it. Looks great, natch. I assume he was his always ultra-entertaining self? ** Steve Erickson, Hi, I hope your meeting today goes well. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this, or you know it, but, in France, films, or big films at least, can’t be available on streaming services here until a long time after they played in theaters, two or three years, I think. Theater protection. And films do have very long lives in theaters here. Once their spotlight time is over, they tend to play at one or two theaters once or twice a day for months and months. I finally saw Claire Denis’s ‘High Life’ last night. I thought it was really lousy on pretty much every level, especially the script, which was shockingly awful. It’s been a big flop here, critically and popularly, and now I see why. ** _Black_Acrylic, He’s still weirdly very cool, even old and post-stroke. Crazy storm, wow. Sounds, you know, nice. I guess if Theresa May had drowned, I would have heard about it by now. Shame. ** Misanthrope, No, he’s an excellent craftsman. I don’t even know what ‘The Boy in Striped Pajamas’ is, and, after your report, I think it will stay that way. Happy Thursday. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi, Corey. I still see young wannabe Belmondos here and there, although I suppose they wannabe someone newer. Yes, there’s a, I think, nefarious method for me to subscribe to and get the Criterion Channel. I can’t remember what it is. A savvy friend is going to hook me up. I do know of CA Conrad, yes, and he’s a very interesting poet as well as being quite the colorful person, in my opinion. Seems like a good target, yes. ** Okay. If I was doing Xmas countdown posts the way I did Halloween countdown posts, the one today would probably be the first. See you tomorrow.

12 Comments

  1. David Ehrenstein

    Amazon killed the “Brick and Mortar” stores — and all the malls. The Mll on Highland and Pico is vanishing. “Nordstrom’s” and “May Company” are gone and all the little shops in the complexwill be goin soon too.

  2. MANCY

    These seem like locations where one could find a corner and truly disappear from the world temporarily. When my anxiety was really bad I used to fantasize constantly about pulling my work van over, breaking into an abandoned commercial space and hiding there haha

  3. Bill

    I like these abandoned spaces a lot more than when they were functional. I’m looking at some of the Asian-looking malls; surely there’s a Tsai Ming-Liang or Weerasethakul film set in one? Dimly lit, sparse uncanny goings-on, an open fire here and there, creepy sound design, characters having furtive sex…

    Wow, sorry to hear about the new Claire Denis. I still haven’t seen Haneke’s Happy End; what’s your verdict?

    Kevin read from the piece about his Arthur Russell “fling”, pretty great as usual. At the end, shirtless boys in masks threw flowers into the room. Can’t ask for more, eh?

    Bill

  4. _Black_Acrylic

    The Hammerhead and the Hawthorne get bonus points for that menacing graffiti, eek!

    This storm here in Scotland has abated a tiny bit but is raining just as hard. I got a taxi out to Marks & Spencers this morning just to make it out of the house and avoid cabin fever. Theresa May didn’t drown on her visit to Glasgow yesterday but CNN did get the views of a few Glaswegians which is good because you’d never see the BBC broadcast anything like that.

    The new Dopplereffekt record arrived today in the post and I’m very much into it, almost like pop music by their usual standards with some actual singing on there. I genuinely think Gerald Donald is a bona fide genius, it might just take the wider world a few decades to catch up.

  5. KeatonAroundTheXmasTree

    So I got this really cool job Ive been shooting for. Nearby, work by myself and from home, big money, 3 days a week. Life at the beach is good. Shopping Tombs, haha now I’m thinking of reading Warhol’s shopping for underwear. I like malls myself, but only if they have a good pizza place like Sbarros. If the food court is bad the mall is no bueno. In my hometown, the old Stone and Thomas downtown is now an indoor baseball place. The Macys there was Kaufmanns which was after the Kaufmanns of Falling Water, it didnt change when Macys took over? I go for massages at the malls. I do everything at malls. I even got an Ace Frehley tattoo at a mall. My Dad only buys things from Amazon. I love the trek to La Defense, I feel like something is exiting is going to happen at Argentine. I go to malls for the teenage trade and I like to spray lots of colognes. There was a notorious rapist back in the 80s, if you went to this one store and you were a woman, when you went to your car, you got raped. The mall was interesting in the 90s, a real peacock and feather show. It was the pre-show to the all-ages shows. “I’ll call, and I’ll follow that ass in the mall…” lol. I buy the same things. Gap jeans. Andy loved Levis, Cartier Tanks, something about socks, and really picky about Jockey shorts. My lawyer friend says I have to quit wearing Gap/Old Navy because Im too old. I guess its time to be old and rayon. I really hate consumerism. If you would quit shopping think of how much money you could save. New things are nice sometimes. I know rich women who buy discount designer panties. I know women who put it on and walk out of the store with it. Where did they go? Oh, if I had a basement it would be bad. Yep that first novels gonna be good sometimes theyll be like Mann, Pynchon, then its like nah jus Keaton. Just before bed last night saw a weird movie with Elijah Wood called Maniac, used 1st person, killing and scalping hookers? it was kind of good. he would like yell at some mannequins then go and kill hookers. Cold is a no no. I cannot do it. Its 60 here for a few days a year and I freak out. I just dont change my clothes, I’m used to being cold. People are like its 70, fur coat! Thats ok them 80s neon thangsll be back on that beach in a minute. Christmas in Paris is amazing. The led lights. A little snugglebug, oh God thats the boy from the metro, hes been dead for two days. Haha, enjoy. Much love from the Gulf.

