I finally figured out why dead malls smell the same

Was at the Palisades Center in West Nyack last weekend and it hit me. It's not just the carpet or the stale air from the fountain that's been dry since 2004. Every dead mall I've been to from that era has this mix of old pizza grease and burnt coffee from the food court that never got deep cleaned. Is there a specific cleaner they all used that left that weird lingering smell?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith_perez1mo ago

The Palisades Center is a good example of a mall that's hanging on but still has that smell. Back in 2008 I worked at a GameStop in a dying mall and I got curious about the smell too, so I asked the janitor. He told me they used a specific Johnson Diversey degreaser that was supposed to be fragrance free but it left this weird chemical undertone when it mixed with old pizza oil. @sanchez.robin is right about that ghost of 90s mall culture, the smell is basically years of that degreaser baking into everything under the heat lamps. If you want to test it, next time you're at a dead mall stick your head in the janitor closet, that concentrated smell is the real smoking gun.

sanchez.robin1mo ago

Does anyone else get a little sad walking through those old food courts? You're right about that baked-in smell of old grease and cheap coffee, it's like the ghost of 90s mall culture refusing to leave. I think the cleaning crews probably used the same industrial degreaser everywhere too, and that chemical mixed with years of grime created that signature stale odor we all recognize.