I saw a story today that China had just completed the largest shopping mall in the world. It's the length of six football fields, which is easy to cover in one day if you're Devin Hester. I'd always assumed that the Mall of America in Minnesota was the largest in the world. But it turns out it's not even the largest in the U.S. California and Pennsylvania each have a mall with more retail space. India, China, Turkey, Malaysia, the Philippines and Canada all have bigger malls than anywhere in the U.S. C'mon, we can't beat out Turkey? They share a name with a cold cut.
I'd wager that, despite the smaller sizes, our malls are much better than any mall in any other country. I mean, India's foodcourt certainly can't serve beef. And I can't imagine anything worse than a meatless foodcourt. I'm going to go ahead and assume that the Mall of Malaysia doesn't have a Pottery Barn. And Canada? Get real. I'd imagine that half their retail space somehow involves the sale of Moosehead or hockey pucks.
The Mall of America is the busiest mall in the world; the O'Hare of malls. They have 40 million people come through every year. It's got an amusement park, an aquarium and a flight simulator. It used to have a restaurant called Hulk Hogan's Pastamania that closed down. I'm not sure why. To me, nothing says high-quality, authentic Italian food like the Hulkster.
I won't be visiting the Mall of America anytime soon, but I do have some shopping to do. After getting dragged around malls as a kid, I've taken to avoiding them. In those days, I dreaded visiting deparment store after department store, rarely getting to stop in the sports paraphernalia store that had everything a young sports fan could want. I can remember staring at the poster that featured Walter Payton, Michael Jordan and Andre Dawson, all in tuxedos, with the title "Chicago Class". Sadly, I don't believe I ever saved up enough allowance to get that poster. But don't cry for me, I did have "The Black and Blues Brothers", which featured the '85 Bears offensive line. That was the baddest poster to have in my day.
So I'll be heading out to Oakbrook or Yorktown at some point this weekend, which I'm not looking forward to. At least it will be less crowded than the Mall of China.