Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to spend the day at the Mall Rats Punk Vendor Festival at the Palmer Park Mall, celebrating the 1990s, and hosted by Blue Flame Events.

My Echo City Capers duo, illustrator Joseph Swarctz and his sidekick author Ralph Greco Jr., were signing books down at the Barnes & Noble at the Promenade Shops in Center Valley. And my art director and personal partner-in-crime Gayle Hendricks had plans. So I asked my enthusiastic (and outgoing) assistant Allison (I shall omit her last name as I did not ask her permission before posting this) to join me at the event, and hoped Joan Zachary might have the chance to come take photos— which you can see from the results above that she did.

It turned out to be a good day in book sales, especially as Allison was determined to beat my on-site sales record for an event in the mall. And when she did, well, then she thought she’d shattered my single day sales record. And if the event ran one more hour, she might have.

But Allison said something about our quirky, little Palmer Park Mall that struck me as sad, true and magical. Allison hails from Los Angeles, and she said, “I never understood the phrase ‘death of the American Mall’ until I came to this one.”

At first, I was sad. Because I’ve been coming to the Palmer Mall since… the 1990s. I’ve seen Clover come and go, Hess’s become the BonTon and then faded into oblivion. In the 1990s, BonTon was one of two entities to give a fresh-out-of-college Darrell Parry a credit card (this was in the days before identity theft was a discussed thing and someone had stolen his social security number for death benefits, if I recall). Darrell had no real use for a BonTon credit card— at that point we were merely applying for whatever cards we might get, since, you know, Darrell was supposedly dead. His mother would use the credit card and give him cash.

(And to prove that Darrell is very much alive I encourage you to purchase his poetry book, Twists: Gathered Ephemera. Here’s a link or stop by the Blue Flame Events Retail Store at the Palmer Park Mall.)

Twists via Bookshop.org

Anyway… I want to invite you to reconsider this vision of the decaying American Mall. People like Kim and Tim of the Blue Flame Events Retail Store and the owners of Mom And Pop’s General Store and the other entrepreneurs in the Palmer Mall, consider Spin Me Round records for example, provide an eclectic mix of options many of which are small, independent businesses and not franchises or larger operations. Allison has grown to appreciate our unique mall, and hopefully more people will support small local businesses in addition to the familiar big names.

Write to Read

Speaking of the mall, and giving it a second chance, on Wednesday, September 25, from 6 to 8 p.m., I will be hosting the inaugural Write to Read Workshop at Blue Flame Events Retail Store.

I hope these monthly workshops will develop into whatever the community wants or needs. Depending who shows up, we can start a book club or discuss writing, develop a critique group or host an open mic with poetry and music. I’m open to anything and I want to offer this time to address any questions I might be able to answer.

But I’m getting ahead of myself… or maybe I’m not.