by Mike Madrid
Recently, I have become reacquainted with several people that I knew in high school. Some names that I have literally not thought about in thirty years have started popping up daily on my computer screen. Oh, did I mention that I have been reunited with these old school chums via Facebook.
Besides checking out people’s pictures to see how they’ve weathered the past decades, one of the interesting things has been the memories that have been stirred up. One group that several of my Facebook friends belong to is a discussion board about Serramonte Shopping Center. Just to give you some more context, I went to high school in Daly City, which is a suburb of San Francisco. Serramonte was the big shopping mall in our town.
Scanning over the postings on the Serramonte discussion board, I noticed a couple of things. First off, people remembered a LOT more about that old shopping mall than I did, and they were nostalgic about it. And there were a lot of them. Over 800 members. They fondly recalled a certain toy store, the old pet shop, and the pizza slices at the QFI market. They all waxed on about Farrell’s ice cream parlor, which was the hot place to have your birthday party. For many people, this shopping mall was the center of their social life, and held cherished memories.
During my high school days, I didn’t have much of a social life. When my classmates were wandering the mall after school, I was at home, devoting my precious hours of freedom to reading comic books, drawing, watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and old movies, and trying to cultivate my future persona. I didn’t have time to waste hanging out, and the mall already held no fascination for me. I realize now that at that tender age, I was already a snob.
I am a city snob. I admit it. I live in the city, I like living in the city. When I travel, I prefer to visit cities–New York, Rome, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Hong Kong. And I like to shop in cities. When I was going to high school, the city was a short 20 minute subway ride away. The mall held no appeal to me, because I could go to the city and hang out and shop. It was just as Petula Clark had promised. Everything seemed more exciting, sophisticated, and adult downtown. I felt like it was a world away from being trapped in a sterile mall environment.
While my high school friends were enjoying their glory days of youth at the mall, I was already thinking about what my future life would be like in the city. I imagined that I’d have interesting friends that I’d meet in cafes to discuss art movies. I explored different neighborhoods and haunted comic book and used record stores, and those late 70’s shops that sold color Xerox postcards that were steeped in punk rock edginess. The nascent snob that I was already felt cooler than my classmates who were hanging around at the Orange Julius stand at Serramonte.
Thirty years later, I live in San Francisco. I have a view of the Transamerica Pyramid from my back window. My neighborhood is infinitely more congested than the spacious suburban streets where I grew up. I’m a five minute walk from my local shopping area. The guy who runs the copy shop, the lady at the bakery, and the owner of the corner grocery store all know me by name. The bartenders at my local bar know what my drink of choice is. And that makes me happy. It’s the kind of life that I wanted when I was in high school. And it’s one that my old classmates who live in the suburbs would no doubt think is inconvenient, uncomfortable, and old-fashioned.
Now when I visit a suburban mall, it’s a real novelty for me. It seems so far away from the world where I grew up, and it feels foreign to me now. That sameness that other people find comforting makes me a little uneasy, but I can take it in small doses. It seems strange to me that someone’s cherished memories will spring out of that manufactured environment. But, hey, whatever makes you happy.
I will admit to one guilty pleasure for which I will set my mall snobbery aside–an outlet mall. Better yet, a premium outlet mall. Because while I may be a snob, I’m probably a bigger cheapskate. And what can satisfy both of those traits more than finding a pair of expensive shoes for a cheap price, and wearing them to walk the city streets to meet a friend for a drink?