The dark side of the mall

Why do bad things happen to middle-class people? This is a question which has fascinated philosophers for centuries, or at least since the Masterbond scandal. Aren’t middle-class people supposed to be insulated against the harsher realities of life? They have short-term insurance. They have channel TV. Their children spend two-thirds of their lives safely ensconced in the mental bubble of their Nintendos and PlayStations. They can buy refrigerated meat in a supermarket instead of having to hunt down and kill live bisons like the cavemen. Unless they accidentally crash their Volvos against a picket fence, or suffer the unavoidable indignity of an incurable disease or a facelift gone wrong, the existence of middle-class people is safely cushioned from the harsher realities of life on this planet.

That is not the whole truth, as I discovered during a recent trip — a nightmare voyage, in fact — to a shopping mall.

But first, let me give you some background information.

The reason why middle-class people live such charmed lives is, of course, because of capitalism. I have always been a great believer in capitalism, even before buying my first fake Tuscan house in suburbia. I reasoned thus: “Mankind is essentially selfish. All religions and political ideologies strive to eradicate this selfishness. Capitalism, however, does not try to discourage selfishness, instead, it turns it into a virtue by using it to stimulate healthy competition. The more selfish people are, the more they strive to make more money by delivering better standards of service, thereby improving the options of the average consumer!”

Throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, nothing happened to upset my firmly held belief in the superiority of the free market system. Even when I went through the compulsory teenage phase of starry-eyed rebellious rock ‘n’ roll idealism, I understood, with some part of my mind, that most successful rock stars got filthy rich because of capitalism, moreover, that we were free to buy their wonderful anti-establishment music in music stores, precisely capitalism made it possible.

The music itself strengthened my capitalist mind-set even further; the most effective critique of communism, I found, not in the books of PJ O’Rourke, but in albums like The Wall by Pink Floyd. The DVD, which came out later, highlighted, with stark visuals, the dreadful dangers of dictatorships; who will ever forget the footage depicting hundreds upon hundreds of hammers, all marching in step like workers in the Eastern Bloc? (It was fitting that, years later, when the Berlin wall fell, this rock group should pay tribute to the event with a live concert on the spot.) For me, it was all about “rocking in the free world”, to quote Neil Young. And during the annual anti-G8 marches of the last decade, I could not help noticing, as I watched the riots on Sky News, how many of the so-called anti-globalisation protesters were always extremely well-groomed, dressed in the latest fashion, and sported expensive cellphones and cameras. Did these guys have any idea of the real meaning of anarchy?

Not even when my wife informed me over breakfast, two weeks ago, that the four insurance policies we had bought a decade ago to save up for the education of our children seem to have had mysteriously halved in value, did my belief in the system falter. “We should simply switch to a bigger, more established insurance company,” I said. “Who did we invest this money with anyway, Arthur J Brown?” “No. Don’t you remember? We bought these policies from ——.”

I almost choked on my Coco Pops. “But —— IS the biggest and most established insurance company in South Africa! How much money have we lost?”

“About fifty thousand rand,” she shrugged.

“Bliksem! We would have been better off just keeping all that cash in a tin under our bed!”

That one had me lying awake at night, all right. But it took an even worse shock to finally make me wake up to the awful truth.

Yes! Something happened — something inconceivably dreadful — only three days ago! Something that completely and irrevocably shattered my faith in middle-class values!

It all started out so innocently. We had decided to go on a family outing to a mall that we had never visited before. My daughter was turning eight that day and she badly wanted to see Toy Story 3 in 3D. The idea of travelling all the way to Century City was a bit daunting. However, our own mall in Somerset West did not have 3D movies. Though we did not mind travelling almost all the way to Cape Town — we had been to Cape Town before, and we knew that it was quite a pleasant seaside town full of laid-back people and unemployed coffee shop philosophers — one had to go through enemy territory to get there. For between the peaceful village of Somerset West and the pleasant beaches of Cape Town lay, what is known to locals as the fearsome “Hip-hop Belt”, consisting of Bellville, Parow and Brackenfel; a nightmarish stretch of urban landscape where teenagers prowl at night and rush-hour traffic is always at its worst.

