At the Mall
It's gotten a little chilly lately, and our apartment, for all its shiny newness, doesn't have heat. I think it's the rare apartment in Cape Town that does have central heat, actually. So over the last several days, Katie and I went out and bought a little space heater and a bunch of sweaters in a series of trips to the mall.
We can't seem to stay away from the mall, truth be told. That's where we went today, and yesterday, and Friday. And Wednesday. And Tuesday. And last Sunday. Maybe it's a lack of knowing where else to go that leads us back there so often, but I don't think so. The malls are always full of (usually white) South Africans, and you can do your grocery shopping and your book buying and fine dining there, so I think it's just where people go.
And the malls are NICE, too. The first one that shocked us was out in Constantia, the fancy suburb that makes all the other fancy suburbs feel bad about themselves. It was quite pleasant, but small. It was just a warm up. Our next stop was the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, which is like San Francisco's Pier 39 in that it's a major tourist destination, but now that the tourists have all gone home for the season, it's still crowded with local shoppers. We keep going back there too, despite warnings from a well-intentioned friend of mine who wrote up a city-wide guide of all the places to eat, shop and hang out. She topped her guide with a caveat about what was missing:
“WARNING: None of this stuff is located in the Waterfront because I hate the Waterfront,” she wrote.
“It is super touristy, overpriced, and overrated for what it is. While I recognize at some point you may have to or (god forbid), want to visit the Waterfront, you are going to have to do it without my help as I refuse to enable anyone who wants to spend time there. You will thank me for this some day.”
Sorry, Carly. We keep going back. I mean, there's TWO movie theaters. And a fantastic kitchen-and-curtains store called @Home that makes Katie drool.
We're dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers. We're not mall people. Not back home, anyway. Malls mean you're consuming the test-marketed, safe and easy stuff from the national chains. There's no sense of discovery, and it takes all the fun out of things. Right? Right?
Lately, we've found yet another one, a four-story spectacular that's closer to where we live. I think it's called Cavendish. This thing is sparkly and shiny and new and always seems just about ready to burst from all the people inside, and it takes the very Americanized version of the mall and pushes it up a notch. I mean, there's a concierge. Even if you're a mall-skeptic, you could appreciate the outlet of a small chain that markets the cutting-edge designs from young South African fashion designers. There's gourmet food. And another @Home.
Katie and I have speculated that the reason South Africans go to malls is because malls are controlled and well-guarded, and we think people here are always unnecessarily convinced that they're going to get shot or stabbed or something. The shoppers are always disproportionately white and Indian compared to the actual population of the country (though, sadly, probably representative of the income distribution), and the parking is also safe. The whole thing is sanitized.
Outside the Cavendish mall is a long street full of local merchants, where it's loud and just a little bit dirty, and that's where we managed to acquire all of our sparse furniture collection. But now when we try to think of where we need to go to get all the other little stuff we require, we always think of the malls.
We didn't realize how bad we were getting until we stopped at the Mother of All Malls for the first time last weekend. This one is far away from where we live, but it was on the way home from the Winelands, where we had gone for some research for a travel story I'm writing. We actually got lost inside this thing. It had a whole amusement park just outside. It was so large that it couldn't settle for just one architectural theme. It had medieval-looking stuff in one part, and an art nouveau wing, and a lot of plain old gigantism elsewhere. It was called Canal Walk, but the one thing we didn't see was a canal. Still, it wouldn't have surprised me to see one running down the middle of one of the wings of shops.
After getting lost, and shoved, and lost again, and hiking for 10 minutes to get back to the car, we decided we were never going back to that particular venue. It was the most American thing we'd seen here yet, the mall to the nth degree, and it cured any longing for home that I might have been feeling.
We can't seem to stay away from the mall, truth be told. That's where we went today, and yesterday, and Friday. And Wednesday. And Tuesday. And last Sunday. Maybe it's a lack of knowing where else to go that leads us back there so often, but I don't think so. The malls are always full of (usually white) South Africans, and you can do your grocery shopping and your book buying and fine dining there, so I think it's just where people go.
And the malls are NICE, too. The first one that shocked us was out in Constantia, the fancy suburb that makes all the other fancy suburbs feel bad about themselves. It was quite pleasant, but small. It was just a warm up. Our next stop was the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, which is like San Francisco's Pier 39 in that it's a major tourist destination, but now that the tourists have all gone home for the season, it's still crowded with local shoppers. We keep going back there too, despite warnings from a well-intentioned friend of mine who wrote up a city-wide guide of all the places to eat, shop and hang out. She topped her guide with a caveat about what was missing:
“WARNING: None of this stuff is located in the Waterfront because I hate the Waterfront,” she wrote.
“It is super touristy, overpriced, and overrated for what it is. While I recognize at some point you may have to or (god forbid), want to visit the Waterfront, you are going to have to do it without my help as I refuse to enable anyone who wants to spend time there. You will thank me for this some day.”
Sorry, Carly. We keep going back. I mean, there's TWO movie theaters. And a fantastic kitchen-and-curtains store called @Home that makes Katie drool.
We're dyed-in-the-wool New Yorkers. We're not mall people. Not back home, anyway. Malls mean you're consuming the test-marketed, safe and easy stuff from the national chains. There's no sense of discovery, and it takes all the fun out of things. Right? Right?
Lately, we've found yet another one, a four-story spectacular that's closer to where we live. I think it's called Cavendish. This thing is sparkly and shiny and new and always seems just about ready to burst from all the people inside, and it takes the very Americanized version of the mall and pushes it up a notch. I mean, there's a concierge. Even if you're a mall-skeptic, you could appreciate the outlet of a small chain that markets the cutting-edge designs from young South African fashion designers. There's gourmet food. And another @Home.
Katie and I have speculated that the reason South Africans go to malls is because malls are controlled and well-guarded, and we think people here are always unnecessarily convinced that they're going to get shot or stabbed or something. The shoppers are always disproportionately white and Indian compared to the actual population of the country (though, sadly, probably representative of the income distribution), and the parking is also safe. The whole thing is sanitized.
Outside the Cavendish mall is a long street full of local merchants, where it's loud and just a little bit dirty, and that's where we managed to acquire all of our sparse furniture collection. But now when we try to think of where we need to go to get all the other little stuff we require, we always think of the malls.
We didn't realize how bad we were getting until we stopped at the Mother of All Malls for the first time last weekend. This one is far away from where we live, but it was on the way home from the Winelands, where we had gone for some research for a travel story I'm writing. We actually got lost inside this thing. It had a whole amusement park just outside. It was so large that it couldn't settle for just one architectural theme. It had medieval-looking stuff in one part, and an art nouveau wing, and a lot of plain old gigantism elsewhere. It was called Canal Walk, but the one thing we didn't see was a canal. Still, it wouldn't have surprised me to see one running down the middle of one of the wings of shops.
After getting lost, and shoved, and lost again, and hiking for 10 minutes to get back to the car, we decided we were never going back to that particular venue. It was the most American thing we'd seen here yet, the mall to the nth degree, and it cured any longing for home that I might have been feeling.
posted by Erik at 11:13 pm
1 Comments:
I am cracking up laughing at 2:47am. No wonder you are a journalist. What do your curtains look like, Katie? I leave for my flight in 3 hours and I haven't even finished packing. This is what happens when you start packing less then 24 hours before your flight... send me a postcard! What's your address by the way?
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