Wednesday, July 25, 2001

Malled

I generally try to avoid shopping in malls; living for much of the early 90s with St. Louis' largest shopping center literally in my backyard made me lazy, and I had become comfortably accustomed to being able to walk to The Gap, Lord & Taylor and — most dangerously — the Garden Cafe, where a latte and a hour or two of people-watching consumed too much of my day.

I made a personal pact a couple of years ago to do all of my holiday buying in the city, eschewing the chains and department stores of the county for the funky boutiques and shops of the Central West End, South Grand and University City. This prohibition on the mainstream mercantile was so successful, I now seldom set foot in The Galleria or Crestwood Plaza or any of the other dozen or so essentially identical commercial monstrosities within a few minutes drive of my house.

Still, occasionally a time crunch or craving for cinnamon buns necessitates breaking my vow. Tonight was one such occasion, when I finally owned up to the need for new pants to accomodate my expanding waistline and had to make an emergency trip to Eddie Bauer.

On my first visit to the mall in many months, I made the following observations:

• There are 18 different places here at which it is possible to purchase a cellular phone or pager. I counted.
  
• In the corridor near the movie theatre (12 screens), there are three hair salons, two stores which sell nothing but earrings, two optometrists and an upscale makeup store. The mall directory does not refer to this as the "head care section", but it should.
  
• Two kiosks offer for sale something called "Space Age Ice Cream". Nowhere can I find a shop offering "Information Age Ice Cream".
  
• The local PBS station operated a store here called "Store of Knowledge" that sold educational videotapes, toys, books and trinkets. The Store of Knowledge has gone out of business, but Waldenbooks offers three entire racks of books "...for Dummies".
  
• Every game available in the video arcade requires the use of some kind of gun, except for Ms. Pac-Man who, in this day and age, should probably at least be carrying Mace.