Wandering the Parisian Arcade

Preparing for my Weimar talk I came across Émile Zola's description [in his 1880 Nana] of the Passage des Panoramas in Paris. Hard to explain why, but this "passage" strikes me as being especially lovely

A shower had just driven a crowd of people into the Passage. There was quite a mob, and it was a slow and difficult task to pass along between the shops on either side. Beneath the glass roof, brightened by the reflection, there was a most fierce illumination, consisting of an endless string of lights white globes, red and blue lamps, rows of flaring gas-jets, and monstrous watches and fans formed of flames of fire burning without any protection whatsoever; and the medley of colours in the various shop windows the gold of the jewellers, the crystal vases of the confectioners, the pale silks of the milliners blazed behind the spotless plate-glass, in the strong light cast by the reflectors; whilst among the chaos of gaudily painted signs, an enormous red glove in the distance looked like a bleeding hand, cut off and fixed to a yellow cuff.  

Count Muffat had strolled leisurely as far as the Boulevard. He cast a glance on the pavement, then slowly retraced his footsteps, keeping close to the shops. A damp and warm air filled the narrow thoroughfare with a kind of luminous vapour. Along the flagstones, wet from the drippings of umbrellas, footsteps reverberated continuously, without the sound of a single voice. The passers-by, elbowing the count at each turn, gazed at his impassive face, rendered paler than usual by the glare of the gas. So, to escape from their curiosity, he went and stood in front of a stationer's shop, where he inspected, apparently with profound attention, a display of glass paper-weights, containing coloured representations of landscapes and flowers. 

But in reality he saw nothing. 

Bonus! I took some pictures of the Passage des Panoramas last year.

August 7 - Santorini to Florence (written by Andy)

Our last hours in Santorini, and the launch of another travel day: a reminder that if you like to sit in airports, wait for cabs, and deal with paperwork then you too can tolerate a three-week tour of Europe. As I packed up my bag again, I remembered all the times my friends warned that so many transfers would rob our travels of their fun and spontaneity. It's a fair point. Yet Jenny and I often prefer our trips in sampler-size portions. Just enough to get a taste. And by this point we'd gotten pretty adept and organizing and moving our lives from country to country. If only all the folks with whom we had to interact were as professional.

Starting with a taxi driver who charged us a ruinous rate, we entered the world of Santorini Airport with low expectations. Security was eerily lax as clumps of people piled into the same tiny terminal. The flight departing before ours was delayed for some reason, which meant that seats became fiercely guarded commodities. Then when our plane was ready to board, the previous flight was also opened. Thus we were several hundred sweaty passengers squeezing through three narrow doors, getting our tickets ripped hurriedly by benumbed attendants. Queuing, as you may have heard, is a little-known custom in this part of the world. You put your feet where you can, expecting that friendly but determined folks will edge their ways ahead of you from all sides.

Prior to boarding, I was at least able to steel a few moments of relative peace on a rooftop garden. Typing these notes, I grinned at sight of a black and white kitten sauntering from table to table, enjoying the attention of everyone sitting nearby. Some people were heading for Athens. Less fortunate souls were stuck in a holding pattern before they could depart for Zurich. Our destination marked our final sweep southward from Greece to Italy and on to France. Next stop: Milan.

The flight was our last visit to Easy Jet's jaunty jumble of crazed queuing, cramped seating, and a la cart prices for everything. We arrived in Italy to, Oh, Lord, big fat raindrops. I reminded myself that we'd enjoyed days of perfect sun in Greece. Dreading the realities of Italian driving, I approached the rental agent in a most unnatural state: seeking that rip-off extra insurance that I routinely eschew. You can imagine my surprise when she seemed nearly as adamant that I need not incur the expense. Italian law requires that all rental agreements include some basic insurance, and the company we used had scored an especially sweet deal on deductibles. So we took our tiny Fiat (a "fashionable" model, the agent assured us) and set for the Autostrada south.

Driving in Italy. Where to begin? First, it's important to remember that cops have the power to demand cash from international motorists when they hand out traffic tickets (yep, they'll follow you to the nearest ATM if you can't pay up). So speeding is a bad idea. Then you add the fact that even large cities seem more designed for pedestrian traffic than for cars. OK, that makes sense, given that you're dealing with more than some mighty ancient cities. Still, it's a scary thing to navigate a place like Milan when streets are rarely signed, (supposedly traffic-smoothing) roundabouts come equipped with jarring stoplights, and busy roads magically transform into cobblestone walkways or one-way alleys.

