Unbecoming Levity :: At the Mall...

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At the Mall...

by Abacquer on Wed 09 Feb 2005 07:06 PM EST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

I went to Burlington Mall for lunch today, while there I mused upon a number of different topics. Here's what I was thinking about...

Parking:
A few years ago Burlington Mall insulted its patrons by offering valet parking. You might wonder how that was an insult, basically they roped off the best parking spaces in a huge section near the mall entrance, setting aside those for valet parking only. If you wanted to park near the entrance you had to pay and give some kid your keys to park your car. Which is freaking annoying considering (a) the spots they roped off were the best ones, (b) they were free of charge for years and suddenly you had to start paying for them, and (c) if your car is being parked for you, why the hell does it have to be near the entrance? Since somebody is going to go get it for you, they can park it far from the entrance.

This pissed me off royally, and appeared to simply be a scam to make more money, and to make the mall seem more "upscale" (read: snooty). So I refused to use the service and made do with parking far from the mall. It wasn't that I couldn't afford it, it was that I found it insulting. Most people I discussed it with seemed to feel the same way, so I figured it would wither on the vine and eventually be discontinued.

Just for kicks I decided to see if the parking spaces in front of the mall were open again. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were. Good. About goddam time, too. You're just a MALL, Burlington Mall, not the Ritz Carlton.

Riding the Escalator:
Riding the escalator is weird. If you run up or down the escalator, it's a little disconcerting how fast you are actually moving since your speed is added to that of the stairs.

Riding an escalator is sort of like riding an elevator, but if you are going down you're looking over the head of the person in front of you, and if you're going up you're about eye-level with some portion of their backside.

Today I was unfortunately stuck behind a pretty young lady in tight jeans. It just worked out that I was eye-level with her fanny when I got on the escalator. Mixed blessings! Fun to look at but looking might offend, so I ended up feeling awkward, looking everywhere else and not at all enjoying my escalator ride.

Food Court:
Is it just me or has the Burlington Mall Food Court gone downhill? Maybe it's just that the Japanese place is gone. They had pretty good lunch there. The bourbon chicken at the Cajun place just isn't as good.

Oh brother here comes someone sticking a food sample in my face. I try to avoid them but they choose to ignore my body language (deliberately looking away, turning slightly away), and come right up to me anyway because they want me to buy from them. "No thank you."

I am preoccupied with a technical problem I am trying to solve at work and I so I have to repeat the questions they ask me at the cajun place. "What would you like?" "Hmmm what would I like?" "Do you want any sides with that?" "Hmmm do I want any sides with that?" "That's $5.20." "$5.20?" They probably thought I was on drugs or something.

Spencer's:
I took a quick glance in here to see if there was anything small I could grab for Patty as a surprise gift. I just don't understand how this shop manages to stay in business in so many malls. It's chock-full of potty-humor items and various sex-related items that most people I know wouldn't want to be caught dead buying.

Further, how can anyone with children in tow even walk in to the place? You can't walk 3 feet without seeing items prominently displayed that are innapropriate for kids. In convenience stores they make you put the kinky magazines behind the counter. At Spencer's the sex game with pictures of boobies and weiners is on prominent display.

As almost always, I leave Spencer's emptihanded. The only things I've ever bought (or considered buying) from Spencer's is lava lamps and statuettes of dragons. My kid likes both of those things too, but how do I get her in and out of Spencer's? Spencer's is fucked up.

Smokers:
When I left work to go to lunch, I walked past two women who were standing outside the office building next door chatting and smoking cigarettes. When I returned there were two different women standing in the same spot, also smoking cigarettes.

I worry about people who smoke. It is SO bad for you. I wonder how they get started. For the record I've never seen anything "cool" in smoking... and certainly nothing attractive. In fact, as a number of my male friends have agreed in the past, the moment a woman lights up, she drops wayyyyyyyy down the scale of attractiveness.

There's a reason nobody fantasizes about kissing an ashtray.

If you've ever looked at those on-line "match-making" sites, most of them include a "smoker/nonsmoker" checkbox. I dated a girl who smoked for awhile and I can appreciate why people need to get that out of the way first. "I smell bad, taste bad, leave dirty ashtrays everywhere, am a fire hazard, and I am prone to chronic illness. Seeking a similarly smelly, yucky, dirty, fiery, sick man for meaningful relationship."

It struck me as funny as I walked into work, that more than once during lunch my worries have centered around women with "hot butts".

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Re: At the Mall...

by plracing on Thu 10 Feb 2005 05:09 AM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Hey Chuck,

I've run into a problem like the one you had on the escalator many times over the years. Sometimes you're not looking at someone, you're just looking and they happen to be where you are looking, but, it seems as if you are staring at them, and it makes for an uncomfortable situation when it shouldn't be.

I'm as non PC as they come, but I try to be reasonable, I won't keep staring at some woman just because "I was looking that way first, too bad". I feel your pain though, even an innocent look ahead into a nice butt makes you feel like you're doing something horribly wrong when you're not...

Tom

PS About your thoughts on smoking and women who smoke, right on! Could not agree more!

Re: At the Mall...

by Maggie on Thu 10 Feb 2005 07:33 AM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Well, the whole elevator story amuses me, because I'm so short that there are people whose butts I'm staring into on level ground!

