Food Court 5000
In the Media
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Interested in featuring the Food Court 5000? Want to book Vera for an appearance, pop-up walk, or glitter-fueled pep talk? We’d love to hear from you!
The Kelly Clarkson Show Mall Walks Through 30 Rock
Published: Sept 30, 2025
“Some people create joy, positivity, and connection just by being their own unique selves. This season, we are celebrating those people in a new segment called Life Well Lit.
My next guest is one of those people, y’all. She is the founder of Food Court 5000, a mall walking group in Portland, Oregon. It’s amazing. Each week they dress up, pump their arms, and spread joy while crisscrossing the mall. Please welcome Krista, everybody!” – Kelly Clarkson...watch in full
Mall walking with the ‘Food Court 5000’ at Lloyd Center
Published: Sept 30, 2025
By Bonnie Silkman | KPTV Good Day Oregon
"All right, Portland — dust off your Walkman and grab your favorite windbreaker, because we’re taking you on a serious throwback. Of course, it’s happening at the mall, where a local group is putting the power in power walking. They’re proving that community cardio — and plenty of 90s flair — never go out of style"....watch in full
Published: Aug 21, 2025
By Rachel McRady | PEOPLE
Cyn Major was struggling.
The 49-year-old woman living in Portland, Ore., had already been living with low vision — a condition that causes blurry vision — when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS).
“I just became this big couch potato because of the fatigue and the depression,” Major tells PEOPLE.
That’s when a friend sent her an Instagram post that changed her life. A newly formed mall walking club in the Portland area called the Food Court 5000 was meeting up at the Lloyd Center Mall on Sundays for a 1980s-themed walk open to people of all ages and physical ability levels...read more
‘We’re Retro-Fabulous Weirdos!’ Inside the Viral ’80s-Inspired Mall Walking Fitness Crew
Published: Aug 17, 2025
By Raquel Lekic | Woman's World
They say that sitting is the new smoking, and with that in mind, all anyone seems to be talking about is achieving their daily 10,000 steps—or, as it turns out, 7,000 per recent research! While sure, many find walking to be a therapeutic practice, others think of those recommended five miles as nothing more than a chore—but what if walking didn’t have to be that way? Enter mall walking. Mall walking is no new phenomenon, as you’ve likely seen an older pair briskly speed-walking around your local shopping center. However, a group of individuals in Oregon looking for a fun way to move their bodies have reinvented the wheel, forming a mall walking group that taps into the trends of the ’80s we love to look back on. Here, learn all about the “Food Court 5000.”...read more
This 80's-Inspired Mall Walking Group Is Redefining Fitness
Published: Jul 18, 2025
By Elise Solé | TODAY.com
Krista Catwood hates to exercise.
“Some people get an endorphin rush — I don’t and it feels miserable,” Catwood, a 43-year-old mom in Oregon, tells TODAY.com. “Exercise can border on suffering.”
As a drag and burlesque performer, Catwood says exercise should feel fun and silly. “There has to be a costume and accountability,” she says.
Enter “Food Court 5000,” an indoor walking group founded by Catwood for “mall walkers” and 1980s enthusiasts. Once a week, the group dresses in neon leggings and acid-washed denim to “power walk” a 3.5-loop around the Lloyd Center in Portland. While the point is fitness, mall walkers love the lively chatter, ample rest stations and post-workout snacks, like Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and bubble tea...read more
Food Court 5000 brings 1980s aerobic craze to mall walkers in Portland
Published: Jul 17, 2025
By Rolando Hernandez | OPB
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...read more
Food Court 5000: Portland’s neon-clad mall walkers take over Lloyd Center every Sunday
Published: Jul 02, 2025
By Samantha Swindler | The Oregonian/OregonLive
On a recent weekend morning, a blaze of neon cut through the air-conditioned halls of the Lloyd Center mall.
It’s a workout group led by a woman wearing a windbreaker jacket, a headset mic and a high ponytail. “Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves” plays from her Bluetooth speaker.
“Are those arms moving people?” she asks her followers. “Show off those guns!”...read more
The Food Court 5000 is the event of the millennium
Published: May 22, 2025
By Everyday Northwest | KOIN
Are you looking for a community with an appreciation of blasts from the past? Every Sunday at 11am, The Food Court 5000 struts, sweat, and brings some serious fun to the Lloyd Center Mall, meeting at the food court and walking over 3 miles with dozens of multi-generational mall walkers in their best retro fitness fashion.
We learned more about The Food Court 5000 from co-founder Vera Mysteria, Coach Steve, and Sister Melissa!...read more
Mall Walking Is Back, Lloyd Center Style
Published: May 22, 2025
By Rachel Saslow | Willamette Week
Mall rats, lace up. Your time has come again.
The time-honored tradition of mall walking—utilizing the long, climate-controlled corridors for fitness—is back. And since it’s at Lloyd Center, it looks a little weirder and cooler than one might expect.
Local performance artist Vera Mysteria started hosting Sunday morning mall walks last month. She goes all out in her early ‘90s best: Spandex leotard, high ponytail, scrunch socks, the works. Think Portland’s Richard Simmons, but without the fitness instructor certification. (“Yet!” she says.) And, to be clear, mall walking never really disappeared—Washington Square, for example, welcomes mall walkers every morning starting at 7 am—but it is decades past its cultural peak and therefore ripe for an ironic takeover.
Mysteria, 42, started organizing the “Food Court 5000” mall walks as a way to get herself moving....read more
