#474 Shopping Maul

Someone suggested we sell tickets for this fundraiser at the new shopping center that’s opened up at the eastern gateway to Lacey. I went out there and agreed that they do have a lot of traffic, which theoretically should be exploitable. Unfortunately, getting something out of the traffic was about as frustrating as trying to swallow food with your armpit. Because this is one of the newest aberrations in urban planning, the inverted mall, and it has no central focal point. You know the ones. Anchored by big box stores on the perimeter of a huge parking lot. A small strip mall with national small box chains that butts up against the street. And by butts, I mean butts, because the backside of every store, um, faces the street while the front of the store faces the forty acres of parking lot. The city has obviously bought into the notion that people are going to park once like they do at a regular mall and hoof it from store to store. Hope is a marvelous thing. And usually an exercise in self-abuse. I suggest the urban planners actually spend a day in the giant shared parking lot to disabuse themselves of this notion. The fact is, Joe Blow, Mrs. Blow and their squalling kids first pull up and park in the neighborhood of Costco, elbowing aside Mr. and Mrs. Elderly for a cart on the way in. Then, after they’ve loaded up on frozen mini pizzas in the sample aisle, they come out, hop in their Minivan and drive across the parking lot to the ice cream place. In the process cutting off Mr. Redneck in his big truck, who’s racing across the parking lot from Home Depot on his way to the sale on bullets and camis at the big box sporting goods store. After awhile they all converge at and fight over the one parking slot left out in front of the Chinese buffet. This new inverted mall urban planning strategy sure is saving a lot of gas and cutting back on that whole global warming thing isn’t it? Somebody ought to invent a place where people could park once and stroll from store to store in an enclosed and weatherproof area. Nah, too farfetched. And really, we don’t have any weather here…
America, ya gotta love it