Paul Bunyan Mall — Local services in Bemidji

Right now this mall is a joke. Women's clothing and shoes. A bunch of empty stores. The dollar store isn't a dollar store. At least 4, if not more, of the stores that are there cater to teens and college age patrons. If you are big and tall or petite, short, or too fat you won't find clothes to fit you. JCPenney's is OK, and there's Herbergers and the new Khols which are a little pricier and good luck trying to find help to find an item at any of them. There is an arcade, but this mall just isn't a place for youth to hang out. Boring. No stores selling music or video games or gadgets or electronics. Not even a book store. If you're socially conscious you can go to JoAnn's Fabric, if not then you can go down to...

I have a history with the mall.

It's gotten bigger since the last time I was there back in the Stranger Things days, all the stores are different, the flow is different, but it's a mall.

There is a pretty cool kid play-space, definitely in the single-digit category. It's a nice feature, kudos to who made that happen.

The stores are an interesting mix. There are the usual mall anchors, interspersed with a couple of specialty shops. If you're a mall-browser, they're worth checking out.

But it's a mall, and ultimately I am mostly focused on single-purpose stores that have tools and manly stuff...

There's a few things I dont like here. The selection for shopping isn't all that great. Its mostly just clothing and attire stores. There is no entertainment stores for media anymore (cds, dvds, blu rays). The other thing I don't like is they ban guns in the premises. As a firm pro gun citizen I really feel open and unprotected here by not being able to arm myself wherever I am. In light of the recent shooting incidents over the past years is good law abiding citizens should be able to have the option to carry wherever with the...