People of Bryan/College Station, let’s face it our mall sucks. We’re all thinking it, we all know it. The mall has been regressing for a while now. All the stores we once loved have fled the mall and their replacements are junky off-brand stores no one has ever heard of.
I mean come on, Walmart has better game than the mall’s sorry excuses for replacement.
Post Oak Mall has lost seven name-brand stores over the last three years: Macy’s, GAP, Aggieland Outfitters, Hollister, Aeropostale, Abercrombie, and yes, even Justice.
Now the mall has become a big ugly building for your grandma and her friends to “mall walk” together and get their steps in.
It’s rough for a girl like me because every time I want to feed into my shopping addiction, I have to go all the way to Houston.
This summer when I went clothing shopping for school, I couldn’t even go to our residential mall as there are only three decent quality stores, and that’s being generous.
These three stores are PacSun, FootLocker, and American Eagle, as they’re the only ones that have the most trendy items that I’m looking for. The bad thing about these stores is not everyone can appreciate them, because they are generally directed toward teenagers and young adults. Another factor is that a lot of their clothing options would be out of dress code for school.
Instead, I had to drive to Houston, where they have all the fashionable stores like Hollister, Urban Outfitters, Zara, and Garage. I ask myself, how is this fair?
We are a small town, but we still have shopping addictions that need to be fulfilled. The highlight of shopping at the Post Oak Mall should not be the Aunt Annie’s pretzel place, because that’s what it’s become at this point, a sad, sad place where you go to get your little pretzel and go on about your day.
You would think with all the college students that we would have a better store selection.
I believe we have the buying power to support trendier stores, especially with all the Aggies back in town we should be able to take delight in spending our money locally again.
To get the stores we want locally, it’s simple really, stop shopping online so much. I believe shopping online is joyful from time to time, but doing it exclusively is not healthy and is killing local businesses.
We can’t expect to get popular stores when we can’t even support what we have. Businesses are not closed and we are not locked down anymore, it’s time to get up off those couches and hurt that bank account.
