I’m absolutely terrified of escalators. I don’t like the “up” escalator, because you’re going high up in the air, under no control of your own, you worry about falling over the side, even if you know you’re far too big to fall over the side. The “down” one scares me even more, seeing those all those little teeth on the edge of the stairs, ready to stab your body if you stumble while getting on the step. I know, I still have the scar on my knee from when I stumbled getting on a stair at the old Sears at the old Newmarket Fair Mall in ‘99.
Speaking of Newmarket, this is where this entry started. During this quarantine, I’ve been working on reviving my retail history blog. I have access to Proquest, so I’ve been getting newspaper articles about my two dead malls in the town I grew up in. I found one article about Newmarket that made me incredibly sad, realizing that I had walked by the site where a girl was killed because she was playing on an escalator so many times growing up.
(Daily Press, May 9, 1989)
This was before the mall was renovated into “Newmarket Fair” in 1990. I was five when this accident happened, so I didn’t even know there was a set of escalators there until I found the article.
The escalators were replaced by a large glass paneled elevator and stairs during the renovations. Newmarket Fair stopped being a mall by the late 90s, and the anchor stores, and then eventually the smaller stores became offices in the early 00s. The building is now called Netcenter.
saleintothe90s 