Alas! If only we had not underestimated the dangers of this voyage! If only we had known about all the things that would go terribly wrong! But we were so sure we had done all our preparations right. We were sure of success!

We had pre-booked six movie tickets on the internet (for my two kids, plus two of their friends, plus my wife and I). I had made peace with my GPS system after our huge argument a month before, and we had programmed it to take us right up to the correct mall entrance closest to the Nu-Metro theatre. We had figured out that the matinee show would be finished early enough so that we could just beat rush hour and re-cross the dreaded Hip-hop Belt back to our home in the peaceful suburbs of Somerset West.

We left home, well ahead of schedule, in my huge sponsored Toyota Quantum Kombi, the one with my name and logo on the doors. We were in a festive mood.

Though the Hip-hop Belt proved no problem — we were careful to stay on the beaten track and not stray away from the N1 — the problems started once we reached the vicinity of the Canal Walk.

It seemed like a tiny little problem at first. We could not find parking. Much to our amazement, there was no open-air parking to be found anywhere near the Century City mall. There were only parking garages. Lots and lots of them.

But all of them had height restrictions.

Even though I had more than enough cash to pay for basement parking, I could not enter any of these parking areas simply because my Toyota Quantum Kombi was too high.

We drove around the centre seven or eight times, looking for a way in. Nothing. Everywhere we were stopped by formidable-looking booms and low ceilings. Though my GPS tried very helpfully to direct us, it was impossible to follow its advice. After saying “turn right” for about the thirteenth time, I noticed a distinct edge of irritation creeping into its voice, and I feared another fight. (My GPS and I have a lot of emotional baggage between us, and arguments tend to get personal.)

Inside the Kombi, tempers started flaring up. The children started crying: “We’re going to be late for the movie!” My wife kept on saying: “You’re in the wrong lane!”

Everything seemed lost until I spotted a sign that pointed to the left, and which said “DELIVERY TRUCKS AND TOUR BUSES ONLY”.

To loud complaints from my GPS system, I turned left. Only to be stopped, a bit further on, by yet another boom. On the right hand of the street I saw an intercom. I stopped next to it, opened my window and pressed a button. To my delight, it talked to me!

“What — bleep bleep — delivery are you making?” the voice asked in an unfriendly tone and barely discernable English.

“I’m looking for a place to park that doesn’t have a height restriction,” I said. “We’re late for a movie.”

“This is the bleep bleep wrong place,” said the disembodied voice. It did not embroider. It did not suggest another place.

“Then what is the right place?” I prompted it.

After arguing back and forth for a while with the unfriendly disembodied voice, I finally got a meaningful response.

“You must go to the — bleep bleep — Shell Garage.”

“Where’s that?” I asked, frantically. We were now very late indeed for Toy Story 3.

But the talking machine had shut itself down.

We managed to make a U-turn, and went off in search of the Shell Garage.

It took us another half an hour, but we did finally find it, only to find that (i) the Shell Garage was very far from the mall and that (ii) the few open-air parking had all been taken, (iii) not by height-restricted vehicles like my own, but by normal sedans owned by people who (iv) wished to avoid the parking fee and who (v) did not mind walking a few kilometres to the mall.

After circling the petrol pumps a few times, we parked in an unmarked spot in front of a shop entrance, bribed a petrol attendant to look after the Kombi and keep the wheel-clamping guys at bay, and asked for directions.

Someone pointed northward. Sure enough! In the distance, we could just make out, barely visible in the encroaching fog, the magical towers and minarets of Century City!

But how to find an entrance to that elusive and mystical place?

“You’ll have to walk through the underground parking garage,” we were told.

So we set off, hand-in-hand like Dorothy and her mythical friends on the way to Oz.

Traversing the parking garages in search of a mystery shopping mall with a bunch of overstressed and heartbroken kids proved a journey of quite epic proportions. It was dark in there, and scary, and we got lost at least three times, before my wife finally pointed to a certain spot, dimly visible among the exhaust fumes, and proclaimed: “There’s a light!”

