So the season of Halloween is here and Hallow's eve is right around the corner. Fall permeates the strangely warm air (for autumn) we've been having with cinnamon scented candles from the windowsills of nice, gingerbread-house-esque cottages along Santa Monica boulevard past the ominous ziggurat-like Church of Latter Day Saints
Hello America! How's your flag doin'?
This week, in accordance with the Halloween spirit, I
decided to go to the creepiest, most spook-tacular, most horrific of all
backyard bone-towns. A place sure to send chills up your spine as it travels on
the broken backs of crunched leaves; wafting their thousands of confetties
along the jetstreams of October. A place both foreboding and terrifying like a
rabid junkyard dog of the capitalist, fright-cities of tomorrows nightmares
bearing his diamond encrusted teeth at your sweaty attempts to look away. A
place where modernity’s bedazzled, dead heels wreak with Betsyville perfume and
toole as they protrude from the graveyard dirt of utilitarian value. Positively
the most mortifying presence to have ever graced this city in its myriad embodiments,
but condenses here—in our backyard in the form of: BUM BUM BUM! (cue lightning)—THE
WESTFIELD MALL! (a faraway scream is faintly audible).
Yesiree,
I went there and do I have a tale to tell/show you or do I have a tale to
tell/show you? You may be thinking to yourself: “Tommy, but I’ve been to the
Westfield mall before. Isn’t all of this superfluous introduction a bit
reactionary? I mean, it’s not so bad right?” Well, to each their own, but I get
the distinct feeling in such built environments that I somehow need something,
something I don’t have…. And right when I turn out the light in bed, when I
think I’m safe, I hear a breathing…. Heaving… from the corner. I think to
myself: “Should I turn on the light? It’s just these old westwood apartments heh
heh.. nothing to worry about…” so slowly… ever so shakily do I reach for the
lamp. I turn it on: “click” and BAM!! I just bought twenty dollars worth of
tea.
My sympathies lie in all of you who have ever been
influenced by advertising; anyone who feels living in a city where a constant
barrage of ‘sweet suns’ and Paul Frank everythings and billboard dudes with
their chests rippling in my face as if they were there, next to me in my shoddy
echo from 2005 makes you think: “hey, this is at best, marginally unsettling
and completely unnatural” and then three weeks later wondered why you lost your
ability to look anyone in the eye on the way to class.
What's with those scars? Am I supposed to be turned on? Why am I supposed to want to consume that? Hmmmm.....
It was all at once disarming: the parking lot was nothing
short of a copy and pasted Tokyo thoroughfare except underground and deconstructed so
that its traffic-moving semiotics were useless and distracting instead of
order-promoting.
I turned all of two times and already forgot where I came in.
I realized this parking lot (like all multi-level parking lots) was built to
induce getting lost in; probably to give you that initial blow to your sense of
self-preservation as if to say: “don’t worry, you have no fortitude to battle
what you are about to be tempted with."
Heyo!
LED Jumbotron Studs: A memoir.
The first thing I saw when I exited the escalator was great
news of what was to come: a new coffee bean was about to be installed right in
the only eyeline possible upon getting off the moving stairs. This was awesome
because I’m always short changed to find quiche coffee shops in enormous
super-malls. I walk around the whole time looking for a way to get my caffeine
fix in order to continue my ruthless shopping onslaught but now I can get my
fix right at the beginning! Fueled up for the good fight!
These obligatory “zen inspired” modern oases of repose
always tickled me. Look at it… Are you feeling a deep relaxation fully take
hold of your body? “Don’t worry” they whisper “You’re not working… you’re not
WOOOOORRKING… let the mantra ‘steep’ into your brain (Coffeebean & Tea Leaf
Inc. (all rights reserved)).
“Also check
out Claaaaaire’s….. 3 prayer beads for the price of twoooooo…. The colors…. Accessoriiiiiiiiize….”
They help me pray when I need a distraction from the
blatantly vaginal American institutions like the subtle and respectable Pink
Taco (which incidentally has really good cocktails. Not kidding). Who’s trying
to get in there anyway? The Barbarians? The Mongols? I think they need a bigger
door. Oh wait…
…I’m sorry,
Rock Sugar needs said protection. After all;
they have inside the culinary secrets of THE ENTIRE CONTINENT OF ASIA.
That stuff needs some golden-gilded guardians
and some even taller doors. That’ll keep ya
pan-Asian.
Problematic institutions aside, lets direct our attention to
other avenues of blatantly forward (but admittedly kind of awesome) product
design.
He certainly is… For your green, green soul.
Also—genetic experiment gone awry?
Gene-splicing between the
terrestrial and the oceanic? Zebra-Dolphin costume fodder? Or is that the
strange, ridged chin of the noble blue whale? Can’t tell. Must move on.
Constructed mini-cities would be nowhere without their own form of private militia.
Stores like blomingdales have these types of guards: kind of like the ancient enclave guards at exclusively senior-citizen-inhabited gated communities. Are they in place because substantial shoplifting occurs? Or is it because there are groups of ruffians just waiting to stick it to bloomingdales? Either way, he has a bike. That's serious business. The good news is he gets paid to stand there and look marginally intimidating. Not a bad deal if you ask me.
The reason this picture is so blurry is because he was literally running and I had only moments before he made his valiant close in this incredible and tantalizing ten-minute tale of "Brinksman and the Skater Kid: Brinksman Humiliates."
