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| You'll never see Crossgates the same again! |
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| jannah |
| 05/23/02 at 13:06:23 |
| Ok.. I was looking for a listing of the stores in xgates and check this out: weird gets weirder too if you go to this guys profiles Crossgates Mall: A Cultural Study Benjamin Polen The suburban dreamscape that has spawned a consumerist generation needs a feeding ground. In these times of peace and prosperity corporations have reaped the largest harvests. Some follow Barbara Kruger's mantra, "I shop therefore I am." Others come only for the bare necessities or the sales. Whether they are Yuppies at the Learning Store or ghetto-wannabes at Midtown, their paths have intertwined at Crossgates. Athenians had the Parthenon. Later, the Catholic Church built hundreds of cathedrals to inspire the awe of God. Now, Albany's own Crossgates Mall is poised to become the second largest self-contained shopping mall in America, the nation of malls. Modern life has climaxed in its creation of these shrines to capitalism. Even the most bare description of Crossgates Mall as a physical entity could not omit the word, "building." Thus so it is dependent on the principles of architecture, the medium's governing discipline. Every employee, visitor, and lost soul that wanders in is subjected to the same experience and whims of architects. Some very basic ancient tricks are indeed used. When one enters one notices a low ceiling in the vestibule and the low-ceilinged hallway that leads to the main concourse. The ceiling then rises sharply and highly, opening on to and past the second story shops, culminating in a glass skylight. This effect of a high ceiling was used by the ancient Greeks. Their temples always contained a pronaos, or ante-chamber. The ceiling in this room was always lower than that in the naos, where the altar to the god was kept. Thus when one entered the naos a feeling of awe at seeing the high ceiling would awash one. This trick was carried on to later times in cathedral design. One does not enter into any cathedral by walking directly into the main chamber. Instead a low ceilinged room greets worshipers, thus accenting the high ceilings of the awe-inspiring chamber. Modern times have witnessed the transformation of temples from houses of God to shrines of materialism. The skylight in Crossgates gives one that sense of awe and reverence. The concourse is open, bright, and hundreds of shoppers mill about. Sure, they each have their own credit card and list of gifts, but, at the same time, they are engaged in a communal experience. They are watching each other. They are being watched. The mall reverts to a tribal experience, or an emperor's courtyard. There is a very basic instinct and tendency in humans towards tribalism. The world over, civilization and society began by humans congregating with clans of their own family, breed, or race. By engaging in communal activities for the good of the tribe the basic fears and worries about life were quelled. One did not question the meaning or purpose of existence, nor fear a fate in the afterlife. By properly respecting ancestors, their blessings would be gotten. Further, when engulfed in a homogenous setting one sees a constant re-affirmation of actions and encouragement that they are doing "the right thing." Of course, tribalism is the root of nationalism and a trust in one's own tribe produced strong xenophobia. The ideal that one's tribal customs were the only right way (the only way known and understood) emerged. When one is in a mall there is a Jungian flashback to prehistoric times. We are hunters and gatherers once again. During a great sale the brutality with which we treat each other is comparable perhaps only to paleolithic times, before settlements when homo sapiens existed on the brink of starvation and survived at each other's expense. People watching is a definite part of the mall experience, especially around holiday times when they are packed. One sees others engaged in the same activity and rituals they are doing--shopping, schlepping, comparing, eating, greeting, meeting, etc. Consider the whole mall one large tribe or worship center, a Stonehenge perhaps. The tribe can be broken further down by what clan they belong to, ie: what store one shops at, what brand name one purchases. Perhaps Gap shoppers are, though subconsciously and they never would admit it, somehow suspicious of their counterparts who swear by Old Navy. They are almost the same, but just a bit different. Conversely, how does one feel when, while strolling through the mall, one sees someone wearing a shirt, sweater, sneakers, or shoes that one has recently made a proud purchase of. A sort of bond goes out between the two consumers as they think, "That one understands..." Teenagers, for whom the mall is a social haunt, are especially conscious of the experience. Who are they with? What are they wearing? Who did they see? Who did they talk to? Who did they ignore? The mall is the breeding ground for the next material-obsessed generation. Americans in particular are obsessed with their youth and many try to purchase what is considered "hot," "hip," or "in style." Pshaw- that any of these things can be found at a cookie-cutter mall in a white-bread suburban city! For even among the elite social circles in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles fashion is a constantly shifting game. The few places left in America that truly do have a sense of style are not about to be co-opted and branded. I do note, with displeasure, Giuliani's Disneyfication of New York