Strangely enough, for all the disorder of Italian city driving, I've never driven a highway with more warning signs: heads-up notices that - news flash! - traffic means excess cars, curves can bring curvy conditions, fire in a tunnel is dangerous (the iconic advice: some poor sap running away from flames). Then, if there isn't anything to warn about, traffic safety engineers post signs of red exclamation points every few kilometers, just in case. It's as if the Italian highway system was designed by your mother.

Best of all, despite all our maps and all our planning, we got lost in every major stop. We got lost in Milan as we searched for the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and later when we tried to return to the Autostrada. And we got lost in Florence as we tried to find our hotel (this time aided by a new map we bought for the purpose). We found that we could neither park near our hotel or hope to speak with someone at a reception desk, because the roads had been turned into a pedestrian walkway and the desk was closed for the evening. When I found a nearby hotel that, according to the tiny fine print of our contract, would provide keys to our room, I was then informed that we needed a guy to pick up our car (sure, it's just a few blocks away, but the spaghetti of one-way roads and pedestrian sidewalks would make the trip a nightmare, I was promised). Oh, and the key-man would be around in an hour. At last we negotiated a better plan, and Jenny and I finally turned the key to our door at the Palazzo Ruspoli.

The room was beautiful, with high ceilings and flowing drapes. Across the street was the Duomo di Firenze. As exhausted as we were, Jenny and I simply had to enjoy some of this pedestrian paradise before collapsing into bed. Around the Duomo, kids were lounging on the steps, drinking, laughing, and playing music. Gelaterias were doing brisk business (somewhere in the Italian constitution, there must be a requirement that no one shall be forced to walk more than a hundred meters to a get some gelato). And our moods lightened. I had to admit: While Florence is a nightmare for motorists, it's pretty cool for walkers.

Day 15 | Day 17

Global Legos

AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye

Over the weekend I attended a lovely gathering of folks dedicated to globalizing our campus. Just the day before, I worked with colleagues helping to plan an international trip, trying to make sure students get a clear sense of their possible leadership roles in an increasingly connected world. Of course my thoughts could never stray from the images and sounds pouring in from Japan. The 9.0 quake threw another sad but essential dimension of our global conflation into sharp relief: nothing more than a flat screen monitor separates us from the pain of others.

When the initial reports began streaming in Thursday night I could hardly sleep. The quake was bad enough, but the subsequent tsunami was worse, wrecking a broad swath of northern Japan and racing toward Hawaii and western North America with the speed of a jet plane. It was about 2 in the morning when newscasters were reading the estimates of impact, just hours away. Eventually I settled into nervous slumber - not expecting waves to crash into my house, of course - but rattled with the anxiety that more bad news was on the way.

I stayed home that Friday (no meetings "over the hill," thank goodness) and I'm glad I did. Pals described an epic traffic jam on Highway 17, a soul-sucking slog exacerbated by gawkers who gathered at the summit to watch the waves roll in. Hawaii was generally spared, but the ports of Crescent City and Santa Cruz (yep, just a few miles away) were hammered. Back in Japan, international shipping container units - that perfect symbol of global modernity - had been tossed around Sendai like Legos. The airport was devastated, and thousands of lives were snuffed out throughout the region.

Then we heard about the nuke plants.

Perhaps four are facing various stages of meltdown. So far we've witnessed one "hydrogen explosion" (a horrifyingly ambiguous term, if you ask me) - and fear that another could be imminent. Experts promise that Japan's nuclear woes do not portend another Chernobyl. But hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated anyway. As a last ditch effort to contain the damage, at least one two reactor cores have been flooded with seawater. Just in time, because seismologists predict that a 7.5 level aftershock will further shake Japan in a day or two. Oh, and just for good measure, a volcano has erupted in that country's southern region.

Those of us who live in California know that our state is due for similar wreckage (well, maybe without the volcano). Our own customized Big One is deemed a virtual certainty within the next thirty years. One day our friends in Japan will watch, horrified, as we suffer a pain they know all too well. Our two countries are bound together, and they will help us then - even as we try to help them now. That's the face of globalization, too. More than malls stocked with exports, more than movies with globish dialogue, our expanding international network means that we suffer together when bad times come.

