What have you done to Southcenter Mall?

[elfs]

For the past year and a half the big shopping mall near my house has been under renovation. Omaha and I went in yesterday to take a look. What have they done to my mall?

It's twice as big as it used to be, completely disorienting anyone familiar with the old straight, linear Southcenter. The new center has gentle curves in the walkway, thus making it hard for you to know how far away you are from any of the exits or entrances. It has one of those bigger foodcourts with distributed cooking kiosks rather than the "in the round" layout it used to have. It's also much more upscale, with faux-marble floors and columns and all that. They apparently attracted higher-end stores to this new section.

The restrooms have these weird air-driven driers for your hands. It's not like those hot-air blowdriers of yesteryear. Instead, you put your hands into the device, and as you slowly pull them out jets of air, so powerful as to feel almost solid, squeegee the air off your hands. Weird. I could feel my skin aging.

Don't they understand that South King County isn't like Bellevue? We're a bit downscale down here. The designers of the new mall apparently don't. This section has been open exactly two days and already one of the no-touch soap dispensors in the restroom has been torn off.

Anyway, I continue to be discouraged.

Comments

[davidlevine]

already one of the no-touch soap dispensors in the restroom has been torn off.

Obviously whoever tore it off didn't follow the instruction "Don't Touch."

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

Must have been the Dyson Air Blade hand dryer... I saw one in Tokyo last year, and have started seeing commercials for them here in the States in the last few weeks.

Yeah... same "Dyson" with the popular vacuum technology.

[solarbird]

High-velocity-air hand dryers were all over the place where I went in Japan. I loved 'em. I did not particularly feel anything along the lines of my skin aging tho'. ^_^

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

The U-Village Blue C Sushi has them or something similar. I found sticking my hands into a glowing red slot a bit disconcerting.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I first encountered them in an airport a few months ago. They're kind of neat, but it didn't quite dry my hands fully and I still prefer paper towels. I know that makes me a bad person, but paper towels have other uses - like wetting them and washing my face and (shaved) head.

[darrelx.livejournal.com]

...and for grabbing the door handle so your freshly cleaned hands don't get all kinds of germs back on them as you leave the bathroom.

[lucky-otter.livejournal.com]

I always worry that those airblade hand dryers are going to cut my hands off. In the post-apocalyptic world their visual designers are living in, they probably would.

[urox.livejournal.com]

Southcenter was VERY ghetto (in the sense that everyone was wearing clean clothing and looked washed, but the gang vibe and color was everywhere) the last time I was there (which was at least a couple years ago) and made me awfully sad that it had changed from how I'd grown up. My guess is they're trying to gentrify the area.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Yah when I was growing up in the area (20-25 years ago) Seatac Mall was the hangout for preteen mall rats, but Southcenter was where the upper middle class went. It now bears absolutely no resemblance to the glamorous mall I had the privilege to enter 3 whole times back then. I was last in there a couple months ago and it just felt like an old mall. The surrounding areas of sidewalk malls and such are more youthful and colorful. I don't really get the ghetto vibe though. There's alot of kids around, but it doesn't feel gang-like to me.