City, and further, that there is now a Gap on St. Marks Place! So, while in the mall buying cool clothes a teenager might have a crisis. The teenager might suddenly question what the fuck s/he is doing here anyway?! What the hell are they doing with their life?! For these existential crises, s/he can find solace in Pink Floyd's The Wall, available for sale at the store of the same name. Which also has a TicketMaster outlet so s/he can purchase tickets for Woodstock XXX, only a three hour drive away. They come in many styles, those materialists. From Yuppies to welfare moms to soccer moms, there's no stopping them. Liberal, conservative, goth, punk, hippie, straight, gay, bi, unemployed, professional, all cry out, "Charge it!" Class is varied throughout the mall but some shops break it down. The Learning Store caters to education minded parents and gift-givers to children, while Kay-Bee toys takes on the lighter side of life. Midtown is for the faux-ghetto crowd, where you can get that red puffy Yankees jacket without trekking all the way down to 125th St. Let's not forget the Yuppie shuffle between The Museum Company and The Bombay Company, or New World Coffee. They shop at the train store for their overprivileged children while the kids play in the arcade off of the food court. There is a hippie store stocking incense and Phish t-shirts, for the fifteen year old who has it all. Structure, an upscale clothing store, likes to boast of its architectural refinements. Yet its employees would be hard pressed to name the order to which the columns they display belong (Ionic). Orange Julius excels at citrus refreshment, and, as they say, all roads lead to Crossgates. The reader can now get a first-hand look at a few profiles of the Crossgates Community. (Warning it has some language) Profiles : http://www.allenwood.org/essays/profilesincrossgates.html |
| Re: You'll never see Crossgates the same again! |
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| siddiqui |
| 05/23/02 at 13:12:39 |
| [slm] wow thats heavy arichtectural philosophy (or was it? ;)) that went straight over my head [slm] |
| Re: You'll never see Crossgates the same again! |
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| jannah |
| 05/27/02 at 02:32:19 |
| [wlm] I just thought his metaphor of a mall to a temple of worship really fascinating! With all this consumerism and materialism that seems to be taking over our lives, sometimes i wonder what we are really worshipping... |
| Re: You'll never see Crossgates the same again! |
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| mwishka |
| 05/27/02 at 18:04:14 |
| i easily admit i take almost everything too seriously, but i'm going to give in and comment on this article anyway..... it wasn't a cultural study by any strectch of the imagination, and i found it to be a very unpleasant, uncomfortable article sort of reviling all these "other" people, of whom the author was not one. his profiles were absolutely disrespectful of the young men he interviewed. i don't care how oblivious or silly or even crude they were, this guy just wanted to say "look at these peasant subhumans! hah! we (you and i) are so much better than them." this kind of attitude toward other people makes me feel sick. (i'm sorry to say it that way, but it does really turn my stomach and make me feel physical revulsion.) i don't even shop at crossgates mall (don't seem to need anything there and it's not convenient) but i would never revile people who do for any reason, especially not simply because they do (i.e., because they're not exactly the same as me). this guy sounds like he thinks where you live is who you are, that if you live in a "cool" place (by his definition) you're way cooler than someone who lives in an "un-cool" place. this is absurd, of course. and i hope he wasn't mistakenly implying that albany is a "white-bread suburban city". it's actually quite urban, historically and in its core identity, urban as new york city is urban. and hardly cookie-cutter -- this term can only apply to new cities and to what in florida are called subdivisions - i don't know what they're called here, they're the giant nearly self-contained neighborhoods built where the land is first razed, then select trees are replanted as identical houses are laid out in a symmetrical pattern spreading over as much as hundreds of acres. and with its demographic history, albany could hardly be called "white-bread". (it is surrounded by what have become suburban areas, but even those are mostly widely separated independently governed villages which had suburban sprawl fill in the gaps between them, sometimes including large cookie-cutter subdivisions. i'd call this trash writing, and i consider it in the way i consider trash art: cultural parasitism. something to keep away from so as not to let oneself fall into the sinkhole of misanthropy where i think this guy is stuck. i hope this guy wasn't paid to do what he did, but i suspect he was. i think i could have dealt with the article ok up to the end of the fifth paragraph, ending in the words the "emperor's courtyard". the only worthwhile things it had to say where said by then. i don't think it succeeded at creating the sense of mall as metaphor for a place of worship as much as it pointed out how successful humans have come to be at understanding their humanness well enough to be able to manipulate our material world, right down to our structures, to elicit certain emotional states, including feeling a sense of belonging or awe, within a particular defined space within a given structure . mwishka |
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