Krista Catwood, also known by the stage name Vera Mysteria, can be found at the Lloyd Center mall every Sunday leading Portlanders in a group workout. But the exercises aren’t done on machines and do not take place in a retail space — instead, they’re done throughout the entire mall. As first reported in The Oregonian/OregonLive, Catwood, armed with a neon track suit and a Bluetooth speaker, leads a group ranging from ages 8 to 80 on a power walk throughout the mall with ’80s music blasting behind them. The group is known as the Food Court 5000. It started off with a group of eight that has now grown to upwards of 70 people. Catwood joins us to share why she started the Food Court 5000 and more.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. I doubt that there’s a mall anywhere in America quite like Portland’s Lloyd Center right now. In the last few years, it’s lost most of its anchor tenants and tons of smaller stores have closed. But the mall is still alive, and it’s turned to a much more local and much weirder place. In recent years at the Lloyd Center, I’ve seen a Samuel Beckett play at a former Victoria’s Secret. I’ve been to a Trackers summer camp where kids practiced archery and fire starting in a wild, beautifully post-apocalyptic scene in what had been the basement of the old Marshalls.
One thing I have not done yet, but is an option, is the weekly Sunday mall walk led by Krista Catwood, who also goes by the stage name Vera Mysteria. As first reported in The Oregonian, Catwood has created the Food Court 5000. It is an ‘80s themed music-filled neon romp through the mall. Krista Catwood joins me now to talk about it. Welcome to the show.
Krista Catwood: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: All right, so what exactly is the Food Court 5000?
Catwood: So the Food 5000, like you mentioned, is a weekly retro mall walking group. It’s free. Anybody can join. And we meet up at the food court at Lloyd’s Center Mall. We start at the top, we do a lap around the top, the middle, bottom floor, then do it all over again. It’s 3.5 miles. So music is blaring, outfits are highly encouraged but not required. We’ve got folks dressed to the nines from 8 years old to 80 years old, like a neon wacky train chugging through the mall.
Miller: Why did you start this?
Catwood: I needed to. Honestly, I hate working out and I think one thing that we all universally agree on is that body movement is important. Exercising is important and I just cannot get motivated to do it. I have a long history of performing at events, so I said, OK, if I’m gonna work out, how am I going to get motivated to do it? I decided it needed to feel like an event. There needs to be costumes involved, it needs to be ridiculous and I wanted some sort of other people there so there’s accountability. And I flashed back on way back in the day when I used to work at Bridgeport Village and in the Washington Square Mall, seeing the mall walkers circle up in front of the shop that I worked at. I said, that’s it. That is absolutely what it needs to be.
Miller: What do you remember from watching those mall walkers? When was this?
Catwood: This was in, I would say like 2015-ish.
Miller: OK, so not that long ago.
Catwood: Not that long ago. What I remember … this specific group, there were two. There was a group of moms that would come with their strollers and they would circle up and do funny stretches in front of the shop. And then there was the older folks, who were 60-plus, mostly retirees who were coming through early in the morning. I remember laughing and thinking, that’s ridiculous. But as it turns out, ridiculous is one of my favorite things. So it made sense.
Miller: It’s funny how it didn’t even take that long for something you thought was ridiculous to turn into something that you loved doing.
Catwood: No, I love ridiculous things. My whole life has been quite involved around it.
Miller: Oh, ridiculous was good.
Catwood: It’s good ridiculous, yeah. And that’s the thing I feel like I end up saying about the mall walk a lot whenever I’m talking about it. I’m like, it’s stupid, stupid fun. You can’t be in a bad mood when you’re going on a mall walk and you’re surrounded by other people who are just full of joy and silly. It feels great.
Miller: How many people were at the very first one?
Catwood: We had about eight people at the first walk. Most of them were my friends. So when I decided that I thought this was an idea to do the mall walk, I sort of put it out there on Instagram and said, “who would do this with me?” And I had a bunch of people say they wanted to do it, but eight showed up. And then it just kept growing from there and we had about 50 people at our last walk.
Miller: Do people ever join you who are actually just at the mall for other reasons?
Catwood: One thousand percent. And I always try to sort of rope people in anyway. We have some rules – I’ll go over them later – for the Food Court 5000. One of them is that we wave at absolutely everybody. And so when I’m walking past people and they look like, I call them mall walkers in the wild. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, are you mall walking? Do you want to come join us?” So I try to rope them in.
We get teenagers who join us thinking they’re being funny, and they end up loving it and enjoying themselves. We get moms who are there with their strollers and pushing the strollers that end up joining in. And we have a lot of people who’ll pull one of us aside and say, “What’s going on? What are you guys doing?” And then they end up joining in subsequent weeks.
Miller: Alright, you said that you have rules.
Catwood: We do have rules.
Miller: One of them is you have to wave at every single person you go by.
Catwood: Absolutely.
Miller: It’s a lot of waving.
Catwood: It’s a lot of waving, but it’s fun. If you think about the psychology of smiling, it’s like science has proven if you smile, you feel better. It releases all these beautiful things in your brain. So as we’re walking along, we’re waving at the shop owners, we’re waving at unsuspecting mall patrons, we’re waving at kids, we’re cheering on the kids as they’re sliding down the slide in the play area. It just makes you feel good. And it’s fun to watch people get surprised at what’s going on and the look on their face. And most of the time, it’s a good surprise.
Miller: What are the other rules?
Catwood: OK, so you have to wave at everybody. The other rule is that when you are mall walking, you have to pump your arms like this. Because otherwise, if you’re not pumping your arms like this, you’re not mall walking, you’re just walking in the mall. So you have to show that you are an official mall walker. The other rule is that you have to listen to your body. I say I may look like a professional, but I’m not. So being the boss of your own body is crucial. One of the beautiful things about mall walking is anybody can do it, right?
