Lifestyle

5 Demolished S’pore Shopping Centres That Completed All 90s Kids’ Childhood

2018-04-15 , 10:20 am

Last Updated on 2021-11-06 , 3:25 pm

The 1990s and early 2000s were, if I may say, the best period in Singapore: people talk face-to-face instead of via Facebook, and relationships were formed in shopping malls instead of WhatsApp.

But unfortunately, with Singapore’s rapid development, some of the malls that we fondly remember have either been demolished or revamped. Before they vanish from our memories, let’s just take a trip back in time to revisit these malls, shall we?

Ginza Plaza

Maybe you can call it Ginna Plaza instead since most ginnas (kids) would go there after school for two hours of Counterstrike. Inaccessible to people living elsewhere but very accessible to people living in the west (it’s, like, there’s a bus everywhere to reach there), it was filled with mainly lan shops.

That competitiveness led to the competitive price of like $2 per hour in certain shops, with some shop having their own “clans” for competitions. Little do these kids know that a few years later, they’ll hate holding a rifle (NS, Bro, NS).

Now, it has been redeveloped into West Coast Plaza—a complete 360-degree turn of what it used to be. Ginza Plaza has got lan shops, lan shops and more lan shops, while West Coast Plaza has got restaurants, restaurants and more restaurants.

Specialists’ Shopping Centre

Long, long ago (actually not that long lah), Somerset MRT Station is just like Jurong East MRT Station—it’s not directly linked to malls nearby. So, in order to find a place to sit down and wait for our friends who were never on time, we just went to a nearby mall and waited; and Specialists Shopping Centre was one of them.

King Albert Park

Okay, maybe it’s not exactly a full-fledged shopping mall since it only comprised a few retail outlets, but it sure has memories that almost all students in the west have built upon. It’s so popular, there’s even a commercial filmed there that is equally popular.

Jurong East Entertainment Centre

If you live in the west, you’ll have been there before. It’s not just a shopping centre: it’s an icon for all people living in the west. Unlike other malls, this mall is overcrowded only from about 2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.—that’s when students from neighbouring schools come together to the large hangout area to study, make new friends and get into fights.

If you don’t understand what a “large hangout area” is, here’s some explanation: It’s a mall that has only a few shops but filled with more tables and chairs. Yeah, we know it’s weird, too. That’s why it’s called “entertainment centre”, bodoh.

Old Jurong Point

The new Jurong Point is crowded, noisy and too “Orchard”. Long, long ago, Jurong Point was the Bugis of Jurong—packed with teenage boys with their sharp combs and teenage girls with their rebond hair. The stairways are popular for young gangsters to recruit new members, too. Now? It’s just another shopping mall out of the six million shopping malls in Jurong.