I had prepared to spend a day at the American Dream somberly mourning American retail, dragging my black lace veil across every tiled concourse, only to find, like Mary Magdalene on the third day, that the New Jersey mall had ascended to a higher plane; that the air was suffused with early-spring sunlight, the laughs and screams of mall-goers, and the pillowy fumes of fresh-baked Cinnabons.
As long as you’ve got money to spend and are the kind of person for whom an afternoon at the mall doesn’t sound akin to wandering the halls of hell, it is difficult not to have a splendid time. The Dream was built to last 100 or 200 years, according to one of the developers—a place of communion and exposition for generations not yet conceived—but it was made just for you.