You get 'em duderino. He'll never skateboard again.
An interesting installment: Possibly the next-stage in vaguely zen inspired seating areas, but this time with a modern twist. It's like a reading room, except everyone's on their iPhones and no one's focused on anything except who's coming their way. I can't tell you how many side-eyes I got at this place.
You know how small dogs will point their head looking in one direction but be
looking at you in a different direction when you play with them, as if you can't see them just
looking right at you? Well, people do it too and they do it a lot in
places where they know they'll be seen i.e. Westfield Mall and yoga
studios and grocery stores and
anywhere in West L.A.
The Apple Store was filled to exact capacity as per-usual. Booming, bustling, making stacks. Way to do it Apple.
I can't help but notice that they don't even need to put words on their sign. How many businesses do that? Its a very effective icon. Really though, like a cross, people know exactly what they're getting into when they come in here. It's an area where you get connected with the facilities that allow you to connect with another plane; a necessary inclusion in this little city.
Not to say it's overtly religious I just think it's an interesting comparison.
What? How can this be? Was he walking one day through this mall thinking "where's the dairy queen?" when ZAPP! he was frozen in carbonite: his look of determination still somewhere in them tortoisey, tortoisey eyes. I can almost see him mouthing the word "mmmmove!" "get out while you still can!" Positively the strangest thing I've ever seen in a mall anywhere.
A fully anatomically accurate bronze cast of a Galapagos tortoise isn't something you see every day but it is nonetheless totally awesome. A creepy compliment to the slowly encroaching postmodernity and those whose bodies are frozen in it's ruthless wake like victims of Pompeii.
Artificial avenues got designed as they often do in huge malls like this. All of the sardonic observation aside, mega-malls and other built environments try to replicate some kind of nature; some kind of comforting home where you can sit and sit all day and then
get up and shop.
Like a cosmopolitan city in Italy, outdoor seats encourage walking and shopping and people watching but only inside the grounds of the mall.
Umbrellas give you shade, air conditioners give you cool respite from the hot day. Coffee keeps you going, cupcakes give you sustenance while eliminating excess weight from you wallet to make you a lean, light shopping machine.
There's everything you could possibly want in one place; all your desires filled, even safety (provided you are of a certain demographic). A mini-Rome with its own marketplace and areas of repose and soldiers employed by the higher-ups of society to regulate the strictures of the environment.
The only two people I saw on the street were outside of Westfield as I was leaving, presumably going into Westfield and were actually true loves to one another but would never know it, because they were looking at their iPhones.
Now tell me: do they don't look like a match made in heaven? Do I smell a compound celeb couple name with a hyphenated last name?
I am reminded of David Harvey's article (a major reason for me going to Westfield) about built environments. He talks a good deal about Fordism and the separation of places of work from places of residence. These factories were of course, found in America during it's own industrial revolution but this idea of places of work separated from places of residence have caught my interest.
The ways in which we assign meaning to space are deeply rooted in cultural semiotics; male vs. female restrooms, restrooms in general, a
bath room a kitchen, a breakfast nook, a mall, enclaves within the mall, the way you are expected to act when you enter Sephora (a company that is fascinating because it's employees are physical manifestations of the company's fashion aesthetic; so much that their outfits are designed to the nines). Why some bars have different energies than others on a spectrum from increasingly public to increasingly private to parochial spaces are all within the realm of how we assign meaning to what is previously meaningless space. In fact, the very construction of spaces is a study in and of itself which I encourage you to look into because it is
so interesting.
Creating spaces, I've come to realize is a large part about what it means to design a mall. Malls themselves seem to be minimum security enclaves. You saw the designer stores, the security guards, the blatant intolerance for behaviors that are thought to be fueled by delinquency and all to the effect of getting you to spend money. Demographics can empirically observed as having less money than other demographics by census takers (as we heard in class). are meticulously noted and taken into account when designing a place where the only purpose for the space is to spend money. The most efficient use of the environment is necessary in order to maximize profit and effectiveness of the space (as Harvey alludes to) and so the poor and homeless are encouraged to not enter because they don't have enough money to make effective use of the space. The presence of the "defiled" as mentioned in last weeks reading
Mapping the Pure and the Defiled as it were, deters the desired clientele and also decreases income. What we are left with is a strange space: it is neither residential nor a workspace. Malls, are consumer spaces designed to make you feel at home, as if the actions you perform there are natural and abide by codified laws of this new built environment. The entire time, I felt like an outsider because I wasn't dressed to the nines which suggests certain types of behaviors are preferred in this space over others.
The Westfield mall is a perfect example of what happens when a well-to-do area like this particular slice of West L.A. is met with a demographic that desires an even more exclusive environment. One where they can be both near home and also away from the perceived evils of even their neighborhood. Or conversely, the mall is a place where one goes to be considered part of such a demographic without having to really conspicuously spend.
One of the first things I noticed was how unlike west L.A. Los Feliz's sidewalks looked. The boutiques on the street weren't overly posh like they are in Brentwood, and the streets were packed with pedestrians! It may seem like an odd observation, but there are very few pedestrians on the street at large in L.A.-here I could barely get by them. It wasn't suffocating either, the general atmosphere was welcoming and non-judgemental with businesses beckoning you in rather than displaying how exclusive their clientele is.