  6. Sypha

    Nice photograph selection today. Reminds me of an older computer game I tried playing earlier this year, FALLOUT 3. I liked the post-apocalyptic landscape with all of its ruined abandoned buildings, but was annoyed that one still had to deal with the usual gaming conventions… wish someone would do a legit post-apocalyptic game where there were no other NPCs and the focus was just survival.

  7. Steve Erickson

    I watched the second cut of my film last night. I’m fine with it, except that the sound in one scene is very low. I E-mailed my editor about that, and she said that’s a temporary product of working with borrowed software with French instructions. She can fix it with more time. I don’t think I’m a very good judge of the film’s quality beyond the technical level – I started writing the script in Sept. 2017, and it’s very personal to me. I’ve gone over it so many times that I cringe at certain parts, but I doubt this means they’re objectively bad or wouldn’t work for others.

    In New York, films which don’t find an audience immediately vanish from theaters very soon, and streaming services use week-long theatrical runs as advertising and Oscar qualification, not a chance to make money or find a real audience. REVENGE played the IFC Center for a week. but the last time I was in Best Buy, one of their monitors had the streaming service Shudder (which specializes in horror films) up, with an ad running for it as “A Shudder Original.” I don’t agree with the 2-year wait in France, but Amazon has a 90-day wait period between the release date of the films they put out in theaters and the day they start streaming them. That seems reasonable, although I do like the fact that someone in a small town in Alabama, where it would never have played even under the best cultural circumstances, can watch HAPPY AS LAZZARO, the same day it opens in a New York theater. I just wish the consequence wasn’t a slow destruction of the theatrical experience – especially since Netflix is actively acquiring films like LAZZARO and producing and distributing worthy American films like PRIVATE LIFE and MUDBOUND that conventional studios have no interest in these days – and an increasing, unexamined attitude that “it’s elitist to say that most films are best seen in the theater or criticize Netflix for refusing to do real theatrical distribution.”

  8. Steve Erickson

    Here’s my review of Milad Alami’s THE CHARMER: https://www.gaycitynews.nyc/stories/2018/25/charmer-film-2018-12-06-gcn.html

  9. Joey

    D, of course I will resend the pictures. Which one though? The beer can label or the original drawing by mi amours? I sent you two.

    This is a creepy post. There are a scant few actual malls in nyc. And they’re filled with stores you can find right around the corner. Most are like Bergdorf/Macy’s. Those are huge. And expensive. Luickly we shop at mom/pop stores and thread stores. I got Jarrod’s sister’s Xmas presents from a jewelry store owned by a couple. It’s her favorite store in Williamsburg.

    I showed off the Weaklings (2008) to an acquainted person at work who found Jarrod’s drawings “quite beautiful” “so much detail” and two poems she read as shocking. Pee pee in my poo poo. That one and another (the cannibal?) You live up to your rep, dude, and that’s pretty amazing for how long you’ve been a poet.

    Frisk is no longer my favorite. It’s God, Jr—a treatise in loneliness and a tip to depression. Like it or not. I know JW and Jarrod LOVE their gaming but I see Jarrod’s gaming as a retreat of talent. And the book is upsetting—in a good connected way.

    Love mucho, Joey

  10. Joey

    Ok. I just left a longish message and it seems that it wasn’t saved. So just the basics, which pic didn’t you get, the beer label can image or the real drawing? Xox, Joey

  11. Corey Heiferman

    I really like the look of the escalators surrounded by ruins. I always get a kick out of how the Hebrew word for mall is קניון, “canyon.” The idea is it takes a gerund form of the verb “to buy” and plays on the English word at the same time.

    I’m resting my computer right now on a huge metal table salvaged from a dead mall that was converted to office space. Every day I’m thankful for my boyfriend for spotting it and figuring out the disassembly transport and re-assembly.

    A literary breakthrough feels imminent but it feels like knowing your body wants to expel something but it’s not coming out just yet.

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