Now and then in my regimented life, I like to be adventurous. In my case, adventurous means going more than ten stops on the metro and not knowing what, exactly, I’m going to have for lunch. Today is such a day. It is Saturday. We are at a mall.
And apparently not a mall, but the mall in Prague. The Westfield Shopping Center (i.e. mall) in Chodov is labyrinthine and bustling. Walking into this mall in 2026 Prague blasts me with nostalgia from my mall days in 1986 Pennsylvania. Back in those days, my buddy Eddie and I would spend a few hours in the afternoon running around the mall. We were twelve or so and our orbit layered us towards Spencer Gifts and its walls of posters and novelty gifts that leaned naughty. Any glimpse of boob – side or otherwise – made the day worth it.
Our secondary goal was McDonald’s fries. Otherwise, we’d walk around and just watch people. In those days, there were metalheads in their black T-shirts. The male hair-do of the day in suburban Philadelphia was the mullet and there were many in the wild. For girls, the convention was for your hair to reach as high as possible towards the international space station. To accomplish this, women spent hours spraying down their hair with aerosol, with little to no worry about what then-minor politician Al Gore would say.
The mall in Prague 2026 is not far off from that. Sure, there are robots cleaning the shop floors and the shop directory is interactive and will tell you in four languages how to get somewhere. But there are still mullets, and Canadian tuxedos, and high hair, and enough Def Leppard, AC/DC T-shirts to bring me to the warm embrace of the 1980s. I snuggled into the nostalgia and when we passed the McDonalds, I almost cried.
Boy did I need this. This August, I did my yearly pilgrimage back to the land of the cheesesteak and also to see my family . . . bring me cheesesteaks. I did all the usual suspects: Barnes and Noble; buying pants at a clothing store that understands that men have 1. asses and 2. testicles; cheesesteaks, pizza, and other foods that made the clothing store trip sad and unpleasant; going to the Jersey shore; eating seafood; some other stuff with family.
One day, my dad and I visited Barnes and Noble which is attached to our local mall – the Neshaminy Mall. I stepped out for a few minutes to run an errand at the clothing shop across the mall. Certain I was in no terrible rush – for I had left my dad in a place that has both books and a bakery – I thought it would be nice to take my time and stroll through the mall. When I related this idea to my mom, she gave me a sidelong look and commented that there wouldn’t be much to see. As kids have since the beginning of parent-child relationships, I shrugged off her comment because I thought I knew better.
The walk across the mall to the clothing store I needed was about ten minutes. But it took about forty seconds for me to realize that this was a dead mall. The Hallmark Shop – a novelty giftshop sadly void of naughty gifts – sits next door to Barnes and Noble. From there, all the shops are boarded up and gone. Same went for the food court and the restaurant where my sister worked until she genuinely considered killing a senior citizen and we made her quit. There were three stands open throughout the vast spaces of emptiness: a cinnamon bun stand, a phone case stand, and a cologne stand. For the life of me, I had no idea what these three places were trying to accomplish by staying open – in my ten-minute walk, I saw perhaps four other people. They looked as dismayed as I’m sure I did. I counted one mullet among them.
I mentally attacked the youth of today for sitting on cell phones and watching ten-second videos. Nobody visited malls anymore? This had been a fun place to be. Could I be so far out of touch? No, not me. I felt like Principal Skinner going by the 4-H Club. It’s the children who are wrong.
So the Westfield Shopping Center was a B2 shot for the mall nostalgia lying dormant within my aging body. And then, as all things related to malls eventually do, it became too much. There were seemingly hundreds, nay thousands of shoppers. They all seemed to want to be where I was already standing. Children were crying, couples bickering; half of the people were well-trained in the art of the Eurasian line-cut. But I guess it’s easy to not see others when you’re wearing sunglasses the size of a satellite dish on your face.
Burke and I and the dog did what we needed to do and we found an exit. It was time for food – and since it was Cheat Day, it was going to be fatty, unhealthy food. No veggie wrap or bulgar for me today, nuh-uh; no protein shake nor fruit shall pass these lips, nope. No. Today I was going to eat processed cheese and ground meat and carbohydrates and chocolate. Burke had found a place that looked good, so we started off in what appeared to be the direction in which it lay. We should be there in about fifteen minutes. Beer and food awaited. We were in good moods.
Forty-five later, standing in the woods somewhere holding a bag of dog poop and wondering where my life choices had brought me, I finally gave up on our destination. We found another place that had very cold beer and nice people, but no food. The waitress informed me, through one squinty eye that worried me of pink eye, that the place next door had food.
We lubed up with a few pivos and moved to the place next door. The kids running the place were very sweet and cheerfully served us drinks, which means they probably weren’t Czech. We drank and ordered cheese burgers. Very specifically – cheese burgers. Something was mildly afoot, but I didn’t know what it was.
When the burgers came out, I realized what it was. Sitting atop each burger was a metal cylinder open on both sides. In the cylinder was melted cheese. The idea is, you raise the cylinder and the cheese coats the outside of your burger – bun and all – with melted cheese. Your burger comes with rubber gloves, because who doesn’t like food that comes with its own cleaning supplies. The family at the next table stared.
“I’ve seen this, you know?” I said to Burke.
“Really? Where?” she said as she examined the burger, the bun, and the cylinder, and tried to understand the physics of her lunch.
“Have you ever seen Stupid Food on Reddit?”
“No. Wait, is that the one we saw Brooklyn Beckham baking pasta in a wheel of parmesan?”
“That’s the one.”
“Then yes.”
I pointed at my burger and leaned forward to whisper. “This is stupid food.”
“Yeah it is.”
“I mean, according to dems internet, this is actual stupid food.”
“Oh, are we taking part in a thing?”
“I think.”
As I said that, the teen girl with the family at the next table snapped a picture of us. I smiled. She huddled with her family and looked at the picture.
If you go the Stupid Food subreddit, you will quickly confirm what you think stupid food is. Influencer culture and the need for visual spectacle have spawned a society in which we need to make food look crazy and wild and interesting. Because the last thing a person wants when they order a burger, is just a fucking burger. No.
Hallmarks of stupid food include milkshakes topped with doughnuts, brownies and burgers; burgers on doughnuts instead of buns; burgers stuffed with mac-and-cheese; pizzas topped with smaller pizzas; Bloody Marys topped with a steak; deep-fried butter. Giant foods are uh, big, such as massive burritos, pizzas and burgers that could be served to Godzilla. Then there is the trend of serving food stuffed inside of other food: a cheeseburger inside a quesadilla inside a burrito inside a lobster.
Through some quick king-of-the-jungle maneuvering, we were both able to deftly slip the (to be fair, somewhat coagulated) cheese off the burger. This made for a nice cheese dipping sauce. Though I will say that the next table and the waiters looked a little disappointed that we didn’t employ our gloves. I licked my fingers clean and asked for the bill.
By the time we got home, I felt happily out of touch. I liked being in a mall and I didn’t go for stupid food. I really went overboard when I read a book on the metro home. Oh well. I did get lost in thought for a while thinking of the future. What will be stupid food for these people when they’re 51? Eating live animals in the forest? Better yet, being eaten by your food? Maybe we’ll be able to send cameras down there to watch our food digest.
In any event, unless it’s eating ham off an octogenarian’s nude body, I don’t think I’ll know it’s happening?
