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Public spanking, public reading

The old Emporium Rotunda reflected in the new Bloomingdale's building floor.

I found myself at the mall, no, at two separate malls last week. The first was your standard-issue suburban-type mall. You know what the worst thing about malls is for me? It's not the blandness, the homogeneity, the obnoxious packs of teenagers, or the horrible music, although those things do tend to keep me away from indoor shopping centers. No, it's the food. The food smells in particular. That food-court smell is sickening and yet somehow enticing.

I have a particularly hard time walking by a Mrs. Fields (or Chocolate Chip Cookie Company, or whatever -- there's one at every mall). As much as I know that industrial chocolate-chip cookies are full of chemicals and trans fats and are horribly bad and obscenely high in calories, I have a weakness for them. Especially the ones that are sandwiched around a glob of shortening-based "buttercream" frosting. Oh lordy. That is truly fat and sugar whipped into its most sinister form.

So the other day as I started to pick up the devilish chocolate-chip-and-crisco aroma, I promised myself that if I could pass by without stopping to indulge, I'd treat myself to a chair massage at the other end of the mall. I walked and averted my eyes and tried not to inhale through my nose as I made my way to the massage chairs.

The massage, billed as offering "the magic of acupressure," was sort of relaxing and sort of alarming. It contained equal parts gentle, soothing strokes and invigorating pounding and slapping, like you might see a trainer applying to a boxer in a movie from the 50s. The slapping actually felt pretty good, but I also found it oddly hilarious that I was getting my butt and thighs smacked by a stranger in public while I listened to smooth jazz.

The second mall was lightyears away. The old Emporium department store on Market in San Francisco has been closed down and boarded up for years, sort of a blight right in the middle of a high-end shopping area. A few months back it reopened as an extension of the shopping center next door, with a Bloomingdale's, a flock of glitzy boutiques, and a movie theater.

I went to a movie there with a friend on Friday. On our way up to the theater I was surprised and pleased to see that a huge open space right under the Emporium's beautifully restored glass rotunda was furnished as a reading area. This was not just a boyfriend-and-husband's waiting area, but a comfy place to settle in. Everyone there was reading! There was no smooth jazz, just the faint rustle of pages turning and distant noises of shoppers wandering about.

When we came out of the movie, I found a comfy chair and spent the rest of the afternoon reading. That's something I never expected to do at a mall.

January 18, 2007 12:21 PM