Lloyd Center

Lloyd Center is a mall in Portland, Oregon. The big chains left. The rents dropped. And into those empty storefronts came something nobody planned: tabletop gaming stores, card traders, comic shops, a pinball museum, a lightsaber forge, a synth lending library. Underground cultures that usually exist in basements and back rooms, suddenly sharing space in the wide-open corridors of a half-empty mall.

It's beautiful. It's open and accepting in a way that feels rare. We've seen a queer insect-themed drag show. We've seen figure skaters walking through the corridors in full costume to get boba. We've seen furries holding hands in a Barnes & Noble. All these passionate, specific communities of people, right next to each other, visible to anyone who wanders past. Subcultures crystallizing in public.

It's also necessarily short-lived. The low rents that made all of this possible only exist because the mall is slated for demolition. A pinball museum can charge $8 all-day and a Star Wars experience can get built for under $2,000 because the rents are low enough to allow it. But rents that low can never compete with what the land is worth as housing. The nearing destruction is what created the opening, and it's what will close it.

The first time I walked into Lloyd Center with my baby daughter Indigo, she caught sight of the skaters flying around the ice rink and let out a wow. That one word set the stage for every visit since. All the wows we'd experience wandering through this place together. Seeing it through her eyes helped me see the awe in it. This site is a snapshot of that experience, before it's gone.

If you're in Portland, go. Enjoy it whilst it lasts. And if you can't make it, look around here. Start with the stores.