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Mall rats, lace up. Your time has come again.
The time-honored tradition of mall walking—utilizing the long, climate-controlled corridors for fitness—is back. And since it’s at Lloyd Center, it looks a little weirder and cooler than one might expect.
Local performance artist Vera Mysteria started hosting Sunday morning mall walks last month. She goes all out in her early ‘90s best: Spandex leotard, high ponytail, scrunch socks, the works. Think Portland’s Richard Simmons, but without the fitness instructor certification. (“Yet!” she says.) And, to be clear, mall walking never really disappeared—Washington Square, for example, welcomes mall walkers every morning starting at 7 am—but it is decades past its cultural peak and therefore ripe for an ironic takeover.
Mysteria, 42, started organizing the “Food Court 5000” mall walks as a way to get herself moving.
“I hate working out with an extreme passion,” she says. “I need all the motivation possible to exercise because I will come up with a million excuses. I realized the only way I would do it was if it’s ridiculous if I could get other people to do it with me.”
She put feelers out on Instagram and got an enthusiastic response. The first mall walk drew 10 attendees, many of them Mysteria’s friends from Portland’s burlesque and drag scenes. Most of the outfits were over the top, but she welcomes attendees who don’t feel like dressing up, too. The whole point is removing barriers to exercise and community, she says.
For the past few years, Lloyd Center has welcomed a diverse and quirky lineup of tenants as national chains have left and independent artists and pop-ups have moved in. This Sunday, March 16, the mall-walkers will swing through the Spot Market, a small business and craft fair that sets up in Lloyd Center quarterly.
The walk takes place every Sunday for the foreseeable future—“until the wheels fall off or my hip breaks, whichever comes first,” Mysteria says—at 11 am. The group does two full laps around the mall, a three mile, 90-minute course.
Meet at the food court.
GO: Food Court 5000 Mall Walks at Lloyd Center, 2201 Lloyd Center, instagram.com/vera_mysteria/?hl=en. 11 am Sundays. Free.
