July 17, 2002

  • I’m in Houston again. It’s a nice place to live if you’re a single-occupant vehicle. If you’re a person, it rather sucks.


    On the way back to Houston from New Braunfels, I stopped off at a place called the Katy Mills Mall, in Katy, TX. Katy is about 20-30 miles west of downtown Houston on I-10, and the west side of Houston is developing rapidly. The big city is on the verge of swallowing Katy. So, natch, someone built a huge (I mean HUGE) mall to attract business.

    The developers of Katy Mills mall have taken a cue from Douglas Adams. The doors talk to you when you go through them. You’ll recall (or maybe you won’t) that in Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,’ the doors on a certain space ship remind you that it was a pleasure for them to have served you. The doors at the mall say this:

    “You are at exit two, neighborhood two, sponsored by Memorial Hospital.”

    These doors have sponsors. They are ADVERTISEMENTS. The entrance to a metaphorical NEIGHBORHOOD is an ADVERTISEMENT. Forget for a moment the absurdity of a door that tells you where you are, because that’s not such a bad idea, really. Get it through to your mind that the entrance TO A MALL is SPONSORED.

    I’m not easily confused by malls. I get overwhelmed, but I understand the layout without looking at map, through some eerie process of intuitive reverse engineering osmosis. But this mall confused me.

    There were giant screens suspended from the ceiling, and they were showing a rock band performing somewhere in the mall. I wandered around for a little while, through a couple of these ‘neighborhoods’ and a food court, and I never found the rock band. I would have to be content with mediated experience.

    The food court was nice. There was a decent bar/grill with a facade that looked like a cross between a New York walk-up and a decaying industrial-age factory. Attractive in the way that such fake things are attractive.

    Went into a bookstore called Books-A-Million! I’m not excited about the place; the name has an exclamation point in it. Noted their lousy selection of anything interesting, and noted their huge selection of crap. Got some magazines, including the new Technology Review, because I’m a sucker for a cover story that asks, “Why is software so bad?”

Comments (6)

  • one day, everything will have a sponsor…. and because of the amazing amount of stuff, advertising will subsequently become useless. if it hasn’t already.

  • Ew. I hate shopping malls. And ads.

  • I somehow found myself in a Books-A-Million! in Houston once. I felt really dirty afterwards.

  • Big chain bookstores are The Scourge of the Earth.

    But do you think I could get someone to sponsor my life? 

  • The doors in Hitchhiker’s were hilarious :D

    these aren’t! They’re getting on my nerves already… just imagine all the noise – people talking, doors talking… !! For all one knows, next the floor will say ‘ouch’ if u step on it too hard!!  ewww :(

  • I don’t mind the sponsors in the malls so much , it’s the ones in the elementary schools that bother me.

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