Page 123 - Purchasing Power Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

108 . Hemmed In and Shut Out

milieu it was designed to be from these children's point of view, at least in
some respects.
Malls are often compared to theme parks such as Disneyland (see es-
says in Sorkin 1992) in part because, like theme parks, malls feature a
carnivalesque atmosphere that is at once both controlled and Utopian.
Several recent megamalls, such as the Mall of America in Minnesota or
West Edmonton Mall in Canada (5.2 million square feet) actually con-
tain theme parks, further eliding these two forms that are at once archi-
tectural, social, and economic. When Tionna, Natalia, and Asia went to
the mall, they often used its spaces as their own kind of personal amuse-
ment center, going down the up escalators, and up the down ones, running
through public spaces loudly laughing and shouting, tailing cute boys like
easy-to-spot, giggly spies. When Macy's was still open, the second-floor
breezeway connecting the mall to the department store was a glass-
encased tunnel through which they could run, run-walk, gallop, shuffle,
or tumble. Macy's itself was a kind of playground, with its three floors,
numerous escalators, and accessible displays of electronics, jewelry, and
makeup. Excerpts of field notes from a shopping expedition taken short-
ly before Christmas in 1992 detail some typical activities in which these
kids engaged when visiting the mall:
Asia and Natalia lean over the second-floor railing throwing pennies
into the fountain on the mall's main floor below. Bunches of poinsettia
plants are set high upon wire pillars that rise up out of the fountain
and the brilliant red flowers seem to float in the air. By the edge of the
fountain is a cart whose proprietors are selling religious clocks and
metal, laser-etched images of saints and reproductions of the Last
Supper. Asia and Natalia decide to try to throw a coin down on top of
someone's head. They drop some pennies down. The coins miss the
unsuspecting person, who is minding the cart with the Last Supper re-
productions. The girls come running up to me, jumping, hopping, vi-
brating with the excitement and danger of what they have done. Then
they spot some cute boys and take off in close pursuit. I take off after
them.
They have lost the boys and decide to look for them in the Macy's
game section one floor up. They go up there, pretending to shop, look-
ing at electronic typewriters. The boys are not there. After a few min-
utes of playing and fiddling with electronic displays, Natalia says,
"Now we got to go boy huntin' again." As we are walking, Asia says,
"Miss Chin looks hype. All she got to do is lose the bags." Natalia,