The Mall

It being the great American Consumer Holiday, Jenny and I decided that we wanted to get ourselves some cameras. She wanted an expensive digital SLR that would allow her to photograph her paintings without us having to pay someone 200$ a pop and I wanted the cheapest and hardiest camera available so that I could photograph the things I write about and remember what the hell I was thinking when I stumbled from writing spot to writing spot.

It was the day before Christmas Eve so we went to Ritz Camera at the Stonestown Mall as much for kicks as for the cameras themselves.

We never go to the mall, but that day we were brave and spontaneous so we drove up past the YMCA and into the parking lot where it was like a rock concert with all the cars and we eventually found a space way out by the eucalyptus trees.

We entered the holy mall through Macys and passed though the initial Christmas displays of trees and wreaths and designer ornaments all on sale due to the late date and that particular section was steeped in the sweet edible scent of mulled wine, cinnamon and other holiday spices which triggered memories of Christmases past.

Then we went up to shoes and leather items, all heavy and tanned, like roast beast, and my nostrils remembered fresh leather, tasty, with almost a hint of chocolate and something fresh yet sour like lemons, then we were around the corner into the perfumes and there was a 10 foot square section where the leather mixed with the perfume and I stood there saying, "You know Bird, there's got to be a job where the department store plans how to lead us along with the mixing of all these smells."

Macys pushed us along, olfactory science planned perfectly to take us from the leather mix into the perfume and beauty counters where young Macys makeup girls stood chittering amongst themselves and appeared to be busy in a manic way, creating false excitement, and on every counter oval mirrors awaited your makeover to the tune of your Macys card charged to the limit. Those girls were like used car salesmen, waiting for the next sucker who wanted to do away with those "crow's feet" and "frown lines" and "jowling at the jawline", "deep folds" or "marionette lines" that are all symptoms of the natural and dignified process of growing older and that have all been properly defined as something negative that can only be "cured" by the latest product offered at Macys.

We escaped beauty and perfume out into the semi controlled chaos of the Mall Proper and the scent of Boudin Bakery mixed with brand new tennis shoes (Just do it, please). Godiva chocolates mixed with that brand new load of mall merchandise; wool sweaters and rows and rows of plastic candy tainted toys, more leather and the ever omnipotent burn of electronic gizmos. There were the yellow lamps warming up large pretzels and hot dogs on a stick up to the food court where broken and tired families sat four to a small table to devour all manner of insincere Asian Pacific noodle and rice plates, or inferior sushi, or faux Philly cheese steaks.

The food court was all sanitized below and manic neon glowing above at each restaurant, with hoodlum wannabe mall warriors talking on cell phones and making high school passes at suburban Latino and Japanese girls done up in their best ghetto makeup with eyebrows pruned then penciled in and all wearing lowcut jeans that enunciated their 17 year old J-Lo asses. And everyone, EVERYONE, on cell phones, so much so that I wondered if at least half of them weren't just acting like they were talking to someone since most of their friends were probably here, at the mall.

Ah, but maybe that was it, they were all talking to the kids a table over.

And there was such a din of talking on those phones...that din was rising up all around us, and they were all moving like cattle in lines, but less orderly since they retained a semblance of their human disorder so they'd break away and jump ahead like healthy salmon swimming upstream to spawn sometimes.

Santa was there in the middle of the mall, below the food court, holding his own court like he was the Pope with pilgrims in line to kiss his ring and sit on his lap. Parents lined up around the great lit Christmas trees with children to get photographs taken.

Santa was Saint Peter and all the good consumers swished though as if they were clubbling or there to talk on their cell phones or simply there because it was the place to go and Bird and I stood at the balcony taking in the voices swirling up into that grand cacophony, up into the vault above him, into the apex of that blinking atrium where it was all white twinkling and bold colors below, reflective spaces and wide open, and those bold color schemes below all defined singular spaces of large inviting entrances where retail slaves stood watch, waiting cheerfully to help you along with your purchase.

