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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

an antithetical outing.

i know this whole blog, our whole tour and my whole life are supposed to be about independent creativity, but when in rome one is wont to do what the romans do. and a trip to edmonton without experiencing "the world's biggest mall" (a claim i feel must be obsolescing to some new development in dubai) is a crime against all things industrialist/albertan. also, aitor had never been to west edmonton mall before and was told by our friend taz that you can shoot guns there...somewhere. for my own part, i wanted to buy some new underwear (with all apologies to indie crafters, y'all have yet to make a panty that can rival my old reliables).

aitor was ready for action and adventure, i was braced for the throngs of doughy teenagers and we set out on our voyage. a quick and surprising discovery about west edmonton mall is that it is littered with old-style photo booths (a great love of ours) in both colour and black and white. i guess west edmonton mall is just large enough to have bought/leased a bunch of these things but just outmoded enough to have kept them instead of replacing everything with cutesy japanese sticker machines.




we went for the black and white; they are getting harder to find.

i was planning on submitting a listing to this site i recently found that is aiming to catalogue photo booths worldwide. but when i got back to our dorms i realized i had broken some of their submission guidelines. i regret nothing! aitor's sock-gartered calves look the best in that booth.

this and buying my underwear comprised the high points of our trip.



aitor and i both immediately got the "shopping with mom" feeling that malls give us; we were (well, aitor was) getting gawked at by teenagers with faces full of metal and plastic bags sewn into their hair; and i experienced a pang of depression when i realized that there are sharks living under the mall in what can't amount to more than a hole in the prairies. but aitor did get to have an orange julius for the first time. oh, malls. what a bad place to vacation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, the Mall! Mall of my childhood! And teenhood! How I miss thee, Santa Maria replica ship and exploited dolphins and Cookies by George and barely glimpsed mall rats!

Thank for for this nostalgia overload, Becky. Hope the new panties are comfy!

sweetie pie press said...

oh, roro!

the panties are okay but they do tend to ride up a touch in the back. nobody's perfect.

also, i hate to rain on your panty-parade but the depressed dolphins have been replaced with depressed sea lions (who weren't there when we were). the blanched flamingos were also nowhere to be found. although souvenir dolls and figures of both majestic beasts filled the nearby shops.