Too bad that one of Minnesota’s best-known attraction is a MALL! 🙁 (Here is a link.) While this is a great (and very large) mall, we have many other attractions and things to do here. So, The Driveby Tourist is working on highlighting many of these. This one is just a start of what I plan to be many more posts about many kinds of attractions. As a result, The Driveby Tourist calls this post Mall of America First Post. I don’t visit the MOA very often as I’m not a “shopping guy”. As a result, it’s mostly a place to take grandkids.

Mall of America First Post – History

Prior to becoming the Mall of America, the real estate belonged to Metropolitan Stadium, the original home of the Minnesota Twins and the Minnesota Vikings. When the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis completed, the real estate became available. (And, the real estate also held the Met Center, home of the Minnesota North Stars of the National Hockey League. The North Stars abandoned Minnesota in 1993 and became the Dallas Stars.)

The Mall of America was designed by Triple Five Group owned by Canada’s Ghermezian Family. Most noteworthy, the family owns the West Edmonton Mall in Canada. Equally important, that mall is the largest in North America. And MOA is still managed by Triple Five Group. While the number of stores changes regularly, currently there are about 550 stores. And that’s not counting the kiosks in the halls, of which there are “many”.

Mall of America – Tidbits

A replica of home plate lies in Nickelodeon, the amusement park in the center courtyard of MOA. And, the red-painted seat from Metropolitan Stadium is on the wall on the other side of Nickelodeon. That marks the longest home run ever hit in the stadium. And, the home run came from the bat of Harmon Killebrew!

Hard to keep my diet when seeing something like this. Just bragging, but I recently lost 40 pounds, can’t keep it off doing this! Mall of America has far too many eating places like this!

So, a store dedicated to Minnesota? In the Mall of America? Of course, we aren’t always humble!

Of course, a number of tacky T-shirt shops, both stores, and kiosks! To be sure, there are a lot of great stores as well. The Mall of America anchor stores became Nordstrom, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Sears. (However, the Sears store recently closed and there are no generally known plans for using that space.)

More recent history

In recent years, the Mall of America expanded again. Two major hotels now stand on the north and south side. J. W. Marriott to the north and Radisson Blu to the south. In fact, the Super Bowl teams stayed at these hotels during Super Bowl LII. And to think Metropolitan Stadium once stood here! The Driveby Tourist decided he needed something to keep busy so drove Uber (link to a post about it) for a while. Including the Super Bowl. And, never did get to give Tom Brady a ride!

  Want to see a shop for my road trip photos? You can have them printed as wall art or puzzles. They also work on coffee mugs, t-shirts and more! So, take a look. Maybe you'll see something you will like!

Classic Rock Recollection

Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People call say ‘beware doll, you’re bound to fall’
You thought they were all kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging your next meal
How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone

(I may re-use this one. It’s ranked as one of the greatest rock songs of all time. It can be viewed as being about conspicuous consumption, which certainly fits the Mall Of America!)

The Driveby Tourist #the-driveby-tourist