WHAT HAVE THEY DONE????????



Yes my friends, the beautiful image of a MAN MALL has been reduced to this!

And you know what that means- back when I started this four years ago (My God, has it been THAT long?)- my theory was that if they tore down the Kingsport Mall then the Eastland was soon to follow.

And if they tore down the Eastland- that was it. World ends!

I mean really! That thing, for all intents and purposes, should have been shuttered in 1986 when Gimbels closed.

AND FOR 20 YEARS IT STAYED OPEN! IN THE STATE OF DISREPAIR THAT MY SOON TO BE RESTORED AVATAR CAPUTURED IN SUCH GLORY!

The theory was it would not die. It was like the Jason Mall, or the Michael Myers Mall.

You could take away all its stores. You could reduce the parking lot to a collection of potholes. You could even have CHILDREN DIE IN THE PARKING LOT but you could not- UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE- KILL THE EASTLAND MALL!

And it WAS like one of those monsters! Throat cut out with a chainsaw under the hockey mask? No matter- Jason was coming back to kill more teens! You simply couldn't kill him- even if he had an blood gushing from his jugular and gangrene infection setting in.

And that was the way Eastland was! For 20 years!

I once dated a woman from Derry, Pennsylvania years ago. Derry is a good 30 or 40 miles from where the Eastland was.

There is NO reason why a woman from Derry, Pennsylvania should have EVER heard of the Eastland Mall- even in its heyday.

I mentioned in passing the Eastland Mall (I was not obsessed with it back then like I am now).

No sooner had those two words escaped from my lips than Terry started- no lie here- SCREAMING A GROAN!

And in GREAT ANGER she recalled being taken to the Eastland Mall by her relatives who happened to live in McKeesport for the next five minutes.

The sort of anger that when a woman enters into it- you NEVER bring the subject up again. I don't care if you're Clint Eastwood and the future of the country is at stake.

I took another woman to the Eastland- only the best for my gals- and she claimed to have nightmares about the place afterwards.

But we were going to REWARD the durability of the Eastland here on the board- a place so ugly it was loveable!

And with this durability came the Man Mall idea.

Remember?

Gun Shop, Dickies Outlet, Republican Headquarters- and we'd fix up the broken floor with a tribute to the Three Stooges in tile!

It is now obvious that WOMEN pushed for the demise of the Eastland Mall. They just COULDN'T LET US HAVE OUR OWN MALL!

And we are diminished.

And in our final days.

Women aren't to blame...the blame falls upon the feminized male race.


Though inherently evil....there were a few good things about the third reich!

Well, among other things, when they lost, it meant that little Tony Macchiaroli, sitting in Italy, then dreamed of moving to the United States in 1945.

And a few years later he did, and worked in a Pittsburgh steel mill at the age of 23.

And he also had absolutely no idea how to speak English.

When he did, and he felt comfortable in it, he got out of the mill and lived the American Dream of running his own business- which turned out to be a cobbler shop that opened in North Versailles, Pennsylvania on August 15, 1963.

In a brand-new shopping center named the Eastland Shopping Plaza.

He would be there for the next 42 years.

Happy to say "Tony the Shoemaker" is still in business at an open-air shopping center a mile away from where Eastland was- Valley Shoe Repair.


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And there Tony is- on the last day of operation at the Eastland Mall- with PittsburghBucs himself.