With your skills, I would look around for a friend who works at a store that might be hiring and see if you can get in easily on their coat tails. I remember my first job back in that previous century you refer to was from a store owned by a friend of a friend of my parents. Just update that by looking for people you know who already work retail to see if they're hiring, etc. Then when you walk in wherever (often there's a "corporate" hiring thing and they assign you to the store these days I think, not all stores have their own employment departments anymore?) you can say, "Joe works for you all and I would like to too." Just make sure any friend is well liked, LOL.

But if you want to target a particular shopping center near you, I'd go online and find those stores' site or the Mall's site, etc. and learn all you can about who might be hiring and how and if there's any online applying possible, that sort of thing -- get an idea of types of stores and where you might like to work more/less, etc.