Appreciation post: The weird little food court at Tilton Square Mall in Ohio

I drove 3 hours to check out Tilton Square Mall near Cincinnati last Saturday, expecting just another empty shell. But the food court area still had this old neon sign for a place called 'Pizza King 33' that was still flickering, even though the whole mall's been closed since 2019. That little sign made me realize I'd been too focused on the big sad empty spaces and not enough on the tiny details that give these places their own personality. Has anyone else found a random working display or sign in a dead mall that made you stop and look closer?

3 comments

3 Comments

danielhenderson28d agoMost Upvoted

Gotta correct you a bit here - Pizza King 33 wasn't actually a pizza place. It was a sandwich shop that did weird square pizzas on the side as a gimmick. I remember going there as a kid in the late 90s and the owner Frank would always have this old jukebox playing Motown hits. That flickering sign though, I get what you mean. There's something special about those little holdouts from a dead mall's better days. I found a still-running water fountain at a mall in Akron once that had tiles from the 1970s and it made my whole trip.

west.anna28d ago

actually, i wonder if that water fountain at the akron mall is the same one that had a little plaque on it? i swear i saw one just like it near a sears that had been closed for years. those old tile fountains are like time capsules, you know? they hold up better than the signs sometimes.

charlienelson12d ago

Wait, hold on. That water fountain with the old tiles? I thought that thing was gone. I swear I walked past that spot like two years ago and it was just a blank wall.