Malls Unsung Heroes
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This phone booth closed shop mid-March when most of
the major retail stores had already shut down.
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Online shopping preceded the virus and forced some stores to go out of business. You saw a few CLOSING DOWN signs at your local mall in 2019, before and after Christmas.
An anchor store is a store that has guaranteed business, like a grocery chain. People buy food everyday. Need a cellphone? They buy it at the mall. Back to school clothes for the kids? They buy them at the mall, but they made the trip primarily to buy food.
The shopping mall is a commercial space period. It exists to make money for tenants and social gratification for shoppers. We feel better after buying something. The fact that the new shoes and jewellery will not make the problem with our marriage or boss go away, is another story.Enter COVID-19. Shopping malls close their doors because of their volume. They attract many people and that makes coronavirus happy, spreading its wings.
Malls as the Village Green
However, shopping malls are also community centers. We go there to mingle with the world, walk around without buying anything, look at clothes we can never afford in a lifetime and have a cup of coffee with elderly friends from the Philippine, Caribbean, China, Japan or Africa.
You see, we came to Canada and the U.S. to help our kids with babysitting, while both parents worked. Our grandchildren grew up, love video games or are active in social media, so we have become redundant. We are a burden to our kids, so they drop us off at the mall and collect us later, when they leave work.
Shopping malls are also fitness centers. People walk briskly from one end of the mall to the other. It is winter in Canada so they can't take walks outside. They do it inside the mall.
It is very hard for people in Africa and Asia to understand mall walking because they wake up in the morning and do Tai Chi with neighbors, go to the market for their petty trading, work in their farms, volunteer in temples, churches and social clubs. They have a life independent of their grandchildren, unlike their friends who have become redundant in Canada and the U.S.
The shopping mall is a rehabilitation centre. COVID-19 has closed shopping malls which means people in wheelchairs cannot enjoy a day out from mental and disability institutions.
You cannot miss them because they are always accompanied by workers that help them with drinking their juice and wiping their mouths. They wheel them around the mall, pointing trinkets we buy with our credit cards.
The mall is a commercial center so its community aspect must take a back seat. We must contain the virus, so high volume places must shut down. We do not expect the government to keep shopping malls open because they are not essential services, for the majority and healthy.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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