Europe 2010 - Vienna - Day 11 of 12

Today was pretty much a "greatest hits" version of yesterday, partially because I was getting a little exhausted by more than a week's worth of novelty and partially because I wanted to dive more deeply into some elements of Vienna that intrigued me the most. For that reason I returned to Cafe Central yet again, once more ordering breakfast and staying long enough to sip a cup or two of melange. Then I dedicated much of the day to finding more street art.

Donaukanal mural

I have yet to fully think through my thoughts about this urban phenomenon. As a rule, I despise the notion that one person can lay claim to the property of another, whether through theft or defacement. Yet I relax my standards somewhat when viewing the imposition of creativity upon an otherwise ugly, deteriorating façade. This is hardly a coherent philosophy, I know. Happily, the city of Vienna has embraced street art in a number of locations, allowing its practitioners an open canvas to share their works. I've written some blog posts about what I found [you might as well start with this one].

Austria's version of "Freedom from Fear"

Exiting the Donaukanal, where I found some of my favorite murals, I also noticed an oddly contradictory poster for the Polizei. It centered on two cops in riot gear, the armored pair filling most of the frame. In the background, a nondescript crowd of protestors hoisted flaming objects, perhaps Molotov cocktails. The slogan: "Freiheit," the German word for "freedom" and "liberty." Not knowing the language, and hardly possessing insight into Austrian notions of irony, if any, I couldn't help but chuckle at the juxtaposition of ideas conveyed by that poster. Thinking back to the street art mounted nearby, I reflected on how these two notions of Viennese life, of discipline and resistance, talk to each other as competing visions.

"Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes"

Evening brought me back to the Gasometer Complex in a halfhearted attempt to seek entrance into the domed living spaces rising from the mall's central axis. I knew that residents, understandably guarding their privacy, would have their own elevators or other pathways to the interior. I thought briefly about trying to follow someone away from the mall, perhaps even striking up a conversation about my interest in this unique type of domestic architecture. But I recognized that my lack of language skills and the creepiness of my request (essentially, "Let me follow you up to your apartment") would be hard to accept. I settled for an hour of random wandering in and around the structures, snapping pictures and planning for a return next year after seeking authorization in advance.

Back to the Gasometer

Exhausted after all my walking, and all my days of largely sleepless activity, I returned to my room and enjoyed an early night's rest.

Day 10 | Day 12

Europe 2010 - Vienna - Day 10 of 12

I got up early and headed straight for Cafe Central again, lining up a table near an outlet and ordering a traditional Viennese breakfast. I'm told that the famed poet Peter Altenberg loved the place enough to request that his mail be delivered here. Hitler too, supposedly, tried to sell some of his paintings in the cafe before he took his turn toward infamy. Sipping a tasty melange, I could certainly understand why the cafe is so popular with folks possessing nothing but time.

Morning at Cafe Central

An unofficial rule of Viennese cafe culture is that you can keep a table all day long. Sip coffee, read books, smoke cigarettes, talk with friends, or just people watch; there's no rush. Servers may be terse (mine never were) but they let you stay as long as you like. Cafe Central even has a rack of international newspapers, so if you haven't flipped through Le Monde in a few days you're in the right place.

View from my favorite seat

Hours passed as my tab grew from melange to melange. Eventually I ordered up a bottle of Pellegrino and received a tiny pitcher of lemon juice when I asked for something a bit more tart. Clouds had gathered outside and I was in no hurry to hit the sidewalks. It wouldn't be until about two in the afternoon that I'd decide to gather my stuff. For the previous half hour or so, I'd been exchanging glances with a group occupying a table near mine. When I left we all smiled at each other, sharing our sense of good fortune without saying a word.

Hundertwasserhaus

For the afternoon I dedicated myself to visiting Hundertwasserhaus, an experiment in nonlinear architecture that allows even the most banal housing to become playfully artistic. Undulating floors, grass-covered roofs, and oddly sized windows made for an oddly psychedelic effect that reminded me of Gustav Klimt's paintings. That said, I had my usual share of difficulties getting to this place, finding myself along dreary streets whose walls were covered with loud and occasionally disturbing iconography. That's when I began to develop an interest in Vienna's street art that would later inspire a more devoted tour of still dingier environs. After snapping some photos along Marxergasse, I slumped into a nearly empty Cafe Zartl, almost melting into a booth, before getting directions for my next destination.

