The now deceased Crossroads Mall was one of my favorite attractions when I came up to Boulder for college during the tail end of the Clinton administration (boy, those were the days...). Really, Crossroads was just a marvelous hodgepodge of practicality and uselessness: On the one hand, the place was comically irrelevant, as it was filled with the kind of shops that one can only find in the dirtiest of dirt malls (booths to make your own low quality music videos, hat embroidering kiosks, Orange Julius, etc), but on the other hand it was in an almost infuriatingly convenient location within Boulder, so every now and again you'd find yourself actually NEEDING to go there for something, as Flatirons Mall had yet to open at this time and there are just certain things that one can only purchase at a mall, regardless of how dilapidated it is. After all, for those of us who don't feel comfortable spending $90 on a pair of jeans from Pearl Street, the only other place we could go was the deliciously outdated Foley’s that clung on to the side of Crossroads like a mildly-useful parasite stuck to the arm of a terminally ill host. But I digress...

All of that is gone now; the construction of Flatirons Mall a few years ago chiseled in the last few digits on Crossroads' headstone, and at that very moment the place finally made the critical shift from being comically irrelevant to absolutely, wholly, and unquestionably irrelevant, and that was that. Shortly thereafter the City of Boulder set itself to figuring out what to do with the massive space that the once grand Crossroads Mall occupied, and they came up with all sorts of ideas... unfortunately, after just having ventured into the new 29th Street shopping complex last week, it appears that the City chose to throw all of those varied and loosely related ideas into a Cuisinart together, then construct whatever came pouring out the other side. It's an interesting philosophy, but as far as I can tell, the results are horrifying.

If I had to describe the 29th Street shopping complex experience in one sentence, I would say that it’s like stepping inside a corporately funded Dr. Seuss book. The shopping center’s outer façade assumes roughly 30 different architectural forms, which is kind of neat to look at, but quite overwhelming when you’re trying to figure out how to actually get to where you're trying to go. To “use” the mall, if you will. The inside (if you can call it an inside, it's something of an indoor outdoor mall, if that makes any sense... yeah, it really doesn't, I apologize...) can be equally confusing, though the lack of foot traffic I encountered made finding what I was looking for an infinitesimally easier task. Still, upon leaving the realm of the mall and reentering the more conventional city of Boulder (just for the record, I doubt I will ever be able to use the phrase “conventional city of Boulder” in a sentence ever again), the primary thought on my mind was “what the hell just happened?” instead of “wow, what a marvelous shopping experience!” This, friends and neighbors, is telling.

I’m sure the mall will do fine once the new movie theater inside actually opens for business, but for the time being I really can’t imagine any good reason to venture to 29th Street when you could find anything you’re looking for there at Flatirons. At least for now, it’s well worth the extra 20 minute drive.