The mall as oasis

While living in the Mega-City one of the oases is the mall.

Malls have essentially taken the place of public parks. Many people come not so much to shop as to hang out in a cool place. The malls are particularly crowded on Sundays as people generally have the day off and like to go out as a family or with a group of friends. The bottom level of my favorite mall has a bumper car section which is usually open on Sundays and holidays with little kids screaming, squealing, and laughing as they bang around in the cars. Indulgent parents smiling from the outside of the ring seemingly oblivious to the sensory overload.

Malls in the first of my world sprawl horizontally, but here they soar vertically. My favorite mall is at least 8 stories high with an open center. Each floor is connected by slow-rise ramps making it like a corkscrew. It is possible to walk from the second floor all the way to the top without having to use the escalators. Of course it is faster to use the escalators but if you want a cool place for a walk this is ideal!

Several Sundays I met friends for lunch after church at the corkscrew mall. There are several restaurants and fast-food places all through the mall but on the very top floor is a food court with tables in the center and food stalls serving a wide variety of relatively inexpensive food ringing the outside. Several churches rent the auditoriums on the upper and bottom levels (as it can be extremely difficult to get building permits to build new churches). So many of those people also filled the eateries before or after their services. I did also shop a little as there were a couple of decent bookstores and a largish supermarket but I usually made sure I got a good walk in as well – up to the top and down twice!

Many if not all malls have a hotel and/or condominium tower connected to it. They tend to have a lot of higher end shops and boutiques but also an assortment of medium ranged goods and services and typically include a supermarket, pharmacies, hair salons, fitness centers, banks, and electronics. There are also seasonal "events" in the central area. These can be related to holidays, but can also include appearances of celebrities, promos, contests and the like. The picture at the right shows a cosmetics demo/promo taking place on the ground level.

There is another mall which is a bit closer to where I was staying, though harder to get to because it was located at the intersection of two major toll roads and was accessible only by crowded narrow service roads. That mall was fancier but I found the ambient quickly overwhelming. There are a lot of shiny surfaces, glass, mirrors, marble floors, and particularly harsh eye-hurting lights which had the impact on me of me wanting to get out of there as soon as possible. I mentioned it to the land lady  and she said she too felt the same way about that mall and so usually shopped at one further away.  I wonder if the mall owners have any idea.........