There was a light indeed, and more than a light. It was a huge door which proclaimed “EXIT 4”. We ran towards it, maddened with thirst and in dire need of a pee.

Century City was like no other mall I had ever seen. It was grotesque, Dickensian, cavernous and quite dark. It was the kind of place where the Pied Piper of Hamelin would take kids and hang them out to dry.

It was a universe of wonder, fear and loathing.

Finding a toilet was our first major hurdle. The second one was finding the Nu-Metro cinema. The third one was finding out whether any other 3D movies were being screened, since we had obviously missed Toy Story 3. We overcame all these hurdles with a mixture of bravery, tenacity and diplomacy. Finally, we managed to convince the kids that, though Toy Story 3 had slipped from our grasp forever, we were still eligible — if we hurried — to see Shrek Forever After.

If we hurried. That was the operational word. That proved to be more difficult than expected.

Though there were no queues at the ticket office or at the refreshment stand, finding someone to serve us was a major problem. There were people in attendance at both points, but the girl selling tickets (i) first denied that a movie by the name of Shrek was showing (though it was advertised on life-size billboards all around us), and (ii) secondly, claimed that it wasn’t in 3D (which it was, according to the billboards). As for the girl at the refreshment stand, she was involved in a deep conversation in Xhosa with one of the cleaners, and it was absolutely impossible to get her to pay any attention. When we finally put in our order of “five dark blue slush thingies”, she spent such an inordinate amount of time (i) repeatedly asking what size slush thingies we wanted, (ii) looking for the key to the safe because she had run out of small change, (iii) laboriously opening the plastic packets of coins to arrange it, according to size in her till before paying us our change, that we ran into the movie after telling her to keep the change (effectively tipping her about forty rand) and ended up missing the first ten minutes of Shrek Forever After; ten minutes that proved crucial to any vague understanding of the plot of the story.

Once we were inside the theatre, we were too scared to leave again, even though we discovered, only then, that the girl at the ticket office had issued all of us with adult-size 3D spectacles, and that the kids’ spectacles kept on falling off. Nevertheless, the evil dragon’s castle seemed a friendlier place than Century City, so we stayed put for the entire movie, sipping noisily at our overpriced containers of dark blue slushy stuff.

We left , more than an hour later, groggy-eyed and mystified, not having understood the movie, and once again inundated with physical needs — not only the need to pee, but also hunger (there had been no time to purchase popcorn).

This was where things turned really ugly. We decided to go to the Spur.

Let me explain a few things about the Spur (lest the lawyers who look after the Spur’s interests read this blog post and decide to sue me). I shall try and give my opinion in a well-balanced way.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Spur.

Hate? Well, it’s common knowledge that their food isn’t exactly cuisine quality. The salads always give one the impression that they had died of boredom a long time ago, only to be revived by shots of Botox. The steaks all taste like the same basting sauce. As for the decor: I had discovered, years ago, during my wild and wanton twenties, that one sure way to kill a good LSD trip was to go to the Spur. Any other environment tended to distort, elongate or wiggle. The Spur — any Spur — was the only environment so utterly predictable, so completely bland, that it was impossible to have ANY hallucinations there WHATSOEVER. Once inside the Spur, everything instantly returned to normal. You sat down, you read the menu, you ordered, and that was that. The Spur was just the Spur, and no amount of chemical mind-alteration could enhance the ambience (or lack thereof).

