Week 10 Blog post

This week I posted on Shmuel Nosrati's blog:

David Harvey's article on neo-liberalism sparked my interest in patterns (including the occupy movement) that have been recurring but each individually hold that they are the beginning of a revolution. I really enjoyed your perspective on this issue and liked to partner it with Harveys word's where Bush jr. sold neo-liberalism in the package of 'a peaceful world of growing freedom' and most pointedly 'serves American long-term interests, reflects enduring ideals and unites Americas allies' I am to believe; only allies to "freedom" and somewhere a cowboy holds his hat over his heart and sheds a tear.
This structural propaganda has seemed to instill itself in every part of our policymakers psyche to the point that the suburbs are now the main holders of any neo-liberal city's industrial tax base. I grew up in Honolulu Hawaii and what is true for most suburbs in America seems to be true of Honolulu as well. Honolulu's governing district is technically spread over the entire island of O'ahu however, the suburbs I am referencing are known as a different district altogether known as Kailua. Here there is an incredible concentration of whites (according to simplymaps)
who have comparatively high in terms of the incomes in valley communities like McCully or Kalihi. While public transportation is a readily available commodity in Honolulu, it's very difficult to get around without some sort of auto. The only way to get from Honolulu to Kailua is over a mountain range. There are those who walk it, but then again there are those who walk up the sidewalkless uphill inclines of the Beverly Hills proscenium arches. These architectural models are intended to keep poor people out and are a result of the affluent classes living away from the areas that their tax dollars would conceivably pay for. In essence, one could view the relationship between the poorer parts of Honolulu and Kailua as the result of neoliberal architecture.
It is sad that the design of some cities (like Los Angeles) contribute to growing inequality and furthering segregation and classism. What are we to do after the fact to reconcile these differences? The best idea I've seen so far has been Majora Carter's talk on greening the ghetto. Hopefully more ideas will come that are not limited to the obviously ineffective backlashes of social-welfare movements.

Week 9 Post on the detremental effects of capitalism

This week I decided to post a comment on Ana Angel's blog (http://yvirgil.blogspot.com/) about consumer capitalism:

Your ideas about the detrimental effects of material consumerism are spot on, but I would like to supplement and possibly add to your argument.

While there are some capitalists who would argue that freedom, personal agency and happiness come out of the availability of choice, the quality of goods and the option of purchasing such goods provided by the capitalist system. In reality this is not entirely true.

First of all, the testimony from the doctor in the example you gave is proof enough of the emptiness of material goods, but what I'm excited about in this argument is not only the meaningless junk we buy day to day at any moment thereby depreciating its value, but also that the meaningless junk provided to us by the capitalist system comes in so much variation that, coupled with the pressures of making the right choice and the constant prodding of modernity for us to adhere to a capitalist system we are rendered not only paralyzed, but also miserable.

The capitalist idea is that with more choice, the consumer should feel freer to do whatever they please within a capitalist system. This is not true. As Barry Schwartz discusses in his TED talk "The Paradox of Choice" the sheer volume of choice available to us makes us unhappier by virtue of the theoretical option that we could possibly have made the wrong choice. We may pick and choose the best product of its type, but at the end of the day we are haunted with the idea that we could have made a different, possibly better one.

In an L.A. Times article about the importance of gratitude, the author mentions that her mother was of the school that when she received gifts, she wrote notes. (Her mother was born in the early 1900's) With the ever-present ability to buy any item at any time in a store, at a restaurant, in a mall, online, from a friend, on craigslist and so on-the individual importance and the very prospect of gift giving and craftsmanship is dissolved; idea that is commonly tied to Fordism. When material production is mechanized and labor is deskilled to fit such a production model (the one capitalism thrives upon) the artisan fades into yesterday out of unimportance and irrelevance to a growing industrial system.

I believe Marx was correct twofold in his ideas of capitalism.

One: that capitalism as an institution keeps the working class just happy enough to not revolt, quit, or commit suicide and feeds them along the way with meaningless material goods.

And two: that the very nature of modern capitalism, the competition of various corporations providing the public with type after type of the same product contributes further to the breaking down of the spirit of the consumer relinquishing the idea of corporate accountability to personal accountability of being incapable of making informed choices.

Week 8 Post: Comment on Malibu

I decided to post on Patrick Soulages Blog about Malibu. Enjoy:

In response to your query on “how people assess their actions and how places can change so much over time” I think this question is particularly interesting when regarding a place like Malibu. The testimony you received from the people you knew reminds me of a study I was made aware of several years ago.

