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Let's take a talk down memory lane. Cause the stories around here are just insane. Pirates World, the Sporto and Wolfies to Palm beach to Key west. That's where we grew. These are the tales from South Florida for you with your host, Bill Monte.
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Thank you. Thank you very much. In the mid-70s to the mid-80s, if you wanted to hang out with your friends, you always ended up at a South Florida mall or a mall wherever you happen to live. With all the mall anchors like Burdines, Jordan, Marsh, Richards, Sears, JCPenney. God, you know, it's amazing to think that in our lifetime, all of those stores are gone. Okay, there's a couple of J.C. penney's here and there, but they are on life support. But these were where you went for clothes, holiday or birthday gifts, housewares, just about everything. The announcement on Saturday or on a weekday night, I'm going to the mall. Meant you were about to go do something important. Most of the time it meant you're gonna go hang out with your friends. Of course, there were other stores besides those anchors. Anyone here remember Dandelion, Hutch? How about Spencer's? Specs Music, Walden Bookstores? Tomican Shoes? Other shoe stores? Browns, Kenny's? How about Woolworths? That were in some malls and some of the places that we would stop to eat and get our meals when we went out there to hang out. Pretty informal, but Sam's Pretzels. Long before pretzels were a big thing, Sam Pretzels was the only place you could find them down here in South Florida. And they were only in the malls. There was Dunderbox, that German restaurant that was in every single mall that I knew of. Had little tables out front. You could grab a sandwich, grab some cheese, I guess, get a beer if you were old enough. Orange Julius. Orange Julius used to have their own stands. And how about the Orange Bowl? Not the one where the Dolphins and the Hurricanes played, but the place that sold hot dogs and a pizza that holds a special place in my heart and memories, and probably yours, too. And it wasn't great pizza, but it was so good. You know, to this day, I still find people who talk about how really great Orange bowl pizza was. And it's never been duplicated anywhere else. What were these hallowed halls or malls, if you will, that became such an important part of our youth? Well, join me as I take a talk down memory lane. And let's find out when it opened. On October 1, 1962, on Kendall Drive, right off of US 1, Dadeland was dubbed Deadland, because North Kendall Drive, which passes in front of it, was branded the road to nowhere. Built as an open airstrip center, Dadeland started up at around 400,000 square feet and 62 merchants. Wow. Including Burdines as its only anchor at the time. But Miami Dade's explosive population growth, along with the construction of thousands of houses, the opening of the Palmetto Expressway, the expansion of Kendall Drive into a four lane highway, and the appearance of important community institutions like Baptist Hospital radically transformed horse country, as it was called, into a flourishing community. By the end of the 1960s, a rapidly expanding Dadeland was enclosed and converted to a mall. In the 1990s. Get this, folks. In the 1990s, Dadeland Mall was the busiest shopping mall in the continental United States. That blows my mind, right? I didn't get to Dadeland Mall a lot. The only times I can recall going was when my father had to go to Miami to do work in a store that was in Dayland Mall. And that's really most the time that I ever got to go down to places like Dayland Mall. Lincoln Mall was another one. Lincoln Road Mall was another one like that. The other mall in Dade county that we got to quite a bit more was the 163rd Street Shopping Center. 163rd Street Shopping center opened in 1956. It was anchored by Burdines, and a little bit later on, Richards came along. It sported about 49 different stores, including here comes a flashback, folks, Food Fair, which later became pantry pride, JCPenney again, M& M Cafeteria, Walgreens and Woolworth. Jordan Marsh, which was a huge store back in the day, opened a three story location in the shopping center's east wing. Now, up until the late 1970s, the center court fronting Burdines had these kiddie rides all encircled by a train track. I remember going there when I was a kid and my dad said we were going to the 163rd Street Shopping Center. I was so excited because it had that ride, you know, kind of like the Dumbo ride in Disney World, you know, just goes up and down in a circle. But it was little helicopters. But that was so cool. It was the only mall I knew of where you could go. And there was a tiny little amusement park in front. There was also a go kart track that existed in the north parking lot, but that got destroyed by Hurricane Cleo. And somewhere around 1980, 1982, the shopping center was converted into a climate controlled enclosed mall. That's when all that was starting to happen. But Aventura mall opened in 1983. JCPenney moved out of the 163rd Street Shopping center over to the new mall and closed the 163rd street store. Unable to lure a replacement store, the penny space was divided into six specialty store spaces and the basement became a sporting goods store. Hey, as a side note, when Aventura mall opened in 1983, guess which one of your favorite podcast hosts was the very first Santa Claus at that mall? I'll give you two guesses, and the first one doesn't count. Ho ho, ho, ho ho. Pantry Pride closed in 1984, and Service Merchandise. Ah, Service Merchandise, man. Service Merchandise opened as its replacement, creating a mall entrance that Pantry Pride hadn't had. The third and most significant change kind of starting to bring about the downfall of this mall was the food court's closure due to just lack of business. 