I DISLIKE huge soulless shopping malls built in the middle of nowhere that have been slowly killing our town centres. I said so the other night in this column.
So Richard Smith sent me an email to cheer me up.
“Shopping Malls, eh?” he wrote. “I have the ideal therapy.”
And he sent me the YouTube connection (Google ‘Blues Brothers mall chase’) for that wonderful scene in the 1980 Blues Brothers film where Jake and Elwood, pursued by police, drive through a mall and totally wreck it.
“This place has got everything,” says Jake – and then they trash it.
Richard also sent me details of the actual mall where the scenes were filmed – the Dixie Square Mall in Illinois.
It was built on the site of a golf course at a cost of $25m and opened in 1966. It closed in 1978.
The Blues Brothers scenes were filmed the following year and the mall has been empty ever since.
The great news is that the Dixie is not alone. Others have become dead malls in America because of changing shopping habits.
So I can live in hope that they may change here too.
Maybe the day will come when a franchised wrecking crew called the Blues Brothers will tour the country, demolishing those soulless malls.
Idea for a TV reality show, perhaps?
