The Sad Mall and the Unfulfilling History of the Inside Joke

Everything in this blog is just my opinion, not fact. The views here are mine and not those of any organization, person, or sentient cat. If you take this seriously, that’s on you—proceed with caution and maybe a sense of humor.

(In the grand tradition of overthinking band names and existential food courts)

Let me tell you, coming up with a good band name is like trying to parallel park on a crowded street while everyone’s watching—you’ll probably end up embarrassed, angry, and possibly banned from owning a vehicle. Band names have vexed me for my entire life, starting with my high school debut as one of the masterminds behind Standing Shadows. The name screamed "moody sophistication," but the band screamed “Please, someone call their parents.”

We had one song, Twenty Dead Goldfish, a punk anthem for anyone who found suburban cornfields outside Chicago soul-crushingly banal. With poignant lyrics like “20 dead goldfish in my lawn / 20 dead goldfish all day long,” it was clear we were grappling with something heavy. Mainly, our lack of musical ability. Our keyboard player couldn’t play the keyboard. The bass player couldn’t play the bass. I couldn’t play my suspiciously cheap knockoff guitar (bought with my paper route money), and—naturally—we didn’t have a drummer. But we were united by one shared ambition: to yell thought-provoking lyrics while also failing to tune our instruments. It was art, people.

The College Years: An Odyssey in Mediocrity
Fast forward to college, where I discovered that you don’t actually need talent to join the pinnacle of the Chicago music scene—you just need a band name and a taco joint willing to tolerate you. Thus began the era of Boring Sunday, Bitter Thursday, and finally, Jerk Store.

We played at The Big Horse, which was a taco restaurant in the front and a music venue in the back—a setup designed for maximum disappointment. I honed many important life skills there, including how to extinguish a cigarette with my hand, a trick that would come in handy precisely zero times in adulthood. Our other stomping ground, Magoo’s Underground Lounge, was conveniently located near the first bar I drank at. I was 15. Chicago, oh yeah.

Naturally, I assumed we’d hit the big time. MTV. Global tours. Epic fame. None of these things happened. After five gigs (a grueling career by any standard), I retired. In reality, I was the guy writing all the songs (well one person wrote two other songs I thought were excellent), booking all the shows, and begging everyone to show up for practice. It turned out my bandmates weren’t exactly oozing commitment IMO, so I did what every great artist does when faced with adversity: I gave up.

Enter: The Sad Mall
Fast-forward 10 to 15 years. Life, as it tends to do, carried on, and I found myself working in an office building near a food court on the other side of the river—a place so profoundly depressing it could have served as the set for a dystopian sci-fi movie (or real-life U.S.A. today). This was The Sad Mall. Picture this: two stories of floor-to-ceiling brown ceramic tiles that screamed “1970s aesthetic with zero therapy.” The windows were tinted smoke-gray, so even on the most beautiful Chicago summer day, it looked like Mordor inside. It was bleak. It was oppressive. It was art.

The name “Sad Mall” didn’t come from the food court’s aura of existential dread, though. It was born during a coffee chat with two friends who shared my struggle with the eternal question: “What the heck is a good band name?” We tossed around ideas, but none of them stuck. Then, in a moment of pure inspiration, I casually suggested The Sad Mall. To my surprise, someone else liked it too. Suddenly, we weren’t just debating band names—we were dueling for intellectual property rights.

The modern-day equivalent of a Wild West standoff played out: we raced to godaddy.com to see who could claim the domain name first. Victory was mine. To this day, The Sad Mall is alive and well. By “alive and well,” I mean I'm still figuring it out, but at least I got (I could have used have there but this is a Chicago story) a name.

A Fitting Legacy
If you’re ever in Chicago and feel the need to experience pure, unfiltered sadness, you can still visit The Sad Mall at 201 N. Clark Street. By visit, I mean stand outside. These days, it looks abandoned or possibly stuck in a state of permanent construction. Honestly, I’m not sure if it ever came back to life after the pandemic. But let’s be real: that’s exactly how The Sad Mall should be—always slightly underwhelming, yet unforgettable.

And isn’t that what great band names are all about?