[PREV - CHERRY] [TOP]
April 27, 2005
Weirdly enough, the original
idea for shopping malls was
to be community centers.
A European architect
wanted to bring something
like a "town square" to He was somewhat
suburban American life. disappointed in GRUEN_HILLS_OF_EARTH
the actual results.
When I was a kid on
Long Island, the Walt Yes: the "Walt Whitman Shopping Mall".
Whitman Shopping Mall
actually *did* function I wonder if there's a
a little like this. "Thoreau Shopping Mall"?
A "Karl Marx Shopping Mall"?
The department stores
had marble benches (A Jesus
outside of them, where Christ S&L?)
teenage kids would hang
around bumming cigarettes
from each other. One day some company
was giving away
Irritating characters those little metal
with clipboards would clicker gadgets as
pretend to be doing a promotional gambit.
political surveys, before
revealing they were Hundreds of people
Hare Krishna converts. were walking around
that day going
In the center of the *clickity-clicky*.
mall was often a strange
product demo,
side-show attraction,
or giveaway contest.
Win a new Chevy Impaler!
See the mysterious frozen missing link!
With these new Conservatator inserts,
you can save water and still get
The Good Flush.
Then things started to change.
The small paperback
bookstore was driven Peculiarly enough,
out of business... it wasn't competition
from the chain bookstore
The "McCrory's" a that did it in:
two-bit dimestore
of a department For ages, the guy who ran
store disappeared. (A victim it had a little display
of arson, cabinet of schrimshaw out
The islands of or so I'm front.
jungle plants told.)
growing Somewhere along the way,
throughout the it became grossly illegal
hallways got In retrospect: to sell this stuff, and
progressively indoor trees as once he was busted for it
dusty. architectual the store disappeared.
features were Heavy fines, perhaps?
The little not the most
"international brilliant idea
store" where
I used to buy
canolis faded
away at some The small single screen
point. movie theater went the way
of all such things as well.
Eventually the place (I once saw a quintuple feature
was closed for there: all five "Planet of the Apes"
remodeling, and when movies. My family wondered what had
it opened it was all happened to me.)
totally slick: wide
open, bright,
glistening tiled
hallways with
nothing but upscale
department stores.
The benches had disappeared.
You don't want people
loitering around do you?
Spend, spend, spend.
They also completely did
away with the dark jungle
ambience I liked so much when And I did indeed like this
I was a kid. shopping mall when I was a
kid.
There are a few differences
between that shopping mall On through my
now, and the one thousands teenage years I used
of miles away at Stanford, to go out of my way
but not very many. to walk through the
place... (usually on
my way to the used
books/comic-book
place another half
mile down the road).
RANDOM_ENCOUNTER
So I was very surprised
when I first heard
hipster-types sneering at
shopping malls, and talking
about how much they hate
them...
But that surprise is
a common pattern.
These things are relative,
and if you're living in
a bleak area it doesn't take
much for something to stand
out by contrast.
If you're in town with real
book stores, something like
a Borders is a threat to
the character of the town.
But if you're living
some place that has no
character, then even a
far worse bookstore
chain might seem like an
oasis of culture.
To someone raised in the
'burbs, a Starbucks might
seem a godsend, and the
people hanging out at
that one on King St
in San Francisco may have
no idea why I was giving
the place the finger when
I rode by on my bike the
other day.
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