After collecting dust for almost 15 years, there's suddenly a lot of activity going on at Northridge Mall. Last week, there was news that William Penzey, owner of Penzey's Spices, will transfer ownership of the former Boston Store at Northridge to the City of Milwaukee for potential redevelopment into light industrial space. And now there's a YouTube star rolling around its normally vacant halls.
YouTuber Casey Neistat posted a video yesterday showing the viral celebrity jetting to Milwaukee (for the first time) and then jetting around the former shopping mall's desolate aisles, offices and movie theater on his electric skateboard with his film crew, scoping out the venue for his now annual Samsung-sponsored holiday movie.
Last year's edition – also filmed with help from Samsung – was something called "Human Flying Drone," in which Neistat and his crew built a drone that could pick up a person. He then used this technological marvel to snowboard.
For his next extravagant holiday video, Neistat claims he wants to "take it a little further" – and for that, he will need a shopping mall, preferably a big, abandoned one. And they don't get much bigger and more abandoned than Milwaukee's Northridge Mall, currently dormant while owned by the Chinese U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group.
What the video concept is and if Northridge Mall is the final site is still unknown; using gallons of qualifiers, Neistat notes that they need to get the space up to code, make sure it's safe to shoot there and actually plan the shoot, while the end title card warns that it's "still not 100 percent that it's gonna happen." But Neistat seems like a kid in a candy shop (albeit a very empty candy shop) during the video, enthusiastically calling the open space "the childhood fantasy" and claiming it's the place they're going to shoot. So stay tuned.
In the meantime, enjoy this behind the scenes footage of dudes zipping around Northridge Mall, finding abandoned hallways, movie theaters and even a floppy disk. (what other wonders might this Milwaukee relic hold!?). And hope that all this newfound excitement inspires the Chinese U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group that owns the mall to actually do something with it.
As much as it is a gigantic cliché to say that one has always had a passion for film, Matt Mueller has always had a passion for film. Whether it was bringing in the latest movie reviews for his first grade show-and-tell or writing film reviews for the St. Norbert College Times as a high school student, Matt is way too obsessed with movies for his own good.
When he's not writing about the latest blockbuster or talking much too glowingly about "Piranha 3D," Matt can probably be found watching literally any sport (minus cricket) or working at - get this - a local movie theater. Or watching a movie. Yeah, he's probably watching a movie.
