I spent about six hours wandering around the Palisades Mall yesterday, and based on empirical evidence, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet you did too.

From the Wikipedia: Victor Gruen

Architect Victor Gruen was born Viktor David Grünbaum in Vienna, but changed his name when he emigrated to the United States in 1938. He didn’t do anything particularly interesting until the mid-1950s, when he designed the first surburban open-air mall outside of Detroit, then the first enclosed mall in the U.S. in Edina, Minnesota.

For this, Gruen’s name is given to “The Gruen Effect” or “The Gruen Transfer,” the experience a shopper has when he enters a mall, becomes disoriented, forgets what he came for, and ends up ambling around the mall looking at shiny things in store windows.

That’s intentional. Gruen himself would, later in life, speak out against intentionally manipulative architecture, but his name is now inextricably linked to it. Shopping-mall designers want you to get lost in their creations, kind of like how casino designers want you to have no idea what time of day it is. The end is the same: You keep spending money.

For a shopper — even one familiar with the mall in question — it takes an inordinate amount of will power to enter the mall focused on a single purchase, make that purchase and leave without being distracted by something at some other store. Often, a mall will have nooks and crannies that force you to look directly at other stores, rather than present an unobstructed view straight down any hall.

Note that in most malls, you can’t see an exit from any of the main shopping areas. It’s never just a long hall with stores on both sides and a big door at the end. That would make it too easy to escape.

The most downright Gruenizing mall I’ve ever been to is the hilarious Mall of America outside Minneapolis. It’s a complete maze, and it’s got like seven Orange Julii. And an amusement park. And an aquarium. I spent a full day there once in lieu of actually checking out Minneapolis.

The funniest instance of the Gruen transfer, of course, occurs in the movie Blues Brothers, when Jake and Elwood drive into the Dixie Square Mall while fleeing from cops, then, in the midst of a high-speed pursuit, become taken with all the shopping options.

“This place has got everything.”

Gets me every time.

I’m not saying the Gruen effect is a bad thing, of course. It just is what it is. I’m from Long Island, so I’m contractually obligated to like shopping malls, even if it’s more of a grotesque fascination. It’s just funny to me to hear people say things like, “Oh, that mall sucks so much, I always get lost there,” when, in fact, that means the mall has done its job.