I Want My MTV: A Magical Night at Rivergate Mall

At 50, life can be discouraging and exhausting. While still parenting your adult kids, you also end up doing senior parent care – or deal with loss and grief if you aren’t. Once a mallrat, now I rescue cats. That’s 50. 50 is also a time to celebrate who we were, who we are, and who we will be. I thought the extent that I would get to experience this was my 50th birthday celebration.

For my 50th birthday celebration, I’d met actor William Shatner, singer Weird Al Yankovic and actress Sonequa Martin-Green as well as reunited with actor Doug Jones with whom I’d worked in film with. Meeting these entertainers spanned my earliest memories to my most recent ones. But these encounters were not the only ways I looked to step back.

Our imaginations are a way we can step back anywhere, any time. I’d been a mallrat growing up in the 1980’s. This year I’d bought a 1990s game called “Mall Madness” which included a “model mall” – and it seemed like this little toy game was the only place the mall as I’d known it existed for me – in my imagination. As we age, our imagination becomes a living museum. I could look at the game board and for a moment, I could see things as they were.

As we age, sometimes – just sometimes we want things back the way they were, just for one night. You don’t want to be sandwiched in the middle of parenthood and parent care, you just want to be you, one more time – You want permission and you want to be allowed. You tell yourself it’s worth a try. And believe me, I tried. Several times.

I’d tried. Lord knows, I’d tried. Sometimes all the trying in the world doesn’t make it so, and you leave exhausted and more discouraged than you already were. I had tried.

Over the Easter 2025 holiday weekend I’d tried. I drove home to the Capitol City Mall in Camp Hill, PA. I’d worked in that mall when I was 16 at a French fry business in the food court. I’d also worked at Spencer’s Gifts, Arbys, Toys R Us, Suncoast, and The Wall Music. I thought I could come home again. Can’t a mallrat come home again? Some things were the same.

Even the Chinese restaurant from the 1980’s was still there. But it wasn’t the 14 year old mallrat eating in the food court, it was the 50 year cat rescuer wondering how his cats were doing in his absence – and knowing it could be the last time eat at the same Chinese restaurant.

I’d eaten at the same Chinese restaurant I’d eaten as a kid and the same lady served me my lunch as did 40 years ago. We both a little more gray in our hair but she recognized me as I’d eaten there quite often. I’d gotten to see my old music store manager who worked managing a Yankee Candle store now. We spoke of the days of working together. I’d sat at the top of one of the mall entrances. It wasn’t the same – but at least I’d known I tried. Sometimes that’s all you can do before heading back to where you live in the present – and live in the present.

In the present, there was a curious event posted on Facebook. The event was centered around cruising the Rivergate Mall one last time – a mall slated for demolition in a few months. I’d thought about going – it wasn’t the mall I grew up in but it could be a good stand-in for it and this event a good experience.

The event was put on by Lisa Kistner Sheler and was getting quite the exposure on Facebook. I decide i’d go. It seemed like someone was allowing us to be young again and someone was giving us permission to be ourselves again – ourselves of decades past.

When I arrived, it was still early. I’d gotten some food to eat from a food court vendor who was playing 1980’s music. From “Footloose” to “Can’t Touch This” – it was an amazing thing to hear. The only song I wished for was “Flashdance…What a Feeling!”. But it wasn’t just the music.

People started to arrive, some in 1980’s and 1990’s clothes while others in appropriate t-shirts and gear. The mall was desolate with many stores and a nearly an entire wing left closed and vacant. But as the hour turned, so did the clock – but not in the direction you would expect.

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As the 6 O’clock hour hit, there were many more people in the mall. It seemed that Spencer’s Gifts was a place to go. It was literally over-run by Gen X’ers – whether it was the only place open that evoked the past or it was the only place of it’s kind open in what was now a nearly desolate mall, it none-the-less seemed to be where memories were being re-lived by we once-again mallrats. It was so real – in so many ways.

It was so real I wanted to call my mother and tell her all about it – and that I’d be home late because I was staying at the mall. I mean that’s what I’d have done if she were still alive. “Losing a parent is so weird because you go through the rest of your life not being able to see or talk to them ever again but you still feel like you will. Every once in a while, it all just hits you that they are literally never coming back and you feel the feeling of losing them all over again.” – Author Unknown, but sentiment…well known to us Gen X’ers as time moves forward.

What was holding time back and so different from my own attempt to re-create it just a few months back? The people.

People were actually ‘hanging out’ at the mall. We knew each other and we talked to each other like we would have decades ago. I was stopped a few times myself by people I knew. It wasn’t just the people hanging at the mall that made it real.

The mall security and maintenance staff both helped keep the moment going. The experience would not have been the same without them – but without a doubt it was a mall full of people hanging out that truly made the difference in holding back the present – for just a few hours.

As the hour turned 6, the mall filled like time had been turned back – and things were back the way they were 40 years ago – the mall was packed with people, the tables were filled with diners, and the mallways were jammed with shoppers. For some of us not from this area, the mall tonight was a stand-in for the malls we knew. Inside it was the 1980’s and we wanted our MTV. Outside however was another staple of the mall life – the cruise.

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Outside there were cars making the rounds. Classic cars were parked, motorycles were riding, and cars were cruising. It was quite the sight to see. The parking lot had not looked this filled in a long time. As the hour hit 8pm, the mall was closing on the inside but on the outside it was just one big cruise.

It was so big cars were parked at the edge of another store’s parking lot while people were watching, waving on, and enjoying the cruisers. As I drove, I played “Flashdance” in my car CD player – someone had to. It must have taken me about 45 minutes to make it out of the parking lot but for once, no one was in a big hurry to leave or for the night to end.

The night had to end at some point. When I got home, there was an instance where both times lived in the same moment – I was coming home from hanging out at the mall on a Friday night and I was taking care of my rescue cats in the same moment.

For a single moment both of us seemed to exist in the same moment and the 14 year old mallrat marveled at sharing the moment with the cat rescuer he would one day become.

And then the moment passed and I was once again the 50 year old cat rescuer – but with an amazing memory and proof that this mall cruise event organizer had made the impossible happen – they’d put things back the way they were – if only for a night.

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Special thanks to Lisa Kistner Sheler for organizing this amazing night. She made the impossible possible in a way no commercial event, no clever marketing, and no promotional night could have ever thought possible.

Also special thanks to the mall housekeeping and security staff for not breaking the illusion and being most welcoming of us.

Here’s to one of the best nights of my life. Let it not be the last time we can all hang out at the mall, one last time.

Bonus Scene:

AI did it’s best to create the instance where 14 year old mallrat-me and present-day 50 year old cat rescuer me shared the same moment.