Two new businesses are open at Briarwood and one of them is the locally owned, independent Sock World, selling wildly colorful socks and leggings. At the moment, they’re mostly for women, but eventually the store hopes to grow its men’s and children’s inventory. Situated in a prime corner where the Macy’s wing meets the Sears wing, the business is a partnership of Hitesh Patel, Vandan Patel, and two others. “Forty percent of people love socks. We’ve done the surveys. I love socks myself, by the way,” says the manager, who prefers not to give his name. “I’m not important, but I know this is what the owners would say.” (The owners were invited to weigh in themselves, but by press time we hadn’t heard from them.)

Zumiez took the old Brookstone gadget store in the Von Maur corridor. It’s a “specialty retailer of action sports related apparel, footwear, accessories and hard goods, focusing on skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, motocross and BMX for young men and women,” says its website. Zumiez operates about 600 stores, some of them under the Blue Tomato brand. And Dry Goods, a new women’s clothing chain owned by Von Maur, will open in early November.

When the late Al Taubman opened Briarwood in 1973, its public spaces had a majestic, museum-like spareness. But even before its sale to Simon Malls in 2007 every inch had been turned into revenue-generating space, from cars parked in the aisles to advertising banners overhead.

We don’t track the individual openings and closings of the mall’s many carts and kiosks, but in October the center aisles were particularly lively. Phone cases, of course, have long been the mainstay of the kiosks here–especially useful if you don’t want to wait at the perpetually mobbed Apple store. A young man with a heavy accent demonstrated what seemed to be a remarkable hair appliance–properly applied, it could curl or straighten, and the effect “lasts up to three days,” he insisted. His accent became impenetrable when it got to the bottom line: how much money do you have to part with to get the exact equipment and product he is demonstrating? It remained a mystery.

Next to the hair demonstration, a man gracefully swooped around on a Future X Board, a $600 contraption like a Segway without a handle or a battery-powered skateboard. You can buy one, but you can’t test drive them yourself, he says, for liability reasons.

Sock World, 332-1718. sockworldboutique.com

Zumiez, 761-1941. zumiez.com