         The study was carried out in an attempt to prove true a previous idea about city planning.

                Before Juliani, Times Square was considered seedy, sketchy; all of the above. However, apart from prohibiting window washers (the ones that spray your windshield with a saliva-windex mixture and ask for money after “cleaning” your car with a dirty rag) he also put money into rebuilding the surrounding area and patching up the broken windows and cleaning the graffiti off of the walls. Juliani is considered one of the main reasons that Times Square is the bustling, gentrified, artistic and economic district it is today.

                The reason for this change is the result of a commonly employed (but never tested until the Netherlands test) theory known widely as “Broken Windows Theory.” The idea is that if there is an area with broken windows, it appears as though no one cares enough to maintain it, so the space can be desecrated. One day graffiti appears so the next passerby thinks it’s okay to throw his beer bottle on the ground and create more broken glass. After a while another person comes along and sees a broken window, graffiti and garbage lying around and thinks “hey, might as well spark a bowl.” Ideally this cycle continues until the area has undergone a comprehensive dergradation and is now riddled with crime.

                The study that was done was in an attempt to prove this theory- Does a cleaner environment lead to an upkeep of that environment and a dirtier environment lead to a dirtier one?

       The people committing the study put graffiti on one alleyway with bikes parked in it and another alley with no graffiti. The bikes had flyers put into their break cables so that when the owners returned, they had the option of either putting the flyers in the trash or throwing them on the ground. What they found proved the theory by showing that the alleyway with the graffiti had far more flyers on the ground than the one without the graffiti.

            It is thought that Juliani employed this tactic and it is this “dirtying” I believe is the case with Malibu. The more people move in, the more trash is associated with it. The more people that want to move in, the more the natural cliff line is hollowed back to make room for more houses. The more the natural environment is disrespected, the more it will be disrespected in the future. This I believe is the cause of such a change.

Week 7 post on Creating Spaces

I decided to comment on Alana Ayasse's blog about going to Orange County to find someplace to drink tea and the difficulties thereof.

Here it is:

I was first attracted to your blog because of your declarative attempts to locate some tea in Orange County. I, a tea aficionado was intrigued. I read on however and found that I was not most interested in the discussion about tea contained in your blog, but rather about your experience trying to enjoy your meal in a parking lot lined section of outdoor seating.
        Ever since taking Professor Michael Curry's Introduction to Cultural Geography, coupled with my interest in theater arts-I have been interested, nay, obsessed with the prospect of creating places and spaces.
       For instance: A beach is a place. When people find this beach and the implied bounty of seafood inclusive, perhaps what was a beach becomes a holy place: a hub for life giving sustenance that sustains the entire population of people living there. Let's imagine now that white imperialists sail from Spain or northern Europe and decide that this place is now under the legal jurisdiction of the Queen and the greater England. (as it were) Where once stood shrines and ritual offerings now stands a courthouse which then implies and imposes the governing laws of England upon the beach itself and on the people. Let's imagine further that this place has undergone years of change and an international business conglomerate decides to build one of many luxury hotels on the beach and include a three Michelin star rated restaurant located in the ground level overlooking said beach. The conduct of such a place is now that of being reserved, perhaps quiet and the purpose and intention of the space is to eat food and enjoy it in a cultured, unobtrusive fashion. If you attempted to use the space as a beach, courthouse, or place of worship you might be kicked out and asked to never return. In this way, the function of the space has changed over time, just as the function of a torn down coffee-shop can arbitrarily be re-assigned and re-engendered with the functionality and effect of an insurance firm.
      We live in a society where different places have been turned into "spaces" thereby re-assigning the meaning and this dictating the appropriate behavior that should be conducted within. In a busy restaurant, you are expected to leave and might feel uncomfortable if you stay sitting there after your meal is done. In a coffee shop, you can stay there all day without anyone complaining-as long as you buy something. In a park, you can sit, stand play and eat all day and maybe even sleep there.
        Your particular post reminded me of an article called "The Future of Public Space: Beyond Invented Streets and Reinvented Places" where Tridib Banerjee talked about "a steady
withering of the public realm, a trend recently exacerbated by a worldwide campaign for market liberalism." (Banerjee 9)There are less and less public places where one is encouraged to stay outside and engage in the built environment provided by the city, such as a park due to various economic changes. The fact that you were so discouraged to continue eating says to me that the function of the space and the effect it has on you is not one where you can sit and eat, but rather one that encourages you to skitter away and return to the private comfort of your home. The intersection of outdoor seating and a parking lot is just such a space.