Gasometer complex

In the early evening, after my tour of Hundertwasserhaus, I took the metro to another example of strange but fascinating urban design, the Gasometer complex. Having never heard of the place before, I was intrigued when I spotted a reference in a pamphlet on Viennese architecture laying in the lobby of my hotel. It turns out that the Gasometer is an interconnected chain of four gas storage tanks that had been built in the 1890s, hulks now transformed into a small city. Surrounded by the buildings' original brick facades, each rotunda now houses rings of apartments that curve around a sunlit interior.

Gasometer vertical panorama

Since different architects designed each building (built between 1999-2001), each structure possesses its own unique character. Drawing the domed towers together: a linear mall that leads back to the metro station outside. Another axis leads to a casino, convincing me that I'd come as close as ever to seeing what Logan's Run might look like in practice. While I had no luck finding a way into the interiors of the domes, having to settle for glimpses through circular ceilings of the mall level, I knew that the Gasometer is a place that demands my return, perhaps in a forthcoming book about "tiny towns."

Another view of the Gasometer

Nightfall brought me back to Vienna's center, to the parliament building where something called "Life Ball" was in full swing. A gala raising funds for HIV/AIDS research and prevention, Life Ball had attracted American luminaries such as Whoopi Goldberg and Bill Clinton -- their pictures made the front-pages of discarded newspapers I'd read on the metro. Even so, most cameras were focused on gaudily costumed partiers who lined the streets and filled the cafes. They'd come to dance until dawn. I found a seat for dessert at Café Landtman to watch the show, which included a coterie of elderly protesters, until I noticed dark billowing storm clouds settling over the city.

AIDS ribbon on Parliament Building for Life Ball

As the winds picked up I headed back, figuring on a quick melange at Gelateria di Jimmy near my hotel. That's when light raindrops turned to torrents and I was forced to sit until closing time, watching panes of water pour from the canopy. The server, a guy who recognized me from the previous night, invited me to stick around, but I'd had enough adventure for one evening. So I packed my gear under my clothes, ducked my head, and raced as fast as my feet would carry me. Inwardly I had to laugh. Right then I'd prefer to run through the streets of Vienna on a stormy Saturday night than be just about anywhere else.

Andy stuck in the rain at Gelateria di Jimmy

Day 9 | Day 11

Converging Ourselves to Death (Speech)

This is a slightly revised version of the speech I presented last month as keynoter for the Rocky Mountain Communication Association's 2010 conference in Denver. The trip was a delight, especially the opportunity it provided to photograph farm relics and neon signs. But the best part was the chance to meet some really cool folks (including some outstanding faculty members and graduate students at The University of Northern Colorado). I just thought it'd be useful to archive my RMCA remarks, if only to bring back some happy memories...

Think back to the last time you were several places at once.

Visualize the moment.

Imagine you're chatting on a mobile phone while scanning a website on your laptop. Perhaps you catch a glimpse of video on another screen nearby. Maybe you're doing these things on the same device.

OK, how many places so far? Three?

Dead Malls

The emptying out of America's malls offers another sign of our current economic mess. Kris Hudson and Vanessa O'Connell, writing for The Wall Street Journal, note that enclosed malls are a dying sector of consumer activity.

"Some analysts estimate that the number of so-called "dead malls" -- centers debilitated by anemic sales and high vacancy rates -- will swell to more than 100 by the end of this year [up from 40 in 2006]."

The authors add that this weakening, while exacerbated by the economic downturn, has roots in another industry trend: the shift away from enclosed malls toward open air "power centers," outdoor complexes anchored by stand-alone big box stores. Indeed Hudson and O'Connell state that an enclosed mall hasn't been built in the U.S. since 2006.

As traditional malls lose tenants, the results can be profound for their surrounding communities: "In suburbs and small towns, malls often are the only major public spaces and the safest venues for teenagers to shop, hang out and seek part-time work."

Naturally, the eerie emptiness of a once thriving urban space collects writers and photographer to document all that ennui. The WSJ cites Deadmalls.com as one site where their images and reflections may be found.

