The Caffeinated Penguin

Posted By matt on November 22, 2003

Last night, I had dinner with Liz, and she said that she had to go to the pet store to get some kitty litter for Mikey, and she had to find a present for her sister-in-law's birthday. She asked if I wanted to come, and I told her that I would go wherever she was going to drive.

Of course, she's a sneaky woman, and she decided that since I said that, she'd drive to Providence place.

For those of you who aren't from around here, please allow me to describe this mall. It was billed in the local papers as the “high class mall” or, by critics, the “yuppie mall”. In all truth, it's not all that upscale. It's the stuff you'd expect in any regular mall – Banana Republic, Eddie Bauer, The Limited, Bath and Body works, etc. I suppose what makes it upscale is the fact that Nordstroms and Lord and Taylor replace the typical Filenes, JC Penney or Sears as the anchor stores, and there isn't an Old Navy. So, it's not like it's annoyingly blue-blooded rich folk annoying or anything, but it's of limited use to me because I don't shot at those stores much. I'm not into “high end” clothes. For work, I buy clothes wherever – from Wal-Mart to Filenes, but that is about as high end as I go. For not-work, I stick to cargo pants and T-Shirts, which means stuff like Old Navy. It's just not worth spending a lot of money on clothes, because I don't care that much. As far as the other stores in there, they're marginally useful; the stuff like Crate & Barrel and the Pottery Barn are nice, but between Wal-Mart's prices on the shit you don't care about the quality, and Kitchens, etc. and Bed Bath and Beyond for the stuff you do, you end up being able to do it cheaper, and the stores in Warwick are larger with more selection and inventory.

That was how unimpressed I was with the shops – they layout is downright horrible. Emerald Square Mall, in Attleboro, is a big box. Easy to find things, nice and open. This mall is all twisty and turny large groups of people spread out then have to bunch up again when you hit a choke point. The overhangs and shit on the ceiling stop you from being able to see stores until you're right on top of them.

On the plus side, I found some nifty bits:
The perfect tea kettle
The perfect T-Shirt
This one isn't bad either
Nifty lamps, box of 4 for $80. Probably el-cheapo, but they're lamps. Who cares.

Now, the only problem with the T-Shirts is that they're from Hot Topic. I've never been in Hot Topic before, merely heard the name and heard it made fun of. Now, I personally didn't have a problem with it, any more than I have a problem with any other trendy clothing store, but I see people's points. To be part of a “scene” in its infancy, then to have it exploited by some chain store where a portion of your identity is reduced to some drop down menu asking “What's your scene?”. Then, you see these little Yuppie children who get deposited on the steps of the mall by their mom's Lincoln Navigator decked out from head to toe in their punk scene Hot Topic gear.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with why the mall sucks, but has pretty much covered the mall itself.

Oh, it was crowded – that too.

Then there's the parking garage. To imagine this debacle, take everything you know about proper traffic flow and how people drive for the last, oh, well, since there have been cars, and toss it out the window. In fact, forget just ignoring it – if you actively apply knowledge of good parking garage design, then invert it, you have an approximation of how bad this is. For example:
- Make the turns at the corners so narrow that 2 cars cannot pass, yet traffic is supposed to flow both ways
- Make those corners blind
- Don't put in any stop signs or anything
- Have the in and out lanes switched around (you know, going up the parking garage is on the left, and down is on the right)
- But, have the traffic flow proceed in a semi-normal clockwise direction
- So that the up traffic has to turn in front of the people trying to head out, and the people heading out have to cross in front of them
- Then make all these corners blind
- And make you have to slalom between concrete pillars just to get in the right lane to hit the middle exit toll booth

Fucking stupid.

Now, the ride into the city is, of course, the same as it always is – you ride through this fucking ghetto and abandoned industrial shit, blowing by it at 55 like it doesn't matter. Then, you nearly get into an accident because the exit ramp you need is about 100 feet from an on ramp that is, of course, clogged with people trying to get on.

Cities. Why anyone wants to live in such a dirty place is beyond me.

Although, I've seen some okay cities – in the Midwest. But most of Providence is like fucking Trenton. It's a hole.

Category: LJ Import
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