Week 6 post: Sibley Love

This week I did go places...
But you won't be hearing about them in this blog post.
Instead I posted on Sara's blog about her connection between skid-row and Sibley's Mapping the Pure and the Defiled. I thought she made some great connections with the reading and had some great stories to boot.

 Here it is:

I was attracted to your blog post because of the story you told me as we left class one day; the one where that woman screamed all those obscenities to you. I thought it was a really interesting story and I wanted to see what the whole trip was like as a whole.

I’ve only been to the fashion district once but it was incredible impacting to me nonetheless. I felt like I was in a third world country; quite literally there were homeless people paving the sidewalks so most people had to walk in the streets to get from place to place. What slivers of sidewalks that were left attached themselves to the insides of storefronts where rack after rack of cheap, bulk cloth hung for people to “haggle” for—as you said.

I thought your comparison with rodeo drive was very interesting. I agree wholeheartedly with your comparison with Sibley’s Mapping the Pure and the Defiled. It hearkens back to a discussion we had in class where we talked about the construction of Beverly hills and how its one way in, one way out, uphill, sidewalk-less entrances are perfectly designed to keep out the poor and the homeless. Those with no cars cannot enter, and the proscenium-like archway separating Beverly Hills from the greater Westwood is intimidating in and of itself.

In the same way that city design in Beverly Hills contributes to social and class differentiation between the rich and the poor. The city in between west L.A. and Rodeo drive is a maze of inaccessible roadways on foot and access roads bisected by highways making on foot transportation between the two places almost impossible. Since there are no public services on Rodeo Dr. it wouldn’t make sense to go to West L.A. and stay there at risk of being profiled by the police strictures of affluent areas (granted you are a skit-row resident)

I really liked your post but I would have liked to see you go more in-depth with the Sibley article. More quotes would have been really nice and made your experience come full circle for me with the article. Also, the use of “colored” for describing African-Americans (or blacks as it were) offended me slightly. I would suggest choosing a different term of phrase and sticking with it throughout your post. Especially when talking about the disenfranchised and the “otherized”, using words like that can get problematic.

Week 5 Post: Jane Jacobs, You Were Right

           I got into a car accident one winter while I was visiting my family in Honolulu. I was driving back from the airport in my dad's car (not going or coming from anywhere, It had to do with the logistics of shipping what is now my L.A. car from there to here and I needed to get back home somehow) when I got hit from behind by a young couple in what was obviously a brand new (still smelly) cherry red mustang convertible rental car. I guess the car behind them also stopped to late and so he (a old jolly man that might as well have been wearing a Greek fisherman hat to match his aloha shirt and white beard) also nicked his fender a little. Everyone was really agreeable about the whole situation and no one got rowdy. Papa fisherman told some anecdote about the mysteries of the wharf (as we were driving alongside the ocean near a developed pier) and promptly left with a smile because his car was the least damaged. The couple was from L.A. They were visiting Hawaii as they were in transition moving out of L.A. (I think to Oregon). I shared I was going to school in Westwood to which there was much shrugging and furrowing and laughing, and since it took so long for the police to arrive, we got to exchanging "things to do" in our respective homes. I told them about all the ramen places I grew up on, the most beautiful spots that weren't in Waikiki (a common consumer-heavy destination for tourists that is notorious for disenchanting people with the whole "island experience") and they shared with me some spots that were unlike Westwood. They told me about a couple places, but the one that stuck out to me was "Los Feliz". They talked highly of it and told me it was one of the few places in L.A where you can actually walk.
               So that is where I went. I figured what better place to do my "walking" portion of the blog than a place reputed by real-life L.A.-ites for it's walking (Also I had never been there before until this past weekend so it was all the more exiting.)

            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.

