Shopping heaven (or hell?)
On the way back from a Toastmaster's conference Saturday I stopped at the new shopping center, Bridgeport Village , south of Portland to see what was there.
David Brooks, the conservative NY Times columnist who usually but not always makes me want to spit, and who wrote the mostly excellent and very discomfiting Bobos in Paradise, would have had plenty to say about this place - and I would have agreed with him. A "bobo", if you haven't read the book (and you should), is a person who tries to hold both bohemian and bourgeouis values simultaneously (Brooks coined the term).
The "village" has an American/Tuscan flavor, with charming walkable side streets, flower kiosks, a stone fountain that kids can play in, sidewalk tables for every restaurant. The shops (Chico's, Anthropologie, Crate and Barrel, ColdWater Creek, and many more) bring us - relatively inexpensively - their unique semi-ethnic-flavored products thanks to laborers in Malaysia, China, and the Marianas.
Now I like a wild Chico's necklace or jacket as much as the next Bobo, and I drool over some of the colorful vases in Crate and Barrel, but I found myself embarassed to be in a place so totally devoted to my baser Bobo instincts. There wasn't a single cheesy bead store (ears pierced while you wait!), no place without a carefully orchestrated corporate identity. I bought a chartreuse vase for a friend and high-tailed it out of there, hoping nobody I knew had seen me.
Bridgeport Village is certainly much more attractive than a mall, but it seems so cravenly driven by market research. If this were a REAL village, people would live upstairs from the shops, there would be a dentist, a dry cleaner, and a tax preparer's office. We'd see people of color, kids with dogs, and old people waiting for the bus with their shopping carts.
David Brooks, the conservative NY Times columnist who usually but not always makes me want to spit, and who wrote the mostly excellent and very discomfiting Bobos in Paradise, would have had plenty to say about this place - and I would have agreed with him. A "bobo", if you haven't read the book (and you should), is a person who tries to hold both bohemian and bourgeouis values simultaneously (Brooks coined the term).
The "village" has an American/Tuscan flavor, with charming walkable side streets, flower kiosks, a stone fountain that kids can play in, sidewalk tables for every restaurant. The shops (Chico's, Anthropologie, Crate and Barrel, ColdWater Creek, and many more) bring us - relatively inexpensively - their unique semi-ethnic-flavored products thanks to laborers in Malaysia, China, and the Marianas.
Now I like a wild Chico's necklace or jacket as much as the next Bobo, and I drool over some of the colorful vases in Crate and Barrel, but I found myself embarassed to be in a place so totally devoted to my baser Bobo instincts. There wasn't a single cheesy bead store (ears pierced while you wait!), no place without a carefully orchestrated corporate identity. I bought a chartreuse vase for a friend and high-tailed it out of there, hoping nobody I knew had seen me.
Bridgeport Village is certainly much more attractive than a mall, but it seems so cravenly driven by market research. If this were a REAL village, people would live upstairs from the shops, there would be a dentist, a dry cleaner, and a tax preparer's office. We'd see people of color, kids with dogs, and old people waiting for the bus with their shopping carts.
posted by JoieDe at 10:08 AM
1 Comments:
regarding the heading, etc. for me at least, its trial and error. i have a program called HELLO, where you send the images to the blog. if you look around blogger.com, you'll find more info. there may be other ways to do this. you have to experiment with your template. the subheader..not sure, maybe some templates don't have that.
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