There are several awesome things about this NYTimes article about shopping malls:
- it’s written in the second person;
- it turned me on to deadmalls.com;
- it is a near-parody of the Times‘ legendary condescension toward “flyover” country, but not near enough;
- it is completely blind to the ways in which Manhattan is becoming an imitation of northern New Jersey mall culture.
Surprised to read on the Deadmalls page that there are only 3 Howard Johnson’s Restaurants left. I remember when all the rest areas on the NJ Turnpike were Hojos. We never went to them because my father had a passionate but never explained hatred of all things Hojo that predated my coming on the scene. Once he did get a coffee there, which he must have needed desperately, but when he took the first sip of it–we were back on the highway then–he rolled down the window, flung the whole cup out of it, and proceeded to curse out the whole Howard Johnson’s corporation, quite beyond any reason I could ever fathom. One of the three left is in Lake George, NY, apparently, which I’ve always meant to go to, so maybe this will be the excuse I need to get out there.
When I was 12 or 13, I accompanied my dad to a toy/gift exhibition in Atlantic City. On the way down, we stopped at a HoJo (not a Turnpike one, but one in a little town off the Parkway (as I recall, 25 years later)) for dinner. Dad ordered a steak. That night, he was violently ill and spent most of his time in the bathroom of our hotel room. I learned a valuable lesson that night. Also, I’ve never ordered a non-pancake dish at IHOP.
We should probably publish an anthology called “Our Fathers & HoJo.” Anyone interested?