Read the article: Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns

Au Bonheur des Dames

Since finishing my manuscript for the omnitopia book I've slowed down a bit to enjoy more leisurely reading, a delightful contrast to the fever of rapid page-flipping that were my experiences with books over the past couple of years. In that spirit, I returned to Émile Zola's (1883) Au Bonheur des Dames, determined to enjoy this book at a more proper pace than when I first plumbed its pages. It's a remarkably different encounter, reading a book purely for the pleasure of its evocation of images and ideas, not simply mining it for raw material, and I'm glad I gave Zola a second look.

Au Bonheur des Dames tells the story of Denise Baudu, who makes her way to Paris after being orphaned back home. Seeking employment in her uncle's shop, she discovers that his business, as well as other small firms throughout the city, is being throttled by the emergence of a new kind of department store that gathers all manner of wares under one vast roof. Eschewing the kind of specialization that is the hallmark of the family business, Au Bonheur des Dames is the Wal-Mart of its day. The novel follows the Denise's transformation from gullible, provincial waif to confident and courageous young woman, an evolution marked by her eventual conquest of the heart of the store's owner. While ostensibly concerned with whether Denise can keep her honor and dignity amid the treacherous social environment of the store, Au Bonheur des Dames introduces its readers to the transformation of Paris in the era of Haussmannization.

Students and scholars of literature praise Zola's modern characters and contemporary themes. Yet lovers of the written word can also treasure Zola's dazzling evocation of place, his rich and potent illustrations of a world that gave birth to our own. From this vantage point, I found myself returning again and again to my own efforts at understanding the sites and strategies of contemporary urban life. In this post, let me share some of my favorite passages that brought me back to the omnitopia project, excerpts also worth reading strictly for their own sake:

"The thought of the [tiny shop], narrow and black, made her see this huge store as even greater than it was, gilded it with light, like a whole city, with its monuments, squares and streets, through with it seem impossible that she should ever find her way" (p. 49, all citations from 2001 Penguin edition, translated by Robin Buss).

"Here were Turkey, Arabia, Persia and India: palaces had been emptied, mosques and bazaars ransacked" (p. 87).

"The moment had come for the fearsome afternoon rush, when the super-heated machine led the customers round the floor, squeezing the money from their very flesh . . . One could no longer hear the wheels of the cabs or the slamming of doors. All that was left, above the great hum of the sale, was a sense of the vastness of Paris, a vastness that would supply more and more customers" (p. 107).

"[I]n the fine mist, everything seemed to mingle, so that one could no longer distinguish one department from another" (p. 107).

"In the middle of the half-constructed walls, pierced by empty bays, electric laps cast wide blue beams of blinding light. Two o'clock in the morning struck, then three, then four. And in the tortured sleep of the neighborhood, the building site, made larger by this lunar brightness, took on colossal and fantastic proportions, swarming with dark shadows, with clamorous workmen, their silhouettes gesticulating against the harsh whiteness of the new walls . . . One day, Au Bonheur des Dames would spread its roof across the whole neighborhood" (p. 215).

"Space had been gained everywhere, air and light entered freely, and the public wandered around at ease beneath the bold vaults of the widely spaced trusses. It was a cathedral of modern trade, light yet solid, designed for a congregation of lady customers" (p. 231).

"Outside, the cold winds that carry March showers were blowing, while here in the galleries of Au Bonheur des Dames, the fine weather warmed them with light materials, the flowery shine of pastel shades and the rural delights of summer fashions and parasols . . . 'It's a world in itself' Madame de Boves announced" (p. 238, p. 239).

"It was like the concourse of a railway station, surrounded by the balustrades of the two upper storeys, cut by suspended stairways and crisscrossed with bridges. The iron stairways, in double spirals, formed daring curves with many landings. The iron bridges hung high up in straight lines across the void. And all this cast iron beneath the white light of the glass roof composed an airy architecture of complicated lacework which let the daylight through -- a modern version of a dream palace, a Tower of Babel with storey piled on storey and rooms expanding, opening on vistas of other storeys and other rooms reaching to infinity" (p. 245).

Alone in Public Life

This is part two of a four-part photo essay from my recent visit to San Francisco atrium hotels. These notes reflect some of my amblings while researching a book on omnitopia.

The atrium hotel complex conflates disparate environments -- lodging, commerce, entertainment, tourism -- gathering large numbers of people into an coherent continuum. The milling, chatting, laughing amalgamation resembles the ancient agora, a site for public life. What interests me most, though, are moments of isolation, when an individual faces the vast interior alone.

