Sometimes when I’m making dinner I watch Defunctland videos about themed entertainment and maybe that’s why YouTube suggested I take a detour into shopping mall content, listen all I can say for sure is that eventually I ended up on a mini-documentary about the history of shopping malls in the Detroit Metro area, which’s where I grew up so we were really playing the hits! Anyhow I got very nostalgic about Briarwood mall in Ann Arbor, which is the asylum where they raised me. So anyways, I made you a quiz!
Quiz: Plan a ’90s Trip To The Mall and I’ll Tell You Which ’90s Pop Hit You Are
![](https://www.autostraddle.com/wp-content/uploads/avatars/2/5c0da6f459994-bpfull.jpg?crop=0px%2C0px%2C250px%2C250px&resize=110%2C110&strip=info)
Riese
Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.
Riese has written 3241 articles for us.
goddammit riese
π
I am, apparently, Livin La Vida Loca.
This made me smile so big throughout. I’m not even American but my parents actually took me to some American malls in the nineties (so iconic to them that they didn’t call it the word in our language for the mall, they said it in English, “the mall”, which sounded like our word for “the mole” because of their accents + me being a child that did not speak any English and I just imagined this massive animal that you could go into and shop at.), and the memories have stayed with me forever. The magically enormous chocolate chip cookies. The endless free samples of Chinese food that we got at the food court. Build-a-fuckin’-bear!!!???!! I still have that bear!!!! Some of my earliest and happiest memories come from the mall. My parents are dead now and were deteriorating for a long time before they died, so I treasure every happy memory I had with them. Thanks for giving me a reason to revisit some of them!
Also I’m apparently Livin’ La Vida Loca and I can only wholeheartedly agree with this. WOOHOOO
this is so lovely! (also that you still have the bear!!)
Same, not American, also got Livin la vida loca, which is good with me.
Ah, the 90s, only just a CK One whiff away in my memory, but actually it’s been 30 years. π
If we still had comment awards I would nominate this comment for one π Just a CK One whiff away…
Country Apple was my scent and I indeed owned an “I’m Too Sexy” cassingle. I danced many slow dances to this song.
“I Kissed a Girl” by Jill Sobule
Maybe one day…