We’ve got people who use assisted mobility devices who go on our mall walks. We have people who are in wheelchairs who go on our mall walks. We have people who are just out of surgery. I am not responsible for that, we are all responsible for ourselves. So that means if you need to take a break and sit down, if you want to relax in a massage chair, if you want to stop and go get an Auntie Anne’s you can, no one’s gonna judge you. So listening to your body, that’s the other one.
Miller: I mentioned that there’s a real ‘80s theme in this fashion-wise. Why?
Catwood: Because like I said, I personally need a costume to get really motivated to show up. It helps me to get in the zone. It’s like my mall walking uniform and it creates an excitement. It creates this event. It’s something to look forward to. You can spend the week looking for that perfect outfit. So for me it’s a major motivator, for a lot of people it’s a motivator. And it’s fun for people to start thinking about it. It gets you in the zone of party and fun.
Miller: Do you have a standard playlist or does it change?
Catwood: I have a massive playlist. So I have a long history and love of music. I’ve DJed at an oldies radio station. I used to DJ around town, so I have about a four hour playlist that I’m always adding to that goes on shuffle when we’re out there.
Miller: I described some of my own experiences at the mall in recent years. I also spent, recently, at least a half an hour with my kids playing keyboards and pianos in this one storefront. They offer piano lessons, but they weren’t happening at that time. It was quiet and the super nice piano teacher just let my kids and a friend of theirs just hang out for a half an hour in this piano place.
What’s your experience of the mall in recent years? I mean, what’s your version of the Lloyd Center?
Catwood: So I think the Lloyd Center is in a magical, very, very, very special era that is totally unique to her. It’s a state of transition.
Miller: She’s definitely a she.
Catwood: In my head, she’s a she. I call her she. I don’t know how she identifies, but we’ll call her she.
Miller: Her name is Lloyd.
Catwood: Her name is Lloyd and she, especially because … like you mentioned earlier, the anchor stores are largely gone. It’s filled with nonprofits, local businesses. There’s very few chains left. There’s lots of empty space that you can rent for about $350 for the whole day and hold events there.
So that means there’s all of the space and room to expand. And it’s changed. It’s evolved into a more of a community center focused mindset/feel vibe, to where, since we started the walks, I now know almost most of the shop owners and we all support each other. And it just feels like a third space that’s accessible for whoever really wants to get in there. That’s really unique.
Miller: Whoever wants to. When you started this, did you call up the folks who run the place now and say, hey, I want to start this thing, or did you just show up?
Catwood: That would have been very professional of me, but I didn’t really. [Laughs] I just went in there. So I tried to reach out, I think, through the info website, email. I didn’t hear anything back, but I just said screw it, I’m going to do it anyway. So I did. Since then, they support all of my posts and repost things, and I think are really thrilled. But I honestly can say I’ve never sat down and had a discussion with mall management there.
Miller: I mean, that honestly makes sense to me because there does seem to be something sort of anarchic about the Lloyd Center right now, which is part of its charm. It seems, as I said in my intro, I’d be surprised if there’s a mall that’s quite like it anywhere right now.
Catwood: I would agree with that. And I would also agree with the fact that mall walking can happen in any community across the country, because there’s lots of malls in various stages of growth and I don’t want to say decay but kind of decline, right? So there are places that I think are in similar boats, but I don’t think it has the same community mindset that the Lloyd Center does.
When we meet up at the food court, there’s the Portland Zine meet up that meets there too. There’s a group of people that go and they play Beyblades and have Beyblade battles. There’s people that meet there and do Pokemon Go and wander around. So you’ve got all of these different groups who are using it as a very active third space. And I would argue there’s no other place like it.
Miller: Has doing this walk for five months now changed the way you think about what malls can or should be?
Catwood: Absolutely. I mean, I’m a big fan of thrifting and reduce, reuse and recycle, and I feel like we’ve got these giant monstrosities of buildings that, as a country, we’re struggling to deal with. And I have admittedly started nerding out about all the different ways that people are trying to reuse the spaces. I don’t know of anyone who’s been able to do it very successfully, like they’ve been trying to use it for housing, they’ve been trying to use them for medical offices or colleges.
I think we need to think of how to rebirth these spaces as community spaces and get rid of this old dead narrative that they’re dead. I’m tired of hearing that the Lloyd Center is dead. It’s not dead. It’s like, go on a walk with us on a Sunday and tell me it’s dead. It’s not.
Miller: Is it your hope then that it doesn’t get torn down to be turned into some other new thing? You want it to stay the way it is and just get more populated?
Catwood: I think the evolution is already sort of happening, right? Nordstrom has gone down and is going to be replaced with a music venue. I think that what I would like to see is a combination of the two. I know the company that has it is, that’s currently not the plan, but I also haven’t seen an active timeline of what that change looks like. In the meantime, and again that’s what makes it really special is we don’t know how long we have in that space. So we get to really try to capitalize on it.
Miller: Interesting, so is that part of the excitement for you, that you don’t know how long this current version of the Lloyd Center will exist?
Catwood: I mean, it’s part of the joy in it for me, because I don’t know how long it’s going to be able to look this one particular way. I am super passionate about mall walking in general, surprising folks and showing up in unpredictable ways. So if the Lloyd Center should cease to exist in the way that it does now, I might show up at IKEA. I might show up at your Safeway. I’ll find something.
Miller: It was a pleasure. Krista Catwood, thanks very much. It was really fun.
Catwood: Thank you so much for having me.
Miller: That’s Krista Catwood who leads a walk in Portland’s Lloyd Center for now – until she can’t – every Sunday morning at 11 a.m. They meet in the food court.
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