I tuned into 1035am this morning for some pre-breakfast junk food... and now I think I need some fillings.
They were broadcasting live from Coastlands in celebration of the malls fortieth birthday. Our national talk back station broadcasting from a fucking mall! Now maybe the absolute whorish-ness of this is down to individual taste. But c'mon, really? The live, chirpy hustle of consumerism in the background? Announcements of specials and sales every two minutes? This is the most poorly veiled attempt at mobilising an audience to buy I have witnessed. Coastlands is in incredibly poor shape. It is no doubt - visible even from its appearance - struggling financially. Could this have any relation to the number of ZB interviews with shop owners, security guards... the guy who handles Coastlands rent. "This is an important place, see? It's been here for forty years! Come buy!".
Sure Coastlands was the first indoor pig-fest in the Wellington area, but is this really where our priorities lie? Will there be a celebration when that consumer paradise Westfield Queensgate turns ten? And what exactly are we celebrating?
I understand that malls allow us to shop at seventy-five degrees for 363 days of the year, maybe this is something cool in Auckland. But not Wellington. Apart from the small town-centres, the entire Wellington region only has three 'malls': Porirua, Queensgate, and Coastlands. The Wellington CBD has none. We're not a mall city. Maybe we're a city of over-priced second hand clothes, under-performing sports teams, soy flat-whites, cultural capital, and as much short-term self-interest as any other city in the world, but a four-walled consumer hell-hole city we are not.
It's a deflating way to start the day.
Please leave the celebration of consumer culture in Devonport and Sylvia Park.
2 comments:
You must have been really grumpy for this to surprise you into ranthood.
I know those mornings.
OH, I remember those Saturday mornings trawling around Coastlands with Mum and Isobel and the week's shopping from Woolworths... yes, I remember them and can honestly say as a former Kapiti Coast resident that Coastlands mall can go fuck itself in a hole and then die painfully and then go to hell and repeat the whole experience for eternity for all I care. The place isn't just mediocre, it's actually actively eating the souls of Paraparaumu residents. Ugh.
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