Purple Haze: 119th Street Town Center
Walking the streets of Dublin always brings back memories of the early days in Kansas City. I bought a pair of socks today, and it brought to mind a day I tried to buy socks in Kansas City. A day I recount when people in Ireland ask me about Kansas City.
Perhaps my most demoralizing of days. It seemed I had finally stumbled upon the method of measurement to determine the quality of a city as a city. Drove the dozen or so blocks - for there is no public transport that direction and on such a perfect day nobody walks - to the shopping experience called Town Center on the quaintly named 119th Street.
It no more resembles a town than an indoor mall does, and among many things it is devoid of, is a centre, but it was there I set out to look for socks. Purple socks.
Actually I was only looking for 1 purple sock, because it would be worn when my other foot was wearing a green sock, but I accepted that it was a pair of purple socks I would be buying.
The infinitely expansive parking lots had about 6,000 cars in them, yet in all the stores I managed to see only about 14 people. These stores were all mostly beside each other in arcades to encourage you to walk. So I walked. And despite the muzak being pumped out onto the fake streets where nobody else walked, I kept walking.
There were 500 stores selling designer furniture, knick knacks from around the globe, kitchenware of peculiar shapes, women’s underwear, and travel items. I struggled to find one single store that sold straighforward clothes. This was not good. Then a department store. These things sell everything. This was good. Money would be no object - I would buy the purple socks.
Their socks were the price I pay for pants when I treat myself. I hadn’t treated myself that way for at least 5 years. Thankfully, for my economic well-being, they had no purple socks - at least in the men’s section - so I didn’t treat myself that way then either.
Tried to find the women’s socks but every time I ventured near the women’s underwear section I found the attention from the sales staff too much. I retreated, at least encouraged that perhaps there might be another store in this major shopping area where I might be able to buy socks.
Not all the stores were joined together. Some of these enormous structures rose up alone from the parking lots. Leaving behind the post-modernist muck that is the architecture of the main group of stores, I walked across parking lots to one of these huge structures where no pavements ventured. As I approached I was sure it wasn’t my sock store but I’d come so far and it looked so manly in its architecture that I was going in anyway for my last hooray.
Through the double doors and a snidey man with a smile waited for you barring your entry until you gave the appropriate nicety back to his empty greeting. In this gi-normous barn of testosterone I weaved and grimaced and wondered who would come to such a place. Then I found socks. Bulky and expensive but not purple. So I looked for the women’s section. I found them, and yes, they make purple socks for women. That very shade of purple.
Naturally they’re too long and will also be too warm but heck they’re purple. And they only sold them in double packs so I ended up with way more socks that I really wanted. I suppose in time I’ll get my use out of them.
Clutching them like a trophy I kept on looking for the not so bulky and long women’s sock section. I never found it so I made for the pay desk. Before being able to buy the socks I had to divulge my zip code. It threw me. I wanted to fight but wasn’t sure on what basis so like a wounded lamb I offerred up my mid-town zip code and wondered if it was his 1st one today.
A helicopter struck me as a good way to leave such an empty hell, but instead I walked across parking lots and grass verges, on pavements with no beginning and no end, listened to some muzak, and finally arrived at my car, whereupon this fantasy lego city suddenly took on a shape and you were never likely to bump into anyone’s shoulders.
5 minutes later I’m back in the office eating free barbeque and forgetting my lunch time like a very bad dream. I reckon it should be a lot easier to buy purple socks in a city. And it would be nice if there were other people out buying socks too.
See Also:
• Talking Temperatures
• A Phone Call from America to a Mother in Ireland
• I’m reminded of the British Police by Valentine’s Day in the USA
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Brilliant post. I can imagine you becoming more and more stubbornly determined to acquire purple socks, continually flying in the face of whatever new adversity The American Shopping Experience threw at you.
It strikes me that cities that grew up all at once can sometimes be like the shopping mall you describe. For example, Milton Keynes in the UK. Maybe America was always so frantic to try and catch up with Europe that it built many of it’s cities all in a rush? So places never had the chance to evolve in quite the same way as, say, Bruges or Genoa or Nice or Bilbao.
Maybe the geography of Kansas (mainly flat, isn’t it?) also meant that no great deal of ingenuity was ever needed by city planners in order to “make the best use of space” - as in New York, say - or “take into account natural features” - as in San Francisco. So you end up with modular, and sprawling, and uniform.