Sometimes I curse the X chromosome I inherited from my father that made me female. Last Thursday was definitely one of those days. Why? I needed a red belt! Why did I need a red belt? To match the new red shoes I had bought the week before that, of course. (If I were a guy, this wouldn’t have been so much of a problem. Most guys I know aren’t in the habit of wearing red heels.) So, figuring that two hours between classes was plenty of time to Trax down to the Gateway mall, run into Forever 21, and buy the first red belt I saw, I set off on my quest.
The Trax ride there was pretty average. As usual, I brought a book in order to avoid having weird random people talk to me. Once I got off Trax at Arena, I crossed the street and went into Urban Outfitters. This place always has a nice air about it, even though the clothes are too expensive for my cheapness. I casually looked at their belts to see if they had a red belt, but no, they didn’t. And that seemed to be the theme for the next hour and a half. Every clothing store I went in had either brown, black, or even blue belts but the red seemed to have become an endangered species.
However, as I went from store to store I seemed to notice a few common things. First off, in every store I went to someone greeted me. Which was nice, but it kind of made me feel a little guilty since my average time spent there was a minute and a half. Secondly, they always mentioned any sort of sales they were having. For obvious reasons. Third, you could really tell the genre of people that the type of store attracted. For instance, I felt wildly out of place in hot topic wearing semi-nice collared shirt and dress pants. And Aeropostale was full of clones wearing the generic Aeropostale t-shirt. Fifth, everyone seemed to be in groups of either two or three. It was rare to see a group of more that five people. And the sixth thing all the stores had in common was that none of them had a red belt for sale. Go figure.
So after walking up and down the mall and through stores I usually wouldn’t be caught dead in (cough, Aeropostale, cough cough), I also got more of a feel for how the mall was laid out. I hadn’t realized before how big it was, but believe me, after traveling on what seemed miles of sidewalk in shoes that massacre my feet on a daily basis, I better understood the scale of the Gateway mall.
I’d say that the mall is a fairly important destination for many people. I know that’s where I usually go if I want to buy clothes or see a movie. It’s very conveniently located since there are, not just one, but two Trax stations right next to it. I guess I’ve never seen it super busy before. But that could just be because I have tendency to go there at odd hours of the day.
All in all, I’d say that the mall is a very cool place even if it has an extreme shortage of red belts.
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Marie: I've had the same sort of experience in Banana Republic or J. Crew, like I am from such a different generation (is there an age height on these stores), its not always even what you are wearing but the generation or social category you come out of that makes you feel at odds with the others there, or even the clerks are all one type or something like that. I've bumped into more Honors students on light rail that I can spot, not necessarily because I recognize them, but because of what they're reading--Aristotle, Dante or Plato, something like that. I'm never wrong when I ask them if they're taking IT. Go diversion technique but then it signifies something else. You're a good writer, I enjoyed your entry!
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