In many ways, this project is inspired by Edward Hopper's grim depictions of modern life, people waiting in all-hours cafes, lost in their own thoughts in motel rooms, standing alone at gas stations. The bright and vibrant colors of contemporary life seem muted somehow. And in turn they mute us.

In these waiting places, many of us practice technologies of anticipatory disengagement. We use mobile phones, iPods, and other aural enclaves to augment other acceptable ways to isolate ourselves. Yet I think that these gaping interiors alone contribute to our experiences of isolation. Even when we chat among friends, sipping Starbucks in a hotel lobby or grabbing a snack in a mall, each of us alone occasionally looks upward toward the open spaces of the atrium and feels somewhat smaller than we are.

Outside the privileged enclave, other individuals carry their worlds with them, not in iPods or mobile phones but in shopping carts. Here the frontiers of omnitopia reassert themselves, while inside the atrium the world seems endless.

Fast Times at Countryside Mall

For teenagers where I grew up, a Florida suburb built between the cities of Clearwater and Dunedin, one mall represented the central site for public life: Countryside Mall. The name is instructive because Countryside wasn’t alongside the “country”; it sat at the intersection of State Road 580 and U.S. 19, then a major conduit for Florida traffic that heading as far north as Erie, Pennsylvania. Located a sizable distance from both Clearwater and Dunedin, Countryside signified the rough land that had been plowed under when humble two-lane 19 bulked up to accommodate the new developments. It was more than just a means of getting somewhere; it was a place of its own. Clogged with freshly planted suburbs and the supportive infrastructure that grows around these sorts of places, Highway 19 called forth a mall and named this site for the country it replaced. It’s a cliché endemic to this sort of writing, but that’s just what happened.

Countryside was an enclave against the old world of downtowns and the rickety social mores they represented. Surrounded by acres of free parking, enclosed against the harsh summer sun, and protected by an internal security force (mocked by my friends as those “old men in red jackets”--retired cops, we assumed), Countryside was the agora, the public green, the place to be seen. We all had typical teenage jobs (I pulled pork butts at a local barbeque restaurant, waited tables at the nearby Steak ‘n Shake, and even served time at the mall’s McDonalds for a couple weeks when I needed money for prom). We all could afford to shop at Countryside from time to time, digging through bargain bins for cheap music cassettes of our favorite bands. But to us, the mall was much more than a place to buy things. It was our dating habitat, our fashion show, and our refuge from responsible life.

The mall was also our place to play “Stalker,” a revved-up version of hide-and-go-seek that grew out of our love for 80s-era slasher flicks. In our game, a “stalker” would chase “victims” throughout the mall. But we followed horror film rules, which meant that no one could run, and no one could occupy a hiding place for more than a minute. While we played out our suburban fantasies, walking and hiding from store to store, we transformed the mall into a film set. Security guards seemed to understand their role as “meddling cops” easily enough, but the shoppers never did came to appreciate their roles as “annoying obstacles.” Nonetheless, playing Stalker with my friends, we learned how to perform/transform a formal and authorized place into our kind of space, an environment where real and perceived dangers could be managed.

In the teen movies of my youth, we saw malls that reflected our own experiences. The big mall movie of my era was Fast Times and Ridgemont High, though truthfully I don’t recall anyone who thought of this flick as a “mall movie.” Fast Times was simply a teen movie where some of the most significant and banal moments occurred in a mall. Not surprisingly, many of the film’s interior shots where filmed in the Sherman Oaks Galleria. Bright and brimming with shops, and safely enclosed from the world of adults and their rules, The Galleria offered a perfect setting Fast Times. The choice seemed obvious, indisputable. Where else could eighties-era suburban teens hang out? In American Graffiti early-sixties-era California kids cruised Main Street, darting in and out of adult responsibilities but keeping their sensibilities securely in childhood. In Dazed and Confused, mid-seventies-era Texas kids transformed their small town into personalized (and literal) “stomping grounds.” They toked up at the Moon Tower, played foosball at the emporium, and scored tickets for Aerosmith, dreaming of that perfect high that waited just over the horizon beyond the frontier of a crummy town. But for kids in the 1980s, at least kids where I grew up, there was no horizon, and we couldn’t imagine hanging out downtown: the space was uninviting.