Each store was colorfully branded like their websites. Like a lifestyle. And everywhere offers of better buying power, better deals, don't worry, you'll never be left out of the yearly holiday buying frenzy. Don't worry my entirely immature child who has absolutely zero concept of what borrowing really means, you can charge it all up now.

I noticed actual open space benches, but they were taken by the hardcore who lived there and who'd invested hours of their time in that place, so the benches were theirs and they were aggressively guarding them. The only other places you could sit came with a purchase of coffee or a pretzel. Watching is discouraged when there are so many places you can investigate and make a purchase.

We made it to Ritz Camera fully expecting to be disappointed, but we were "waited on" by a smart kid named Paul who knew cameras and told us about the lenses Jenny needed and we dropped a grand with him. I asked him if he got a commission and he said, "A small one" so that was cool. We grabbed a catalog on the way out because I felt like we'd made a connection. Something almost sincere. We'd go back there. The scam worked. But Paul was cool nonetheless.

Then we were back into the Mall Proper that flowed like a rushing river and each store was an eddy, a place to relax and escape that constant pull. We'd been to our store. But we didn't have another store. Or did we?

Soon thereafter, we ran into a wondeful friend who was with her mother and I was able to try out my camera.

The true American Christmas spirit of consumption pulled us into stores we'd never seen before to examine their wares, to touch their fabric and almost buy, then leave and move onto the next. It seems like the Mall is our latest incarnation of the carnival, but without any rides or games, since it is so well engrained into us that consumption is the game and the ride. We need more rides. We need better rides. We can do better.

Each store comes with a soundtrack, music to match the mood of each branded establishment, with decorations and shiny things in between to keep you moving along. It is the physical manifestation of all that advertising money...and it all lives inside the Mall temple to Mammon who is capital and the exchange of that capital for goods.

It is, in essence, America and our holiday mania that really is more concerned with getting the right gift for someone rather than celebrating the birth of some long diluted and hijacked godhead who would probably spit upon all this commercial excess and wonder why the fuck we weren't taking care of the least among us.

But I digress. I was at that moment, one of those fish swirling around inside that peculiar fishbowl.

We needed to accomplish one last thing at the large sparkly commerce temple before we left and that was to buy a DVD for the nieces. We believed said DVD was available for sale at the Disney store. The Mall became overwhelming and as the sun went down outside, automatic Mall lights came on inside the skylights to give the illusion that time did not exist and all was well shoppers. You have garnered an extra hour of two of your lives while you were inside here. I looked up right as those light came on and it reminded me of how the casinos in Vegas control the environment so you won't flee and realize that your life is passing you by as you sit there, a monkey to the lever, hitting that pleasure center.

Bird and I found the Disney store and that store is a microcosm of the Mall Proper. There are various branding zones. There was a Cinderella section with music piped in overhead and surrounding you, and videos played on the multiple televisions. There was a Young Einstein section. There was a Chicken Little Section. And all through the store there are the impulse buy situations, smaller, cheaper shit at a child's eye level, much like the meaty bones in our petstore, down so that the dogs can grab them with their mouth and their owners can think how cute it is that their darling pet selected something on their VERY own, so much so that they can't help but buy it even though they are holding the 100$ Cinderella doll that's two feet taller than the child they are buying that doll for.

We couldn't find the DVD. We looked around the place and felt ill. There was a long sad line of parents with sniffling children in tow waiting for the Happy Disney Associates to ring them up so that they could move on to the next store. Disney is the master of distilling wants and needs into something easily digestible like baby formula and in that instant the mall burped around us. Jenny rolled her eyes and I smiled so we fled.

The exits weren't clearly marked to keep the hamsters in their cage no doubt, but we eventually made it back through to Macys and the smells led us downstairs then outside and and we opened those doors out into the night and gasped the cold wet San Francisco air and we passed darkly as crowds of freshly showered mall kids goosestepped while talking on their cell phones towards the open maw of the mall and we ran to the car parked out by the eucalyptus and went home.

When we were finally home we played with our new toys.

We got some nice cameras.