[PREV - HARAJUKU_FACE]    [TOP]

NEW_PEOPLE

                                               March 20, 2014

  The New People location in                      CHERRY
  San Francisco's Japantown...

     A friend of mine commented that the
     place seemed interesting, but a
     bit unfocused in it's purpose.
     I realized that he didn't quite get
     what they were trying to do, and
     tried to explain... belatedly realizing
     that there was a bunch of things to           J_MAZE
     go in to--


  Anyway:  "The New People" building
  in Japantown is an operation run
  by VizMedia-- it's something like       Viz is the US distributor of
  a five level space that has:            much otaku-fodder, and (if I've
  (1) movie theater in the basment        got this right) the producer of
  (2) cafe inside the door                a number of excellent films:
  (3) half-flight up, a retail area,
      a neat array of knick-knacks            Train Man
      and such, including things              The Taste of Tea
      like VizMedia DVDs.                     Nana
  (4) up the stairs from their a              Linda, Linda
      clothing retail area                    The Death Note series.
      with "Baby The Stars Shine              and... Kamikazee Girls.
      Bright".
  (5) Gallery space

                                      Unlike much of SF's Japantown, the
  This may look a bit all over        New People building resembles
  the place, but really there's       modern Tokyo: a super clean, white
  a clear, central idea:              glassy look, with little sense of
                                      history about it.
  The cross-promotion of
  various properties through
  the promotion of a sub-culture
  obsessed with them.

  The cafe up front in recent years
  has started doing high tea and
  such-- what is that about?  It's
  an attempt at giving women who
  buy the clothes at "Baby" a place
  to show them off...


     In general, this strikes me as a variant
     of an old idea of mine that I've called
     "The Hipster Shopping Mall", though                  EAST_OF_THE_EAST
     that's a name I used before the current
     generation of yuppies started calling
     themselves hipsters (by that definition,         DEATH_OF_HIP
     any shopping mall is a hipster shopping
     mall).


--------
[NEXT - AKB48_COMPLEX]