Menlo Park Mall - Raw & Real Retail

This is our walkthrough of the Menlo Park Mall in Edison, NJ from September 10, 2020. This is a stunningly beautiful mall. The architecture is lovely, with very high ceilings, big arches, clerestory windows, and an abundance of big atrium-style skylights. Unfortunately Simon Property Group has seen fit to remove the once majestic fountains and paint all the brown accents white. The lack of contrast is quite striking, as everything is just painted white. Usually this would be the aesthetic death of a mall, but Menlo Park just doesn't give up so easily. Sans fountains and contrast, the mall still dazzles and remains one of our favorite malls we've visited to date. Songs used in this video (in order): Dave Koz - Silver Lining George Howard - Dream Ride David Sanborn - Let's Just Say Goodbye David Marriott, Jr. - On the Seventh Day Steve Gray - Wonder Groove Steve Gray - Reach Out Here is a link to the Wikipedia article for further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlo_P... --------------------- I'd like to say a few words about being an ambassador to your local malls. We have been taking the time to visit all the malls within a reasonable driving distance to check up on them and see how they are doing. Also filming an updated video every year or so, regardless of the lack of many changes, just so there is a video record of the health over time. We think this is an important thing to keep tabs on, especially in these wildly turbulent times. The current health emergency has accelerated the impending Retail Apocalypse we've all been talking about these last several years. This was already a big problem, but the shutdowns and restrictions have made the issue 5x worse and likely hastened the death of the enclosed shopping mall. I know we've all been on pins and needles wondering how bad the fallout is going to be from all of this. There really is no way to know exactly unless we ALL go and do our small part to make it known how it turns out. I implore you, if you have the means to pick an area you would like to be an ambassador for, and go document your local malls. Whatever your medium, it doesn't matter, any and all documentation is necessary and vital in this day and age. Whether it be on Social Media, Flickr, Youtube, any platform gets it out there and preserves it for posterity. We can't paint this picture unless we all grab a brush... ---------------------------------- We utilize the value-for-value model here at RRR. Our product is free, and we're not asking you to pay for it. If you received value in any way from watching RRR, you can help us by donating, if you feel like it. Any little bit helps us to keep corporations and advertisers out of the decision making process. Your donation will keep us ad-free, and in turn, it will give us the opportunity to get to more far-flung locations to help tell this tale of retail instability. This is a non-profit project and every penny will go back into the gas tank for future trips!   / rawandrealretail   ITM