When the Riverchase Galleria opened in February 1986, I had barely been aware it was coming. \u00a0At the time, the best thing going for malls in Birmingham was Century Plaza, a mid-70s two-level brick Brutalist monster with four anchor stores, a flat exhibition deck in the middle of the second story (suitable for setting up Santa Claus in December and not much else), a scattering of eateries (including the much-missed Hot Sam pretzels) and a general feel that you could just as easily be underground. \u00a0And the anchors – Sears, JC Penney, Pizitz and Rich’s – were pretty much set in stone, in ascending order of posh and respectable.<\/p>\n
And then the Galleria opened.<\/p>\n
The first hint that things were different came as soon as you walked into Parisian, the major Birmingham department store not represented at Century. \u00a0It was huge, airy, with a mezzanine level floating between its two stories, and in 1986 fashion, that level was loaded with nothing but Swatch watches and Coca-Cola rugby shirts. \u00a0All by itself, that would have been a revolution in local retail.<\/p>\n
But then, you walked out into the mall itself\u2026and it was open and airy itself, with a huge glass atrium (with neon accents!) running the entire length of the mall proper. \u00a0It couldn’t have felt more radically different. \u00a0The mall had everything I needed at the time – two record stores, two bookstores – but it also had an actual candy store, something unheard of in malls around our area. \u00a0It had a store selling nothing but video games (Electronics Boutique), it had a music box store (seriously), and in a stunning turn of events, it had a whole lot of places to eat right next to each other, with a common dining space around a huge fountain spraying three stories high into an atrium between the office tower and the hotel (yes, a hotel in a mall).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first food court in town wasn’t the half of the amazements, though. There were glass elevators going to the third-level observation deck (itself mainly just an extension of the office building lobby). \u00a0There was a store called Banana Republic that appeared to be some kind of safari outfitter, complete with a jeep halfway through the front glass surrounded by jungle foliage. And Rich’s, the biggest anchor store, was itself three stories, and the top story even had a tiny grocery section. \u00a0You could presumably have a room in the hotel and come over to get Pop Tarts.\u00a0And to cap it all off, there was space for another anchor store, one coming in 1987: Macy’s. \u00a0Macy’s<\/em>. \u00a0The icon of New York City opening a store in Alabama.<\/p>\n Two or three years earlier, the notion had come to me in a dream that the mall would be a perfect place to hang out and walk around and spend time as a teenager – that’s how culturally benighted we were; I didn’t get it from movies or TV, it came to me in a freakin’ dream<\/em> – so to have this amazing modern super-80s temple of American commerce dropped on me at age 14 was absolutely perfect. \u00a0The obvious problem, of course, was that it was on the wrong side of town and I didn’t have a driver’s license. \u00a0But any time I could get over there, I went like a shot – after a life spent largely on the rural side of town, this was my first routinely accessible exposure to a bigger, brighter, more exciting world. \u00a0One that would lead to a couple of major changes within a year\u2026but that’s another story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the Riverchase Galleria opened in February 1986, I had barely been aware it was coming. \u00a0At the time, the best thing going for malls in Birmingham was Century Plaza, a mid-70s two-level brick Brutalist monster with four anchor stores, a flat exhibition deck in the middle of the second story (suitable for setting up … <\/p>\n