Why I Went to the Mall

I grew up in suburbia and have spent a non-trivial amount of time in malls—two things that, having escaped the orbits of, I aspire to avoid as much as possible. But the other week I took my car in for servicing, and, rather than breathing in that lurid admixture of new-car smell and old-car-salesman cologne, I opted to go to the Starbucks at the mall across the street.

The mall in question suffers the usual plight of its kin: long gone are the hordes of shoppers that stuffed its Gaps and Abercrombies in search of khakis and polos; these days, loneliness lingers like the scent of mothballs where there was once Cinnabon. Yet somehow, this particular mall hangs on and refuses to host its final clearance sale in the sky to become numbered among the ghost-malls of consumerism past. Which is perfect, because I really wanted a Starbucks.

Upon entering the mall this time, my first impression was the signature smell: instantly recognizable to anyone who's ever been to a mall, anywhere. Like car dealerships, hospitals, and Subway franchises, the smell is precise and unmistakable. But I'd never stopped to consider it before: just what is mall smell, exactly?

Like most people, I don't carry around a portable mass spectrometer, so I was unable to perform a scientific analysis; but I thought about it and decided that mall smell is...a complex volatile organic compound, composed of off-gassing synthetic rubber and assorted plastics from new footwear, handbags, pleather clothing, and the like; aromas from the sundry cultural novelty goods (e.g., Simpsons memorabilia, fake barf, lewd coffee mugs, and so on); potpourri (itself a complex compound that is indelibly linked, Pavlovian-style, to the suburban culture of my youth); something like cotton candy or candy apples; and, crucially, a pinch of the aforementioned linchpin: Cinnabon.

Satisfied with with my appraisal, I turned my mental powers to selecting my forthcoming beverage: a Pike Place, extra large, with extra room for extra milk. But when I arrived at the Starbucks I was sickened to discover that it had, sometime since my last car servicing appointment, succumbed to the retail singularity and was shuttered (pictured).

I panicked for a moment but then recovered, reasoning that there must be other cafés in the mall. So I proceeded to walk the entire length of the three long corridors, several times over, but to my consternation there was not a single café left standing. So, as a last resort, I went to the drug store and bought a bottled Starbucks Frappuccino, ascended to the steps to the food court on the second floor, selected a choice table from the rows-upon-rows of empty choice tables, sat down, popped the cap, sipped my hard-earned coffee, and contemplated the liminal space between cultural epochs in which I now sat. And while I never liked malls much to begin with, I felt a bit sad. But then I looked up from my bottle and something caught my attention: a store with actual customers in it.

But first let me flash back to a few months ago when I attended my nephew's twelfth birthday party. He had asked for, and received, a vinyl record player from his parents as his present. Vinyl, however improbable, is apparently back in the zeitgeist. (And moreover, it has been for some time now—I searched The Economist which has written about the vinyl resurgence for over a decade; for example, an article from 2011 states: "One common trend in many Western countries...is clear: vinyl is back.") But whether a new or ongoing phenomenon, the vinyl resurgence is, to me, simultaneously absurd and appealing. Absurd because it it were invented today, nobody would take it seriously. (Seriously, it hisses and pops and scratches and a dozen songs take up the area of a large pizza???)

But oh, the appeal! One of my favourite images from literature is from the prologue of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; the unnamed narrator basks in the incandescent light from a thousand bulbs burning on stolen power in his underground apartment-lair, while listening to Louis Armstrong on his phonograph:

...I listen to Louis while I have my favorite desert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound.

Just thinking of it makes me want to buy a record player. So I finished my coffee and walked over to—you guessed it, the record store.

I browsed the store's collection and took in the strange irony: situated in this forlorn mall—a fading cultural phenomenon that struggles daily for relevance in the age of e-commerce—one of the few interesting stores left was the one that one caters to a musical medium that should, logically speaking, be obsolete. But luckily not, because my nephew is graduating from grade six next month, and the place that sold the fake barf has apparently succumbed to the singularity. So, for his graduation gift, Bowie it is—on vinyl.