Last Saturday (12/13) at the Target/Best Buy (Watertown Mall), every single space in the large parking lot was taken -- along with several cars idling in every single aisle. I left and came back in the evening when I could find parking.

Conclusion: people aren't shopping so much at the upscale stores (CambridgeSide Galleria), but are swarming to the downscale stores (Target). Matches Adam's earlier observation of the Natick Mall... er, Natick Collection of Empty High-End Stores.

I have little doubt that people are (justifiably) spending less this year. I know I sure am spending a lot less than I ever have before. But this kind of histrionic doom and gloom cheerleading is neither accurate nor beneficial; I've been to plenty of malls (or just out in the city shopping) during the Christmas season and have seen tons of people shopping. Are they spending as much? Probably not, but that doesn't mean the entire Cambridgeside Galleria is about to fail.

And again, as my own blog documents, there's not really anything particularly joyful about a major mall failing, either.

There's still a ton of *local* people who work in and manage these stores. Local people who could very well lose their jobs soon, and even if not, they're probably terrified of it about now. I don't understand why it's so fun to cheerlead the failure of a chain store while we would never do such a thing for a local store. I'm all for shopping local--I worked for Newbury Comics for years--but this is still a pretty shallow viewpoint, I think.

It's pretty easy to get into Cambridgeside before anything is open. The garage opens earlier than the mall and the stairs aren't closed off (or are opened, not sure) at least an hour before anything opens.

When the iPhone was causing lengthy lines at Apple stores, there would be nobody in the entire mall except for the 30 people (and growing) outside of the Apple store and the store employees.