So I lived in Flemington as a kid before moving to Belgium at age 6, and personally I have fairly rose-colored memories of Liberty Village. Most striking, though, is that I remember it being *lively*. Recently, I visited the new Leesberg Outlets, and the replacement just seems so ... dead? empty? I don't know. Probably I just went there at a not-very-busy time. Still, I felt it lacked something that Liberty Village had.
Anyway, glad and surprised to see someone writing about Flemington! :)
I'm writing to you from Canada, where I grew up in small-town suburbia not far from the American border. Though we now have outlet malls and strip malls abound, especially around larger city centres, the first time I ever encountered anything like this was on a trip to Myrtle Beach as a tween. I remember finding it so odd - why would you put a mall outside? It was also unbearably hot, being June in the South, which pushed shoppers into air-conditioned storefronts every 30 feet or so. I still find them such odd spaces...retail oases in a sea of parking. The whole experience is so commercial, so clearly artificially constructed to extract maximum attention and profit from shoppers...and yet so many people I know subject themselves to the experience, particularly on vacation. Always thought them strange and uncanny.
So I lived in Flemington as a kid before moving to Belgium at age 6, and personally I have fairly rose-colored memories of Liberty Village. Most striking, though, is that I remember it being *lively*. Recently, I visited the new Leesberg Outlets, and the replacement just seems so ... dead? empty? I don't know. Probably I just went there at a not-very-busy time. Still, I felt it lacked something that Liberty Village had.
Anyway, glad and surprised to see someone writing about Flemington! :)
I'm writing to you from Canada, where I grew up in small-town suburbia not far from the American border. Though we now have outlet malls and strip malls abound, especially around larger city centres, the first time I ever encountered anything like this was on a trip to Myrtle Beach as a tween. I remember finding it so odd - why would you put a mall outside? It was also unbearably hot, being June in the South, which pushed shoppers into air-conditioned storefronts every 30 feet or so. I still find them such odd spaces...retail oases in a sea of parking. The whole experience is so commercial, so clearly artificially constructed to extract maximum attention and profit from shoppers...and yet so many people I know subject themselves to the experience, particularly on vacation. Always thought them strange and uncanny.