Love? Well, yes, I must admit — reluctantly — that, in a way, I also LOVE the Spur. In the first place, it’s one of the few places one can take your kids and never once see them throughout the meal. Now that’s something! They simply disappear into the play area for hours! In the second place — and here I must make a painful confession — though my wife and I love good cuisine, there are times, approximately once every three months, that I get a sudden and inexplicable yearning to stuff myself on a Double Pepa-Melt Burger with extra onion rings. Naughty, naughty! This urge, unfortunately, is non-negotiable! It HAS to be satisfied! And it can ONLY be satisfied by a Double Pepa-Melt Burger with extra onion rings! So, whenever I feel the lust for a Double Pepa-Melt Burger with extra onion rings creep up on me, I’d drop everything and tell my wife: “Let’s take the kids to the Spur.” Then she’d say: “But you HATE the Spur!” and I’d say: “Just this once, for the sake of the children, I’m prepared to endure it.” So, off to the Spur we’d go with the starry-eyed kids in tow, where I’d order a double Pepa-Melt Burger with extra onion rings and she’d order something meaty and Mexican (to mask the taste of the basting sauce). And, invariably, we end up getting drunk on lukewarm white wine and having a wonderfully relaxing time while the kids blow their minds on video games, before we return home, burping and farting all the way.

There are two things one should avoid when going to the Spur, though.

(i) When the Spur manager ambles closer to your table, ignore him; he usually wants to talk about his marriage problems (Spur managers are invariably depressed individuals who are desperate for company). (A tip: you can easily recognise a Spur manager by (a) his tell-tale shirt and (b) his hair-style (most Spur managers are completely clean-shaven and bald because they’re trying to look like Bruce Willis)

(ii) If you have a kid celebrating a birthday, KEEP IT A SECRET! DON’T LET THE SPUR MANAGEMENT FIND OUT! TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPEN TO KIDS WHO GO TO THE SPUR ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS! (See the photograph I took with a hidden camera.)

Having explained my love-hate relationship with the Spur, let’s just say that our visit to the Century City Spur did not quite live up to expectations. The play area had no video games. The table we were seated at was sticky. Someone — probably the previous customer, in a fit of depression or a sugar rush — had slashed the seats with a sharp object so that the stuffing came out. The manager was more depressed than usual, and hovered around our table throughout the meal, telling us his entire life story. Worst of all, THEY FOUND OUT IT WAS MY DAUGHTER’S BIRTHDAY.

To this day, I’m not sure who spilt the beans, but, before we knew it, jungle rhythms started beating from somewhere, and the next moment our table was surrounded — yes, completely surrounded! — by jovial Spur waiters singing and clapping hands to an atrocious tape-recording of “Happy Birthday”! They presented our hapless eight-year-old with a large chunk of ice-cream WHICH APPEARED TO BE ON FIRE! She was speechless with terror! The next moment, the thing happened which we had been fearing all along: all the other children at our table, and surrounding tables, started demanding ice-cream as well! Do you realise what this meant? It meant that (i) our bill would sky-rocket, (ii) the kids would return to the car all messy, and (iii) in the ensuing sugar rush, they would start banging their free Spur balloons against one another, trying to make them (iv) EXPLODE, after which they would (v) burst into tears, demanding that we (vi) return to the Spur immediately to get new ones!!

That, dear reader, is exactly what happened. Yes, it happened to us. One always tends to think that things like these only happen to other people, but, alas, it can happen to anyone, at any time. It can happen to YOU, or SOMEONE YOU LOVE! In fact, it happens somewhere in South Africa approximately once every FOUR SECONDS!!!

In time, we will get over it. In time, we will look back on this incident and maybe chuckle over it a bit as if it were sort of funny. In time, we might learn to forgive and forget. Yes, the wounds will heal, I will eventually manage to clean the seats of my Kombi and get on with my life.

In time, I might also forget the fact that, when we emerged from Century City, hours after entering that hell-hole, evening was upon us, rush hour was in full swing, and we were stuck, like fearful rabbits caught in the headlights of an approaching truck, in the Hip-hop Belt for what seemed like hours, with children screaming and yelling and demanding more dark blue slushy thingies!

In time, I will recover my dignity as a human being, my faith in God, and I will be able to say the words “with extra onion rings, please” without wincing (next time I go to a Spur).

But I shall never, EVER believe in capitalism again. I have experienced the sheer undiluted UGLINESS of that system. I have personally been into the belly of the Beast and back.

I have seen the Dark Side of the Mall …