It was a hot day, so I was at Chico Mall, getting in my daily walk. As I passed by one of the stalls in the middle of the aisle, a vendor called out to me: "You dropped something," she said. I looked down. "Your smile," she added. I scowled at her.

Unless you're a teenager, there's nothing at the mall to make you smile. The only places I go to buy things there are the anchor stores -- all two of them.

The other mall stores sell only clothes, personal care products, jewelry, tacky gifts, computer games and electronics.

The mall experienced a milestone recently, when the last local business, a shoe repair store, vacated its cubbyhole next to a back entrance. When the mall opened 20 years ago, this store occupied several times the space it did in its final days.

If I were not a flaneur -- who walks everywhere and sees everything -- I would have concluded that the shoe repair store went out of business. But it has moved to a strip mall on Mangrove Avenue. I hope it prospers at its new location.

The mall's parent company recently filed for bankruptcy protection. I don't know what the will mean for the mall. I know that even before this step was announced, the mall was planning to at least partly reinvent itself by adding a section intended to look more like a traditional downtown.

I wonder if that would work. For one thing, we already have a downtown. For another thing, I believe a downtown-like shopping area is part of the plans for Meriam Park, which will be built just a few blocks from the mall. For a final thing, downtowns are struggling these days. They succeed only when they can offer specialty goods and services.

The only local retailing concept that seems to be thriving these days is the big box store, so perhaps the mall will be razed and replaced with warehouses containing acres and acres of merchandise.

If that were to happen, I would miss the mall and what it once represented: the late 20th-century version of Main Street, where every shopper could pick and choose from a smorgasbord of stores and have an excellent chance of finding whatever it was they wanted or needed.