The Rad Decades and the Columbia Mall

Being a child of the “rad” decades, the mall was a fixture of my youth. I was destined trek the desert, climb mountains, drive racecars, and fly all manner of things, but the Maryland suburb of Columbia didn’t offer much of those (I probably would have got in a lot less trouble if it had). 

Instead, it had a mall: The Columbia Mall.

The Columbia Mall Circa 1979

Opened in 1971 as the centerpiece of the planned community of Columbia, Maryland, the Mall in Columbia (which it is now called thanks to some euphemistic word reversing) was the anchor by which the suburb of both Washington D.C. and Baltimore grew. Unlike the drab fluorescent windowless structures that defined many malls across the country in the latter decades of the Twentieth Century, when the Columbia Mall was opened, it was airy by comparison. The L-shaped structure featured continuous skylights above tiered upper levels and a cobblestone-like floor that was made from a sea of brown bricks.

Its cavernous walls were lined with rad-era retailers like Musicland, Sam Goody, and of course, the Arcade. The stores were separated by courtyards filled with water fountains and concrete benches with a few food courts strewn in between. The Columbia Mall even had its own smell; part chlorinated water from the fountains, part mall food, and part desperation—because, if you were hanging out at the mall, you had nothing better to do...

My teenage years in Columbia were tumultuous ones. I was always skirting the line of rebellion and craving independence, while getting in a lot of trouble in the process. I just didn’t belong in a place like Columbia, but at the same time, I was lucky to have grown up there. My Mom worked hard and sacrificed tons for my brother I, for which I have nothing but gratitude. I even received a good education despite my efforts at trying not to. It was inevitable then, that I would periodically find myself at the mall. If my friends and I were marbles, rolling around the theoretical folds of coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s, at the bottom of those folds was the mall—and when there was nothing else to do, gravity always wins.

When you walked into the southern entrance of the Columbia Mall, there was a certain smell that caught your nose. It stood out from the faint chemical burn of the chlorinated water fountains, the heavy grease of the food court, and even the putrid desperation that settled in the heavy air. It was a sweet smell with a bit of a kick; it was the smell of cinnamon—the smell of Cinnabon. If there ever was a store made for the mall, it was Cinnabon. Founded in Seattle at the SeaTac Mall in the mid-1980s, Cinnabon was a mall niche that satisfied the gluttonous impulses of innocent passersby who had no idea of the bad decision they were about to make. Once they caught the scent it was like an olfactory siren’s call, there was no turning back, their fate was sealed.

I know this because Cinnabon was my first real job. Sure, I’d worked on a cow farm for a few days before that career choice was preemptively ended by almost drowning in a manure pond (always stay on the trail they said, always…). That was followed by a stint as a bus boy at a small restaurant, but I’ll just say that the sit-down restaurant industry and I were an ill-suited match. My buddy Mark got me the job at Cinnabon, where I earned a minimum wage of $4.25 for my hard work. My uniform consisted of dark blue polyester trousers (not unlike the ones that I wear for my current airline), a white polyester shirt, a striped dark blue polyester tie, and a white apron with a blue and pink Cinnabon logo. 

The manager was a woman named Marcy, and she ran a tight ship. Tall and slender with dark hair, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, she set the tone of the joint and held us to a high standard. The entire mall cubby that Cinnabon occupied was white (a poor choice when your main product is brown), so we were always cleaning. You weren’t allowed to sit either, but we overcame that by sit-leaning on the tall plastic trashcans. You always had to test the trashcan before you put your full weight on it. If the trashcan’s max-gross payload had been previously exceeded, then it would fold up like a tin can and you’d be down on the white tile floor. 

Marcy kept us inline, despite most of us having some inherent miscreant tendencies. While not the glowing beacon of robotic perfection that was Chick-fil-a, Cinnabon was far from the grease pits that Roy Rogers or Boardwalk Fries were. I was always trying to fraternize with those Christian Chick-fil-A girls, but their manager kept us heathens at bay. My duties consisted of manning the register, cleaning, taking out the trash (a highly coveted choir thanks to the cigarette opportunity it afforded), and washing dishes, which I did with all of the enthusiasm that a sixteen-year old earning minimum wage would.

