Mall of America: The Mall is America
“America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
I.
Retuning from a week-long visit to St. Helen’s, Oregon, I’m staying in a chain hotel just over the river from the Portland Airport, a day ahead of an early morning flight to San Jose. The hotel is in my budget ($82, all-in, for the night), located next to the Vancouver Mall and near a transit center (I traveled the 35 miles to get here using only public transportation, and spent $2.80).
The hotel is a bit down on its luck and subtly beat-up. The room is clean but the mattress is saggy, more limp lasagna noodle than Tempur-Pedic. There is no bath mat provided for the shower, so I improvise with a hand towel. The door jamb wood is gashed, like someone forgot their room key and tried to gain entry with a crowbar.
The free breakfast buffet is noticeably lacking. No plates are provided. I have to use a cardboard cereal bowl as a plate for my bagel, and a plastic spoon to spread the cream cheese. There’s no protein on offer, mostly high-fructose sugar products, including generic Apple Jacks cereal, stored in bulk in large bags resembling dog food.
Yet as I looked around, I realize people are living out of this hotel, the same way millions of others are living out of their apartments, condos and single-family homes. A woman walks her dog, and the dog is wrapped in what looks like to be emerald-green scarf. A young father loads up his child in a stroller from a minivan, while a younger sibling trails behind. An elderly man limps into the breakfast room, using a cane, and helps his wife find the toaster for her bagel.
This is life in America, on a Friday morning in April. The tradesmen working construction left around 6 a.m. (and earlier), heading off to install sheetrock, bathroom fixtures and cabinetry. The day shift desk clerk arrives on her 400cc motorbike, while the night shift clerk heads home to her wife and children, who are still sleeping. A new six-pack bag of bagels is placed on the counter, and the single-serve vanilla coffee creamers are restocked.
At age 65, with both hips replaced, I can no longer reach down to clip my toenails. Yoga might help but I’m no downward dog in this life. I call up a nail salon inside the mall for a pedicure, and the Vietnamese woman who answers the phone tells me to come on over; they’re located right next to Macy’s.
III.
It’s a Friday, around 10:15 a.m. The giant mall is empty and enormous, floating like an anvil cloud above the former farmland north of the Columbia River, waiting to rain.
None of the retail stores are open yet, shuttered behind metal mesh grates. Every other store seems to be selling sports apparel or jewelry. Who shops here? Who buys all this merchandise?
Opened in August, 1977, the Vancouver Mall is 883,000 square feet of primo retail space.
To put this in relative terms, the Vancouver Mall is about the same size as Buckingham Palace (830,000 square feet), slightly smaller than Alcatraz (960,000 square feet), and just over half the size of The Pentagon (1,490,000 square feet).
The pedicure is a breeze. For $42 (including tip), I walk out of the nail place with perfect feet. The Vietnamese woman tells me she’s been in this location for twenty years, or about the same length of time I’ve been divorced. Time flies.
I encounter walkers on my way out of the mall, but that’s about it. A ghost town is more crowded.
In the food court, I spot a Men’s Bible Study in progress — at least fifteen guys in their 70’s. One man is hand-signing for another man across from him who is hearing-impaired. I’m wondering if they’re studying Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Chapter 5: You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another humbly in love (NIV)
For lunch, I pass on the obvious choice (Panda Express), and try Banderyky, the Ukrainian place, a one-off, not a chain, featuring banderyky, vanderyky and holubtsi. I order the combo meal and polish it off, and thank my server by saying Dyakuyu (thanks, Google Translate).
I can’t cook in my room, so I ordered a gyro to-go for dinner from “Sammy,” who arrived from Syria twenty years ago. Sammy speaks in Spanish to his grillman, confirming my“to-go” order versus “dine in.” I think back to my German immigrant great-great grandparents, who made a similar transition in Hudson, NY, interlopers and outcasts who installed stonework and opened a barber shop on Main Street, so that I could order my dinner effortlessly in a Washington food court.
I order the gyro, plus a pastry made from dates and nuts for my dessert while I watch a Law & Order marathon back in my hotel room, the original episodes with Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth.
Sammy and I become fast friends in this brief interaction, and he almost offers me a ride to the airport Saturday morning, to save me money on an Uber.
III.
The mall is America: Macy’s and the Vietnamese nail salon, Sephora and the Ukrainian place in the food court, J.C. Penney and Sammy, the gyro guy from Aleppo.
We have erected these giant monuments to our purchasing power that will one day become senior housing (the food court will become the cafeteria and the Hobby Lobby will become the craft room).
Contrary to my original bias, these malls are not vacuous or soulless. People work there. People shop there. Malls, for better or for worse, put food on the table. There’s more meaning there than you might realize.
There are acres of impervious surface here, which hardly helps the planet, but if fifteen senior men can gather and study the Book of Galatians freely in a mall food court on a Friday morning, I’m all for it.
