The Prospect Mall closes next Sunday (the cinema closes this weekend), and for many, it's good riddance. Most Milwaukeeans probably won't miss the dusty, dim "mall" with the funky smell -- but I certainly will. Growing up on Downer Avenue in the '70s and '80s, I spent a lot of time there, as scary as that may sound.

A friend compared the stagnant mall to a half-filled kids' swimming pool that sits in a yard for ages without getting dumped, and despite my nostalgia, she's right. The mall has a rather stale appearance -- and the space is undeniably prime real estate -- so the fact it's going to become something more usable is probably in the city's best interest.

In fact, it's amazing the ghostly mall has remained standing for as long as it has.

Although the Prospect Mall was never a bustling marketplace -- even back in the day it housed an oddball assortment of non-chain shops -- it was always a little slice of DIY (do-it-yourself) heaven. In the mid-'80s, Star Spin was one of my favorites, a punk rock-ish music and accessories store where I bought a pair of sunglasses that looked like a pink plastic headband with two black lenses.

In 1986, when "Top Gun" was playing on the main screen, I started working at the Prospect Mall Cinemas as a "vendette." I was 15 and earned the sub-minimum wage at the time, $2.90 an hour. My uniform included a tan polyester blouse, brown polyester wrap-around skirt and a brown speckled polyester neck scarf. It didn't matter if my hair was jet black or Bozo red or if I wore steel-toed Doc Martin boots -- as long as I donned my company-issued garb and didn't over-squirt the butter-flavored oil.

Clandestinely, I smoked Lucky Strikes in the mall bathroom, smooched with a polyester tuxedo-wearing boy in the projectionist's "box," and met my first true love at the Chocolate Factory. Before we attended Riverside High School's prom, I tanned a few times at Sun of Kenilworth, one of the few businesses to brave the Prospect Mall's lonely second floor.

Later, in the early '90s, my friend Bradley opened Saved By The Light and attempted to sell his wacky, recycled art in the large space just north of the cinema. Around the same time, I got my nose pierced at Gothic Body, and before going in, chug-a-lugged two gin and tonics at Thai Joe's.

So, as I sit on the Hooligan's patio across the street from the mall and write this, I raise my weiss glass to all that was the Prospect Mall -- from the massive selection of Betamax at Video Visions to double scoops of blue moon at the Chocolate Factory and every intriguing or fly-by-night venture in between, including Recycled Books & Records, Gothic Body, Thai Joe's, Star Spin, Sun of Kenilworth, Bangkok Orchid, Kosta's, The Country Store, Video Visions, La Petite France, Cherry Bomb, Blommer's, Prospect Mall Cinemas, Drama Crow, Saved By The Light, Gothic Gecko, Collectors Unlimited and all the others that I will someday tell my sons about as we stand on the corner of Prospect and Ivanhoe -- hopefully not in front of a Starbucks.