Last month, Kari mentioned a mall food court favorite called Hot Sam’s that is no longer around. This got us both waxing nostalgic in the comments section about others we miss, like Hot Dog on a Stick, Sbarro, and Gloria Jean’s Coffee Bean.
As a self-described former mallrat, I spent years working in malls during college – all in the Bay Area – and got to know the food courts pretty well. Kari mentioned Mrs. Fields, and while their cookies were good, I was a bigger fan of Blue Chip Cookies myself. She had never heard of them, which makes sense: they originated on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf in 1983. They were best known for their White Chocolate Macadamia cookies, which were made with Guittard white chocolate bars. Really good stuff.
Blue Chip was purchased by an Ohio-based company in 2005. Like many other mall-based chains, they closed most of their retail stores, shifting to an online sales model that focuses on corporate and holiday gifts. Business is apparently thriving. I had no idea they were still around until that conversation with Kari, but naturally, this gave me inspiration. I know I just wrote that you can never go home again, but I thought, maybe it’s possible to reignite a cherished part of your youth without making a physical journey. Only one way to find out: I’d order some Blue Chip cookies and see if they lived up to my fondest memories!
Memory is a fickle thing. We tend to romanticize the past, glossing over the bad parts. Billy Joel said it best: the good ole days weren’t always good/and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.
(He also said, “Wheel of Fortune”, Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide/Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz/Hypodermics on the shore, China’s under martial law/Rock and roller, cola wars, I can’t take it anymore, so take the Piano Man’s wisdom with a grain of salt.)
Which is why I began to second-guess my decision to order them. What if the cookies weren’t as good as I remembered? How could they be, given that I used to order them freshly baked and still warm? These were being shipped via UPS. But by then, it was too late to cancel.
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” I said to myself, resigned to letting the chocolate chips fall where they may.
In the end, all my worries were for naught. Were the cookies as good as I remembered? It’s hard to say, because quite frankly, I don’t remember what they tasted like. But I will say, they were good. Very good, actually. Biting into my go-to white chocolate macadamia cookie for the first time in 30 years instantly transported me back to the golden age of Camelot Music. I felt like I was back in college again!
…and then I got up from my recliner and my back seized up for a few seconds with the strain of rising and I glanced outside and saw some kid on the lawn and I yelled at him to get off and so I knew I most certainly was not back in college again.
Good thing, though. Those mall jobs barely paid minimum wage. Even with inflation and the cost of shipping, I can much more easily afford Blue Chip cookies these days.
Since I’ve embarked upon this little stroll down The California Years of my Memory Lane, just for kicks, I looked up how much a one-bedroom apartment rents for in the San Jose complex where I first lived after flying the coop. The same floor plan, on the same floor, now costs $3,070/month. For 780 square feet, which isn’t much bigger than a studio.
Holy crap. That’s why you can never go home again. You can’t afford the rent! Unless you’re a Silicon Valley exec, I suppose. I don’t know how we pulled it off in 1992. Rent was a lot lower back then, of course, but it still wasn’t cheap. And that’s why I left California in 1994: I knew I’d forever struggle to simply make ends meet.
Granted, the complex is nice…
But not $3,000 a month nice. Or even $800 a month nice, or however much we paid, 30 years ago.
What can I say? I always did enjoy the finer things in life. Or at least I used to. No more champagne wishes and caviar dreams for me. College Mark would never in a million years believe Middle Age Mark would one day own a John Deere lawn tractor and call a small Wisconsin town home.
I guess that means I now have Brandy Old Fashioned wishes and cheese curd dreams.
Mark My Words 
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