In the late 1980s Eastpoint Mall had these large, square brick water fountains that anchored each corner. I remember sitting on the edge, the air-conditioned bricks cool on my bare legs, and staring into the glittering pool of wasted pocket change and dreams. I would ask my mom for a penny to toss in, after making a secret wish. And then another. It was addictive, once I learned all you had to do to get whatever my heart desired was to toss a penny into the fountain! This has been a memory that has stayed with me since that first wish.
It was just announced, and confirmed, that at the end of August 2026 Eastpoint Mall would shut down forever. The mall is already a shadow of its former self. All the good stores have long ago left--most went out of business--but now it will permanently close and become razed soon. A piece of Dundalk history and legend will be erased from time and space like so much of the town lately.
With this announcement my buddies and I decided to walk around the mall, playing mallrats one final time to say goodbye, and make sure our memories stay fresh in our minds for a long time to come.
Many years ago...
At the far end of the mall sat a York Steakhouse. I remember this restaurant fondly, because it was dark inside, with warm yellow lamp light. And the food was lined up, so you could see what you were about to eat! This boggled my young developing toddler mind! Although I really didn't care about the food as much as the glass cups of chocolate pudding at the end of the row. That's all I had my mind on at the moment. Years later the restaurant became King's Court. The lingering memory here is that I was so comfortable sitting and eating here.
My mom signed me up for Cub Scouts in the late 1980s. She took me to JCPenney one autumn evening to pick out my gear. I'm not sure how JCPenney became the apparel store for the Scouts, but there we were. They sized me for my shirt, my pants, and I took home the yellow neckerchief and slide, belt, and cap. After this we walked to the middle of the mall and grabbed some hot dogs from Wild Dog. How I can remember days like this I'll never know, but they must've made an impact on me for some reason...
In my high school years, I would spend hours going through books and magazines at Waldenbooks, which was situated between Kay Bee Toys and Arby's. I still have dozens of the books I purchased there, and quite a few magazines. I started reading vampire fiction at this store, something I still enjoy over 3 decades later. I would sit at the bottom of the shelf, flipping through Anne Rice paperbacks and other fantasy books that I'd almost always purchase come payday.
Some years later I would finally get to work in the mall. I got several part-time jobs at Eastpoint in late 1996. First to hire me was Saturday Matinee/Record Town. My buddy Mike and I liked to think we ruled these two stores together. It didn't help when I was given control of Billy's video game wall, and before that Mike had taken a girl that Billy had liked. We were proud we completely and thoroughly dismantled this poor kid's world... The Saturday Matinee/Record Town location acted as one store, split down the middle. You could ring up movies in the music side, and vice versa.
But sometime in 1997 or early 1998 Sat Mat broke off from Record Town, to give the music store more room. We moved Saturday Matinee across the hall on the corner, shouting distance away, and I moved with the movies. This turned Sat Mat and Record Town into nWo and nWo Wolfpack! No more cohabitating, and this really sucked.
In hindsight I'm happy that I got to work with VHS and Laserdisc and cassettes before the industry changed again. It wasn't as cool as working at Empire Records, but we had our fun.
A couple weeks before starting at Saturday Matinee/Record Town I was hired at Electronics Boutique. I was already a long-time customer, and now I would be an employee. I worked with Mike McClellan; Dawn was our store manager. Cheryl was a long-time employee dating back to the store and another name. She was an older woman, soft spoken and a sweetheart to everyone there.
And before too long I would have my third part-time job in the mall with Halloween Adventure in late summer 1997. Both stints were quite short compared to my employment with Trans World Entertainment (and no, this was not an association of sex change workers...).
Walking into the Halloween store one day with my buddy and colleague Mike, we got to talking to the lady behind the counter there. I don't remember her name unfortunately, but we started talking about comic books, and that she liked the character Shy. Somehow, I remember that. Before we left, she had offered me a job, and I took it. I was now juggling several jobs in the mall, and I was still working at the McDonald's across the street. I was getting over 40 hours a week cumulatively. I was making bank! I was buying every PlayStation or Saturn game I wanted. Not to mention tons of VHS and CDs...
After maybe only a week or two I was offered the Assistant Manager job of Halloween Adventure, but this would be at the store in another mall not too far away, Golden Ring Mall. Another fabled mall that was deleted sometime late 1998. But that was Golden Ring Mall and not Eastpoint, so we'll talk about that another post.
Aladdin's Castle was arcade perfection. It was chock-full of Sega AM2 games and Namco games. Aladdin's Castle sat across from Subway, where Mike and Dan and John worked. Gratis meatball subs would come after hours playing Point Blank or San Francisco Rush or Tekken. Ed worked here for a bit, and sonovabitch he never hooked me up with a single damn game, come to think of it! How did that happen?? He would move on to Ames after a single summer at the arcade.
Eastpoint Mall is another Dundalk institution. It has been there long before I was born, and I had hoped it would be there long after I move on for other generations to enjoy. But that will not be the case after this summer. The mall has languished in retail hell for probably over a decade now. All big stores have gone bankrupt, like Sears and JC Penney, and before them Ames and Value City. Americans just don't shop like we did in the 1970s, '80s, '90s. Most folks just prefer to order on their phone and have it delivered to their home. Can't blame 'em; that's crazy convenient. But me, I like to be out and about. I like to shop amongst other Americans. I don't like the lonely, solitary lifestyle personally. I think it makes up for the fact that I don't go out and drink socially anymore. But more likely is that I'm trying to hold on to the lifestyle that is rapidly disappearing from society.
This all goes to explain why I really just do not like society today. It's getting more and more different to what I knew growing up and I'm having a hard time coming to terms with it. And Dundalk is becoming the quintessential case for the world changing quicker than I can keep up with. What's left of home when all the things that made up home are long gone?
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