163rd Street Mall is still there, I believe, but now I think it has like a Home Depot in it. It certainly is not what you think of as a mall. I guess it's what a mall has become in that area and around there. Right. Moving up into Broward county, the Hollywood Fashion Center. Now that's where I really hung out as a teenager. That's where we would go to meet our friends to eat some food and where I would eventually end up working a lot. That in the Hollywood Mall down the road. The Hollywood Fashion center was located at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and U.S. 441. The first store to open at the mall was Guess Burdines, which opened on October 5, 1970. The mall itself opened on November 1, 1971, with Burdines, Jordan Marsh, JCPenney and Richards. This again, absolutely my hangout mall. It was two levels which we did not have in Broward county at that time. It had a restaurant in it, which changed many times over the years. And it was just cooler than the old fashioned Hollywood Mall, which was kind of looked on as now the place where our parents would go and hang out. Us, not so much. The mall began a serious decline, though, in the 1990s as it rapidly lost Anchors Ames, which had been converted from Zaire's, which had replaced Richards, closed. Jordan Marsh closed in 1991. Both Burdines and J.C. penney closed and moved to the new Pembroke Lakes Mall in 1992, leaving the mall anchorless. And by 1994, the Hollywood Fashion center had completely shut down. Very sad time. I have a lot of great memories of the Hollywood Fashion center, of meeting my friends there, of the stores that were there. I worked in many stores in there. I worked in the Specs for a brief time. I worked in the Tomican shoe store there. I worked. I don't remember the name of the luggage store. It was the one that used to have the commercial with the gorilla jumping up and down on it. I worked in the Walden Bookstore in there. And I enjoyed many a pizza at the Orange Bowl. There was a Dandelion Hut, which was sort of like a head store. I guess they had, you know, drug paraphernalia, pipes and things like that. Spencer's, which always seemed a little bit naughty. Chess King was in there, which had the really cool clothes. Yeah, it just had all this stuff. That's where you wanted to go. And again, you. It was a two level mall. It had a parking garage which we did not have in any other mall in Broward county at the time. So when it closed up, it really was just a sad day. And going back to the Hollywood Mall. Listen, when I first moved here as a kid, the only malls that I was aware of were the Lauderhill Mall, the 163rd street shopping center we just talked about. And then there was the Hollywood Mall. And for me as a child, it was the Hollywood Mall that had that kind of magical feeling for me. This is where my father shopped when he needed like tools or appliances. He went to Sears for those. It's where we got our haircuts. There was the barber shop in there. It seemed like all of Hollywood went to that barbershop. We'd go to Sears to get the Christmas catalog to prepare for the holidays in September when it came out. And for a special treat, we'd sometimes eat at Morrison's cafeteria. Again, as a teenager and when I started getting my first jobs, it was Tom McCann then specs that I worked at. And across the street from the mall was the Florida Theater. First it was the single screen theater when we first moved in. Later on became a twin theater with two screens and something called a sunroom. Anybody here remember that? The Florida Theater sunroom? There was even a sign in the lobby pointing towards it. I don't know who went into that but. Or who needed a sunroom. Going to the movies. If you ever went into there, please let me know because it would solve a big mystery for me. And of course, that was the theater that housed the midnight shows of Rocky Horror Picture show and the Led Zeppelin film Song Remains the Same, all those kind of things. So yeah, you'd go to the Hollywood Mall, might grab a bite to eat, do a Little shopping. When it closed up, you'd drive around maybe and prepare for the midnight show and then go to the midnight show at the Florida theater. Yeah, the Hollywood Mall was special, but the reason it became famous was a story that changed all of south Florida and indeed the nation. A young boy named Adam was abducted from the Sears department store at the Hollywood Mall on July 27, 1981. I'm not going to go into the graphic and sad details here, but it was a horrible time. It was a horrible thing that happened. What I do remember back then, though, is we were all first shocked that it could happen at the Sears at the Hollywood mall. It just didn't seem possible that a young boy who was there with his mother could have been kidnapped and just disappeared. The only information shared with the public at the time to try to help find young Adam was to be on the lookout for a white van, possibly might be blue, and. And it had its windows blacked out. And I remember that's what we did, all of us. We looked for that van everywhere when you were driving around. I had a job at the time where I drove a lot, and I spent a lot of that time looking for that van, seeing if I could possibly help. And you have to remember, back then, that's what we could do. There was no Internet. There were no cell phones. There was no texting, you know, so it became the first national crime where people started realizing that this was an issue of children. And it just. It galvanized this community down here. We all were worried about this young boy. We all wanted him found, and we all were doing what little bit we could to help. Unfortunately, two weeks after he was kidnapped, Adam's remains were found somewhere near Vero Beach. Everything had changed. Feeling of security we'd felt at the malls was replaced by caution. And that age of innocence, it was fading away. The time of the malls had passed. We'll continue talking about the malls of our youth right after this message. Hello, friends. Your support is appreciated and so very important to me. Please take a moment to hit that subscribe or follow button on whatever platform you listen to this show on. This will ensure that you receive information on new episodes and special offers. And feel free to hit that like icon and leave a review if you're so inclined. Also, be sure to join our Facebook group, Tales from South Florida. That's where the party's really happening. I do. Thank you. And now back to the show. Malls were so important that they had become part of our culture and a big part of our lives. So much so that films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Mall Rats presented as accurate a picture of the mall's impact on us as they possibly could for movies I know I didn't touch on perhaps many of your favorites places like Searstown, the Falls, Aventura Mall, Broward Mall, the Sawgrass Mall. Most of these came along a little bit later on. They weren't part of our scene back at that time. What were your favorite malls? Where did you hang out with your friends? What were your favorite stores from back then? I'd love to hear your stories. As always, please remember you can write to me at billmonte04mail.com or you can call and leave a voicemail at 754-800-3170. Let me know. What was it like hanging out back in the day at the mall for you? It was, after all, a special time that has passed, as has so much of who and what we were long ago has. This is Bill Monti and I thank you for for taking this talk down memory lane with me. And remember to join us again for more Tales from South Florida. And folks, be kind whenever possible because it's always possible.
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That's where we grew. These are the Tales from South Florida for you with your host, Bill Monti.