This is juan juan, a salon (lol) in Beverly Hills. I drive past it whenever I'm coming from the Wiltern and I can't help but notice how much it looks like a castle. The door is basically set inside of a stone wall and all the windows are mirrored or are built as thin slats to minimize visibility inside. This says a couple things to me: The clientele don't want the outside coming inside; they want to escape from the outside world while they get a makeover and can emerge confident and proud. Also the salon is advertising to a specific type of person both affluent and entitled. Some salons or high fashion stores don't even have the purpose of the store outside (juan juan at least says it's a salon). The client must already know; have exclusive information about the establishment to enter in the first place. This trend of impersonal, monolithic businesses are everywhere in high-end areas where you must drive to reach them. The only stores in places like this are high-end shopping with the occasional coffee shop, but even now: do you see anyone on the street? Furthermore, you would think that there would be more people visible on the street since people obviously aren't driving from store to store (although they may). The only time I see this clientele emerge is when they are in the short transitory period from store to store and even then, most people I see with shopping bags hanging off their arms when they're alone are on their phones (another common way to broadcast that you are both disconnected and occupied with something else in public; that your attention is decidedly elsewhere).

 This is a bookstore in Los Feliz. The entire shopfront is a window, and it clearly displays what it is to the passers-by on the sidewalk. There is no attempt to screen anyone by their economic status (maybe aside from the word "fine" in the sign, but I think that just attaches to "harmony" in a sort of rustic way) and I don't think a man wearing a fine suit would be turned away necessarily. Unlike silver lake, I saw a great mix of both expensive and inexpensive establishments in Los Feliz, all advertising to the pedestrian. Most people I passed were not on their phones, but talking to someone else or just enjoying the day. In Silver Lake, I feel that the transition from seedy to ironically hip and young is causing a certain put-togetherness to be discouraged in most businesses-that is to say that, if I were in a pizza place wearing a suit in silver lake, I might feel uncomfortable.

Perhaps the coolest happening in Los Feliz for me was my inexplicable holing-up in a cafe for around two hours. I was kind of appalled that I spent so much time there, but then again, they did have a menu with twenty kinds of milkshakes and some great coffee. It was called the Bourgeois Pig and I imagine some people have heard of it but this was of interest to me... I don't feel like I can spend much time inside of businesses comfortably in L.A. but I felt very at home here.

There was a lounge in the back modelled to look like a forest and it was here my friend Lanelle and I sat and drank coffee for almost two hours. I felt an immense solidarity here and all the while knew that outside people were walking around and looking for the best place to do exactly what we were doing. I didn't feel pressured to buy seventy things or that my choice would eventually come to be something I regretted buying. Most of the time I spent there was talking and hanging out in the awesome covel that was covered in the writing of a thousand cafe patrons. Here are some pictures of the inside.

My friend Lanelle (actually a candid picture, but it looks like she's posing for her presidential campaign poster).

David Bowie Dust

Praise Him! NO-Fuck You. (on a bed of peace sign)

Words of Wisdom from Mike.

Cool Cork Thingey

 Self Explanatory

Someone drew this on a napkin before we got there and Lanelle took it.







The rest of the cafe I took as a representation of the entire area. I felt the same way even after I walked a couple miles to another street where we went to a great Italian-French fusion restaurant (with less pretense than it sounds like it has) and a great bar called-

 -Dresden cafe that has live blues every Sunday.

        Basically what I found in Los Feliz was a prime example of what Jane Jacobs talks about in a chapter of her book "Death and Life of Great American Cities" entitled "Uses of Sidewalks: Safety".
            She holds that when there are people on the streets, on the sidewalks the general provide a sense of community policing, where rates of crime in areas where people are essentially hanging out on their stoops is remarkably lower than places where there are no residential pockets. She calls this "eyes on the street." With this in mind, Los Feliz feels safer, more welcoming, more enterprising and un-manipulative compared to places like the shopping district of Rodeo Drive where in the dead of night homeless people gather and very few people walk around. If there is a place where no one walks, that place is more dangerous (according to Jacobs) and less welcoming than places where people walk all the time and from what it seemed like, Los Feliz had a wonderful night life.

Small streets and sidewalks for walking.

            Los Feliz also had trees which is a rare sight for L.A. and the whole outside/public arena was generally more looked after and put together than the downtowns and shopping districts like Market st in San Fransisco do at night, or during the day for that matter. Because Los Feliz has such a rich walking culture, it is more comfortable to be outside of your car in, and in my opinion, better to explore in.






Some more photos of The Bourgeois Pig's interior (not inside the forest) in case any of you guys are interested.

Ooh!

Wow!

Like that mirror!

Sweet floor!

I love their color schemes. The blue with red lights makes me happy.

Week 4 Post: Enclaves within Enclaves

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.