Most teens don’t get a mall in their backyard. Well, in this case, within walking distance.
In 1978, my mother moved us to Euclid, a Cleveland suburb, to get away from the city’s quickly failing school system. Euclid Square Mall had been open a year. It was still brand spanking new for the most part. I didn’t get to experience it much. Soon after I swiftly relocated to Selma, Alabama to live with relatives because of a sadistic stepfather whose only value to me was showing how not to live my life.
However, after fleeing the overt bigotry, the forced church attendance, and every other thing I detested about living in the Deep South, I returned to Euclid and the mall became one of my oases. Coming back from Selma was making a bargain with the Devil. I could come back to Euclid and enjoy some semblance of civilization—including the ability to hop on public transportation and escape to the movies.
The alternative: enduring the less-enlightened individuals of Selma, who attended West Side Junior High, hurl the N-word at me with the occasional “Yankie” added for color. Moving back to Euclid also came with having to deal with “Curtis,” the stepfather from Hell.
Yes, Selma was that bad. However, when my stepfather went on a tirade, Euclid Square Mall was there to provide an escape. It wasn’t the most impressive mall on the east side of Cleveland. That honor belonged to Randall Park and even Richmond Mall back then. But I couldn’t walk to them via railroad tracks in ten minutes.
That meant ten minutes to get hours of freedom walking from store to store. There was the obligatory record store—a Sam Goody where I bought Journey’s Frontiers, among other records. Of course, there was a game room where a couple of bucks ensured mindless entertainment and, if you were any good, fame at Euclid High School.
The store, however, that proved most intriguing: VideoConcepts, the home of geek stuff—video, audio, a movie club where you could rent films . . . Nirvana. My buddy (and still my best friend some forty-six years later) Sam Pantalone scored a job there and had worked his way up to manager. He got me in.
Some perspective: Euclid Square, built in a lower-middle to middle-middle class area, wasn’t expected to do serious business except at Christmastime. It was that mall you went to when you wanted to get in, get out, and be done. It did have the requisite York Steak House and local anchors—May Co. and Higbees. It didn’t have national anchors such as JCPenney and Sears. And even more curious: in an area with a dearth of movie theaters, its developer, Jacobs, Visconsi & Jacobs, didn’t consider a movie theater a necessity.
Euclid Square Mall’s death was akin to watching an individual suffer through Alzheimer’s. It was slow, painful, and ultimately it proved relieving when it closed. The same could be said of Randall Park Mall. How ironic that both sites have been reborn as Amazon Fulfillment Centers.
—George M. Thomas (The Akron Beacon Journal)
