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Tim Dineen's avatar

I am such an old fogie! I'm a Downtown Department Store Guy. Growing up in San Francisco, we had THE BEST Downtown! City of Paris, The White House, The Emporium, I Magnin, the HUGE Woolworths at Powell and Market, and Macy's west coast flagship before it bought everyone and made it a crap company. (It's now slated to be closed once a buyer is found for the building.) We had a Sears store that was so big they turned it into a shopping mall when it closed! Plus the scores of smaller shops that sold everything your heart desired - with service to match!

I love the older buildings with character. Of course, that being said, our "mall" growing up was Stonestown - a planned community of high-rises and garden apartments a short bus ride away. My great-aunts lived in one of the towers. It was an open-air mall built in 1952 with maybe 40 stores total - including groceries, bakeries, movie theatre, restaurants, pharmacies... I was a cook at the biggest restaurant in the complex - The Red Chimney circa 1974. In the late '80s, they completely rebuilt it as a fancy-schmancy indoor mall and The Red Chimney was torn down.

All that to talk about another underground shopping complex - in Montréal! The Underground City is just fantastic - totally integrated into the Metro, highrises, residential complexes - even universities! It's just phenomenal.

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Richard Weingarten's avatar

I'm learning more and more about you. But, SEVEN DOLLARS?. c'mon!

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