Day 21: Mall culture

Every city or town has its gathering place so to speak, the space where people go to see and to be seen. A place to meet friends, to hang out, to get some food, to be entertained. When I lived in Mexico, the gathering places were often large plazas where people congregated to meet friends and to let their children play. In Kazakhstan, people liked to simply гулять or walk through the parks and town. In Tartu, it was popular to meet in the cute cafés to spend time together - or, even better, to escape to the country to hike or pick mushrooms. In small town Wyoming, we do not have many options for common space, especially when the weather isn't playing nice, and people go to wander aimlessly through Walmart. Everywhere is different. In Jakarta, its gathering spaces are shopping malls.

Wikipedia lists over 50 malls in Jakarta alone. Enormous, glitzy buildings spanning several streets and extending up several floors, these buildings serve as the gathering place for more than just teenagers. The mall is a mini-city in and of itself. You can shop, of course, but you can also dine at some of the most elegant restaurants in the city, grocery shop, watch movies at a state-of-the-art cinema, and visit a spa. Some of the floors are set up to look like real streets and its patrons dress up in their finest to spend the day in the mall. The maze of available retail is overwhelming - H&M, the Gap, the Body Shop, Banana Republic, Mango - in and of itself. There are cultural events and nightclubs. Not a particularly huge mall fan in the U.S. (too many choices, too much commercialism begging for my attention and dollars), I find myself at the mall again and again and again here in Jakarta.

Perhaps it makes sense in a crowded city to escape the heat and jammed streets to a sanitized version of everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Malls are clean, safe, cool, and glitzy. Hanging out is a status marker. You can sip a latte at Starbucks and then wander through Marks & Spencer before heading to your spinning class and treating yourself to an OPI pedicure and a Krispy Kreme.

I am not eager to judge - and I know that malls will be part of my life here as they are a part of everyone else's life. However, each time that I find myself invited to eat dinner (at some of the best restaurants in the city) or trudging to go grocery shopping at the mall, I hesitate as I try to establish a location amidst the nondescript retail chains, marble floors, gentle bubbling waterfall, and bustle of people hunched over their smart phones. Where have I been transported to? Am I in Pentagon City (Arlington), the Khan Shatyr (Astana), La Gran Plaza (Guadalajara), or the Grand Indonesia (Jakarta)? Perhaps these 50+ malls play important roles as public, civic spaces, but I am not yet sure of anything other than their ubiquity.