It was surely worse elsewhere around the country where urban centers had progressed further along their slow descent into shuttered and boarded oblivion. When Bruce Springsteen sang about his hometown’s empty storefronts in the 1984 album Born in the U.S.A my friends and I vaguely got his point, though we’d never seen whitewashed windows on Main Street. We’d never thought to look. And driving offered little relief from the boredom of our enclosures, since U.S. 19 simply connected us to more suburbs. While this lament merely revealed our provincial ignorance, it really seemed we had no place to go. Utopia was one freshly mowed lawn after another. Certainly, we could have headed further south to visit the old school urbanity of St. Petersburg, or we could have headed north along the arching coast where the highway soon returned to its two-lane roots. But we almost never did. We lived indoors, recognizing the Fast Times mall as our own.

My friends and I liked Fast Times because we liked the characters (despite the fact that they looked so much older than real teenagers), but we respected Fast Times because this movie got many of the details right. Of particular interest to me is how the movie depicted the mall’s video “arcades” not as some form of social-commercial connective tissue but as a place to break the bonds between teenage life and the adult world of the city. In the movie and in my experience, arcades provided a separate space where intruding adults were little more than zombies, participants in a horror show they could not recognize. In Fast Times, and certainly at Countryside, the mall replaced Main Street as a gathering place; the mall was the central site of social ordering and hierarchy. Most importantly, the mall provided a quasi-public enclave where we made the rules, or at least thought we did. And we could hardly imagine an alternative to this place.

Learn More:

Read my entries on Dazed and Confused and American Graffiti: Great Movie Endings Part 1

Malls and Free Speech

Do malls constitute a form of public space? It's a complex issue. Some observers note their clearly privatized environs, arguing that one cannot protest in a mall any more than in a stranger's house. Others reply that malls have replaced traditional public spaces. Thus, like it or not, they should accommodate communications that would otherwise appear on the proverbial village green. Here's a recent article that addresses this issue.

(Excerpt begins)

SOUTH PORTLAND - Should the public have free-speech rights in the common areas of Maine's privately owned malls?

That isn't the case now, and Rep. Jon Hinck, D-Portland, says that a change is needed.

Hinck has introduced a bill that would give people the right to petition and otherwise exercise their free-speech rights in the common areas of shopping centers as long as they do not interfere with business or pedestrian traffic.

...

"They've shut down Main Streets, and that's where we used to go. Main Street doesn't exist anymore," [Sen. Peter] Mills said.

(Excerpt ends)

Read the whole thing:

Kim, A. (2007, May 9). Malls would be a marketplace of ideas under bill. Portland Press Herald.

See also:

Lithwick, D. (2003, March 10). Why can shopping malls limit free speech? Slate.

The Mall at 4:30 a.m.

These days, I'm writing about malls: enclosed malls, theme malls, mega malls, power centers, and lifestyle centers. It's for a chapter in my book on omnitopia (check out the node to learn more). To that end, I recently traveled to Alberta to visit the West Edmonton Mall, where I stayed for three days in the Fantasyland Hotel, which is integrated into the property. Here's a tiny excerpt

***

At 4:30 a.m., I leave my room for an early morning walk through the mall. While the shops close at around nine, the mall’s concourses are open all night long, and not just to hotel guests. Joggers, for example, use the mall as an indoor track. Its grand spaces and long vistas are also filled with the sounds of floor cleaners. In their nearby enclosure, the mall’s flock of flamingos are asleep, each perched on one spindly leg, their heads coiled and burrowed backward into their wings. I commit to not waking them, but manage to roust them from their slumbers anyway, just standing there. Virtually all of the birds startle each other into alertness, and they begin to stretch and preen themselves before plunging their heads back among their feathers in what appears to be a rebellious effort to return to sleep despite my presence. There’s something delightfully unauthorized about wandering a mall before the shops open, living a childhood fantasy of transforming a public place or, more accurately, a corporately owned place used by the public, into a private enclave. For many boys of my age, that fantasy manifested itself in the construction of “forts,” the heady realization that these pillows owned by parents or some other authority figure (grandparents, in my case) could be transmogrified into something uniquely mine, a safe place.

***

By the way, if you're curious, the International Council of Shopping Centers provides a terrific place to learn basic mall terminology, and it offers an excellent collection of publications and periodicals.