And usually it's not a pretty view.

I was really disappointed one year to find The Museum Company gone from the Burlington mall. I wonder if the store is completely defunct, or just gone from that mall.

When the girls were little, going to the mall was actually something to do on a lousy day. They'd smell candles in Yankee Candles, and they'd play in the play place, and they'd play with the trains at Learningsmith and Hammets (this was at the Emerald Square Mall), and we'd hit all the science stores. They'd have fun and I'd never spend a dime. Now all of the science and "learning" stores are gone. Fortunately, they're older. And I hardly ever hit a mall any more!

Re: At the Mall...

by Abacquer on Thu 10 Feb 2005 10:12 AM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Well, the whole elevator story amuses me, because I'm so short that there are people whose butts I'm staring into on level ground!

So riding up the escalator gives tall people the chance to see things from a short person's perspective and going down gives short people the chance to see things from a tall person's perspective? I wonder if escalators will be used for height-sensitivity training classes?

And usually it's not a pretty view.

Well that's probably a better situation to be in. It's easy to not look at someone or something that you find unappealing. It's much harder to avert your eyes from someone or something that is pleasant to look at.

...They'd have fun and I'd never spend a dime. Now all of the science and "learning" stores are gone...

I guess too many people were showing up, having fun, and not spending a dime. ;-P I too was bummed to see those stores leave the mall. But the mall is still a nice place to take my kid. She likes to browse and shop, and we walk together and chat and have lunch together. Pat had to work late the other night so Lynnea and I went to Panera Bread at the Searstown Mall in Leominster, had dinner, and then went shopping. She got Mulan II and then at Toys R Us we got some neat kits you use to build things out of magnets. I'll probably post something brief about those later.

Re: At the Mall...

by JPB on Thu 10 Feb 2005 12:52 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

I took a quick glance in here to see if there was anything small I could grab for Patty as a surprise gift. I just don't understand how this shop manages to stay in business in so many malls. It's chock-full of potty-humor items and various sex-related items [...]

Asked and answered.

So, when did the escalator become a ride? This will probably offend pretty much everybody because my observation is that nearly all people park their asses on the escalator and allow it to convey them to up to the heavens or down to the depths.

But an escalator is shaped like stairs for a couple of reasons. One is that it makes the thing continuous rather than batch-fed. The other is because it si a form of power stairs which allow you to increase your rate of stair ascention. Looking around, people's preferred rate of stair ascention is the default, or "zero personal effort applied."

I'm sure I can get a whole blog post out of this which will have the potential to offend as wide an audience as possible, but why, when I try to walk up the escalator do I always get stuck abotu 3 steps into my trip behind some incredibly physically un-taxed looking people? Would it kill these people to either walk up the stairs or move out of the way so that those of us who don't want to die prematurely of heart attacks can get a wee bit of exercise AND get to our destination a little more efficiently?

I've got an idea. How about malls install machines in their food courts which chew the food FOR you? Isn't that special?

We didn't evolve legs so that we could more efficiently stand on escalators.

Re: Re: At the Mall...

by Abacquer on Thu 10 Feb 2005 01:56 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

So, when did the escalator become a ride?

It becomes a ride the moment you are stuck behind someone who is not moving, like I was. As long as you're stuck there is it wrong to enjoy the ride?

Given my druthers I'd rather walk up and down the escalator just like stairs. But not run... I just feel like I'm going too fast on an escalator if I hurry up or down it. Too freeky.

But you're right, most people treat the escalator like an elevator. Step on and it will take you where you want to go. The Burlington mall has escalators, elevators, AND stairs. So if you are walking the mall for exercise, there are ways you can do it without being stuck behind a person who has decided they would like to rest on the escalator and let it carry them up or down. I think most malls that offer escalators also offer stairs.

On the matter of exercise though, since you've got to walk all over the place in the mall, and malls tend to be very big requiring a lot of walking, it seems unlikely to me that "riding" the escalator as opposed to "climbing" it makes much of a health impact. If two people walk a half mile and one of them climbs a single flight of stairs in the process, are the health benefits drastically different?

Now if the mall had moving walkways that you stood around on that would be another matter entirely.

Re: Re: Re: At the Mall...

by JPB on Thu 10 Feb 2005 02:26 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

The Providence Place Mall has no stairs, and the Galleria removed theirs years ago. Emerald Square still has them, I think. When I mall has stairs, and they are between me and my destination, I will trot up them.

The Emerald Square Mall stairs ad spiral-ish. Try moving up them at greater than a snail's pace and you'll find you're behind someone who looks like htey've never encountered stairs before. They're using the stairs because they're too lazy to walk over to the escalator. ;-)

Climbing stairs is a substantially different kind of exertion than walking, btw. Uses different muscles and requires a raising of the limbs which requires more effort by the heart. It is an excellent form of exercise.

Aside from the exercise angle, if I'm trying to get from point A to point B, an escalator is an odd place to suddenly take a rest. If I wanted a rest, I'd sit down. No, I'm trying to get from here to there, and I like walking and don't mind the stairs.

Re: Re: Re: Re: At the Mall...

by Maggie on Thu 10 Feb 2005 05:58 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

You know, in defense of the people on the stairs at the ESM, they're scary. A smallish person like me gets the sensation that she might fall through them. I'll bet they're terrifying for kids.

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