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MAULED
April 27, 2005
Weirdly enough, the original
idea for shopping malls was
to act as 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. "Henry David Thoreau Shopping Mall"?
A "Karl Marx Shopping Mall"?
The department stores
had marble benches (A "Jesus Christ
outside of them, where Savings and Loan"?)
teenage kids would hang
around bumming cigarettes
from each other.
Irritating characters One day some company
with clipboards would was giving away
pretend to be doing those little metal
political surveys, before clicker gadgets as
revealing they were a promotional gambit.
Hare Krishna converts.
Hundreds of people
In the center of the were walking around
mall was often a strange that day going
product demo, clickity-clicky.
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 a chain bookstore
The old that did it in:
two-bit dimestore
in the center The guy who ran it had a
("McCrory's") little display cabinet of
disappeared. (A victim schrimshaw out front.
of arson, It had been there for ages.
apparently.)
The islands of Somewhere along the way,
jungle plants it became grossly illegal
growing to sell this stuff, and
throughout the once he was busted for it
hallways got the store disappeared.
progressively In retrospect:
dusty. indoor trees as
architectual
features were
The little not the most
"international brilliant idea
store" where
I used to buy
canolis faded
away at some The single screen movie
point. 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 And I did indeed
when I was a kid. like this place.
There are a few differences I used to go out of
between that shopping mall my way to walk
now, and ones thousands of through the place...
miles away in California, (almost always on my
but not very many. way to the used
books/comic-book
RANDOM_ENCOUNTER place another
mile down the road).
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:
if you're living in a bleak
area it doesn't take much
for something to stand out
by contrast.
In a town with real book
stores, something like a
"Borders" is a threat to the
character of the town; but
if you're living in some
place that has no character
to begin with, then even a
far worse bookstore chain
can 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.
It turns out that the old
"Walt Whitman" has been
featured at the "Malls of
America" site:
[ref]
[ref]
What it looks like now:
[ref]
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