The one area that I did excel in was rolling Cinnabons. Despite the early-1990s war on drugs, my skill set at rolling things was precisely honed and refined with the delicate touch of an artisan. The process started by taking a large ball of dough and beating it, then rolling it into flat rectangle. Once it was laid out you unsheathed a literal brick of margin and slathered it in a thick layer on top of the dough. This would be the glue that held a pound of cinnamon in place, spread evenly in another layer on top of the margin. From there the trick was to tuck the end of the sheet into a small fold, which would be the foundation of the role—every great house starts with a solid foundation. Another trick was to pull as you rolled, which made a tightly curled 36-inch log of future Cinnabons. If you did it right, it looked like a “big fatty,” but unlike the reefer variety, you wanted it to be perfectly linear. Then you cut the log into individual discs and put them upright into the oven—six at time. Minibons, pint-sized Cinnabons for those more conscious of their gluttony, were made the same way, but with the initial sheet of dough cut in half.

Once the buns were done, you spread a cream cheese icing on top, which melted into an oozing glaze down the sides. The buns would then be transferred to a hot plate, awaiting their destiny until those lured in by the siren’s call succumbed to their olfactory urges. “For here, or to go?” determined whether you got a box or a plate, the latter best enjoyed by the ambience of the courtyard water fountain. But it was the Cinnabons that never found a home that would play the most interesting role in my Columbia Mall experience. If I were Alice, those poor homeless Cinnabons were the white rabbit that led me down the hole to a secret underground Wonderland. 

Some Cinnabons were boxed up to go and sold for take-home on a rack that also doubled as our only door. We kept them for several days, then they were to be discarded. One of the perks of working at Cinnabon was a plentiful supply of finely aged Cinnabons. The thing about Cinnabons is that they tend to be addictive. Some keen-eyed customers deep in the throngs of their addiction knew that if their timing was right, they might be able to score a free box (those people could care less about how old they were). They would loiter in the mall, lurking in the shadows until after it closed, then stroll up and speak slyly, “Hey man, you got any boxes of Cinnabons you are throwing out?” For the most part, we sent those people on their way, but if you were a mall insider, things were different. 

After the mall closed, there was an entire underground economy that sprung to life; this was the Wonderland. All manner of goods and commodities were traded in those crucial after-hours twilight when the doors were locked and the straggler customers were ushered on their way, but before all of the employees had left for the night. Sam Goody and Musicland had their tapes and CDs on lockdown, and most retail clothing chains were impenetrable fortresses, but the small businesses had more leeway. The folks who owned the hippie store were always up for trading, along with the pet store as well. Other than Chick-fil-a, most of the other food places were keen to trade. The majority of it was trivial and respectful to the business owners if they were not involved directly. 

The currency by which this commerce took place were slightly hardened Cinnabons. They were traded like large poker chips, handed back and forth across the floor of the mall. They found their way far beyond the hands of Cinnabon employees, but that also made us keenly aware of exactly what was going down throughout the mall. Tangibly, the most I ever had to show for it was free food from participating joints when I was too broke to support my munchies and some awesome fish for my aquarium (every teenage stoner needs a rad aquarium). But intangibly there was so much more—we were part of a secret society, one that was predicated on hours of mind-numbing, soul-crushing, ‘90s-era mall retail work. 

That shared misery created a bond within our secret society, one that you could express with nothing more than a knowing glance in-passing. Within the white tile walls of Cinnabon we were a tightknit group as well. There isn’t a person that I didn’t get along with and I’m still friends with some of them two decades later. As the current owner of a small business looking back, Marcy was a great manager; she set a friendly and fun tone, instilled loyalty and good work ethic in us, and kicked us in the ass when we deserved it. 

Eventually, I moved on from Cinnabon. Specifically, just down-mall to the T-shirt cart. It was a solo-gig that gave up the shared misery and comradery of Cinnabon for a director’s-folding-chair to sit in and the conspicuous absence of cinnamon odor on all of my clothes. The woman that owned the T-shirt cart wasn’t down with afterhours trading, and I honored her wishes. As such, I eventually drifted out of the secret society. Coming of age, I had a few more tumultuous years ahead of me, but by my early twenties, I’d cleaned up my act enough to get into flight school and leave Columbia, Maryland. I loaded up all of my humble belongings into my “hardbody” 1993 Nissan truck and headed west to fulfill my destiny, sadly the aquarium didn’t make it.

Two decades later, I can still smell the siren’s call of the Columbia Mall Cinnabon, disturbingly resurrecting it on command. I can also still roll cinnamon buns (careful, not trying to get sued…) and fold T-shirts with alarming precision, but I choose to reserve the former for special occasions. I make it to the Mall in Columbia occasionally when I visit, but like everything else in the world, it is not the same as it was in the 1990s. As much as I detested working at the Columbia Mall, I’m grateful to have done so. The years that followed were dark and formative ones, but I emerged from them with an insatiable drive to pursue a life that I would have never dreamed of back when I was strolling into the Columbia Mall with nothing better to do.