As a confused and despairing broke college dropout in the early ’90s, I found The Vineyard a source of reassurance. It was an Italian restaurant at the front of the Boulevard Mall. At the risk of gross misremembrance, I’ll let the dreamy, feely, associative part of my memory conjure a picture: I remember a cozy, natal, candle-flickering cocoon of geniality and generosity, steaming, ropy piles of pasta, and grape juleps that could magically induce me to make sudden, veering, disastrous romantic pronouncements to would-be girlfriends. Being broke, I could afford to eat at The Vineyard only rarely. That added another dimension to its allure: As an emblem of the Boulevard Mall itself, The Vineyard represented to me a portal to the consumer rites of middle-class American adulthood, a life phase in which eating at decent Italian restaurants was a key portfolio item of your identity. I always imagined the Boulevard Mall to be waiting for my official arrival. (In the fantasy, I wore blazers, I used the valet, I opened doors for my dates with balletic confidence. The closest I came to that arrival was when my mom took my broke ass to Sears for my birthday and bought me a cast-iron saucepan.)
I stumbled into some off-brand version of adulthood through other doors, and what of the Boulevard Mall? It did, too. What strange and wonderful things have happened to it! It seems stingy and unfair to murmur despondently about its decline as part of the larger story of the American shopping mall. It’s not exactly thriving, either. But it’s certainly becoming in a way that marks a distinct chapter of midtown. In its recent improvisations, the mall is consciously evolving into a family-oriented retail and entertainment complex that caters to its Hispanic and working-class neighborhood. It has become vigorously local in a way that malls — megalithic composites of chain stores — typically are not. The concourse to Galaxy Theatre is lined with portraits of Mexican cinema stars bearing short biographies in English and Spanish. The Chamango Mexican Snacks concession is constantly abuzz, as is the Christy Mexican Candy Shop. There are, of course, playlist standards: Old Navy, Hot Topic, Victoria’s Secret. But these aren’t as interesting as the Boulevard’s locally owned stores such as Sticks & Stones. It’s delightfully improbable: a fragrant and placid shop that sells all manner of crystals, candles, and sage sticks on the sincere premise of spiritual wellness. One of the clerks is named Mercy, and she is probably the only retail worker on the planet who can be said to emanate shamanic calm. Not far away, the Goodwill is bustling with bargain-hunters; the SeaQuest aquarium exhales oceanic damp. In a way, the mall is trying to sidestep its preordained history through feverish adaptation. It would require a psychic or a shaman to divine the future of the Boulevard Mall, but its current incarnation is its most expressively Las Vegas yet.