Still Hanging In There

Despite the economy being in this state for over a year now, it hasn't stopped several construction projects from continuing in the area. In just the last few months we've had new malls (excuse me, Places) open up in Foxboro with Patriot Place and Dedham's Liberty Place, both of which are supposed to be made up of higher-end stores. Personally I don't really think we needed another mall in the area, let alone two, but I am happy there are new movie theatres in the area to save me a drive to Randolph.

The problem is that squeezed in between these new places is the good old Walpole Mall. It was never much in the way of variety, but it had enough good stores that you could at least get some Christmas shopping done there. However, the mall's stores were hit pretty hard by the economy going to hell and a lot of them closed. Then the mall tried to give itself a facelift and expand to include new stores that you could get to without going into the mall. Instead of new stores going in, however, what happened is that the only chain stores in the mall took those new spots and made inside of the mall even more barren. Now it's just a Kohl's at one end and Barnes & Nobles at the other. Pretty much nothing in between.

I was up there this week looking for a present for my new niece and my mom's birthday when I found out the one place I expected to be long gone is in fact still there - the video arcade. Not only is it still open, it's actually doing well; it had a dozen or so people in there playing games. This is a surprising twist because they have probably done the least amount of upgrades of any store still in the place. They seem to have the same 15 arcade games that were there 5 years ago or stupid games with the chance to win tickets for crappy prizes. In this day and age of unbelievable graphics for video games you can play in the comfort of your own home for free, why the hell would people still be going to the video arcade to play old video games? Could the pull of playing Cruisin' USA with an actual steering wheel be that strong? It's not like the prizes are that sweet. If you can spend the $50 dollars to win enough tickets do you really need a Family Guy doll that would cost you $10 in a store?