Minnesota, Mall of America

 

June 15 2025 Sunday

The Mall of America and malls in general, what can I say? There not a man’s world that’s for sure. The Mall of America is three stories tall, and we walked every bit of it. You know what I didn’t see, Man stores! There was not a single Harbor Freight or Tractor Supply in the whole place. For the first time, I missed Sears, a man could always count on the Sears tool department to break the monotony of mall shopping. 

Unknown to us at the time, Millie was coming down with Covid

Millie pointed out a few men’s clothing stores, all of them displaying trendy new fashions. I told her they were for young men who hadn’t yet learned the value of a dollar. The only store I thought interesting and I actually went inside for a minute was the Swiss Watch Store. I won’t tell you what the retail price of my Rolex is or what I paid for it, but it’s probably the best investment I ever made.

Enough about that, the mall had many stores to make women happy and I suppose kids too, well maybe girl kids. I can’t imagine any guy kid saying he couldn’t wait to try on school clothes when there is a whole amusement park in the center court!

Amusement park for kids

Giant Lego store

The mall was clean, no offensive music playing, no sidewalk vendors offering free samples, no large groups of teenagers, nothing intimidating of any kind. 

The clientele was mixture of today’s society, mostly women, young, middle age and a few mature. The later I suspect were tourists, they usually had a man in tow, who looked like he just found out there are no more Sears stores! 

The dress code of the women was……. Oh no, you’re not getting me in trouble. Go to your local mall, you’ll see the whole gambit, it’s the same here.

On the third floor they had many franchised fast-food establishments and also a lot of finer restaurants, all side by side in this… I don’t want to call it a food court, more like restaurant row.

Would I recommend a visit to The Mall of America? Well, I would not drive any significant distance to experience the largest mall in the USA, but if you happen to be passing by……..

PostScript: I just thought of something I found interesting. There is a Lego store in the mall, on one large wall they have bins with loose Lego pieces. Seems like this would be most appreciated by the afficionado who just put together a zillion piece Lego set and found out they were missing the final tile!

Wall of spare Lego pieces on left

PostScript2:  Before we left on this trip, we heard there is a large number of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, some estimates are as high as 85,000. Rumor has it that they were settled here during the Obama years; some say to ensure the election of a certain Somali liberal Democratic congress woman. I don’t know if that is true or not, maybe they all got together and decided they’ve had enough of the hot dry desert, “lets go to Minneapolis” they said,” I hear that minus -20 degrees is quite invigorating and snow up to your arse is much fun!” 

Where do you suppose the refugees got the money to shop here!

Somali Men and women have separate stores.

You will see the Somalis pretty much everywhere; the women are distinguishable because they are covered head to toe. The Men, like Muslim men everywhere dress anyway they want. What ever happened to, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!”

meanwhile over in front of the Victoria Secrets