Looks the Same

Dearest Rachel –

The last time I was here at the Fashion Outlet Mall was just over a year ago, and for much the same reason; at barely above zero Fahrenheit, it’s just too darn cold outside to walk through the woods. So I’m wandering around here, waiting to meet up with Lars, at which point we can do a few laps around the place. It’s not the most challenging of terrain, but it keeps the circulation going – literally in fact, as we just keep making circuit after circuit around each floor, ultimately tallying some fifteen thousand steps in the process.

This time around, I have a different perspective on the place, now that I’ve visited malls in all sorts of countries – not to mention the downtown areas in other cities. I can’t help but be reminded of that verse from that old song we used to play on road trips:

The skin around every city looks the same
Miles of flat neon spelling well-known names
USED TRUCKS — DIRTY DONUTS — YOU YOU’RE THE ONE
Fat wheeled cars squeal into the sun

Bruce Cockburn, “Silver Wheels” from In the Falling Dark (1976)

I don’t know if Bruce was trying to denigrate the commerciality of urban through exurban Canada (which of course could be just as easily applied to us in the U.S.), or just the clientele of such places. Judging from some of the other verses throughout the same song, I think he preferred the natural landscape of the rural areas; and while I consider myself something of a city boy myself (well, suburban, anyway – the city, as the old cliché goes, is a nice place to visit, but I’d just as soon not live there, either), I understand his position on what constitutes beauty.

In either case, while it’s probably overstating things to suggest that he’s sneering at the conformist nature of one identical town after another, with their same-old, same-old brand names being advertised along the way, there’s no question that the uniformity from one town to the next clearly grates on him. Whatever happened, he seems to be asking, to the idea of local color? We could do so much better than this, I hear him suggest (even if that’s not actually what he meant).

The reason this song, and these lyrics, are running through my mind as I walk through this mall – which doesn’t look at all like the truck stop world Bruce describes – is that, when you think about it, it really IS very much the same, but with a high-fashion gloss to it. For all that the rich, upper-class folk who seem to think of themselves as orders of magnitude better than those gritty, common, Tim Horton-loving schlumps that make up the hoi polloi (if only due to their wealth, which could be indicative of a certain level of business acumen, at least among the nouveau riche), they’re no less likely to gravitate towards certain brands the world over, leading to a similar effect as Bruce describes, if only in different places in those self-same cities.

Think about it; as I pass by one storefront or another here, I’m realizing that I’m seeing many of the same names that I have in Nassau or St. Maarten, Manila or Auckland, Taipei, Dubai, Honolulu or Hong Kong – at least, in terms of these fancy-schmancy, high-end goods. Gucci, Versace, Jimmy Choo, Tommy Hilfiger… whether on the Magnificent Mile, Fifth Avenue, or in any one of these malls built especially for the well-heeled urbane traveler who sails above the riff-raff of society (or at least thinks they do), the goods offered for sale don’t really look all that different from those offered anywhere else in similar stores.

It’s a puzzle to me as to why folks would buy such stuff while traveling, seeing that they could get it as easily back home. There are less rarified circles to travel in that would offer more in the way of local color and flavor; why would you waste your time in a place like this? Even any argument about price seems to be squelched, as the exchange rate between our money and anywhere else (especially Asia, which I’ve managed to dip my toes into and which the clientele of this place seems to be) renders the goods on offer here much less of a bargain than they would be back “home” for these travelers.

Lars posits that the stores don’t actually sell the same things here as there, though; there may be some slight differences that identify a dress or a clutch as having been obtained in the States as opposed to Europe or Asia, which offers some cachet back home that I haven’t a sufficiently trained eye to recognize or appreciate. Granted, I can sort of relate to the concept, since Logan often speaks of anime-related merchandise that one can only find in Japan as opposed to what makes its way over here, so it’s not totally alien to me.

Still, for all that the wealthy folk consider themselves to be our betters, presumably because they can make or keep their money better than we can, they seem to be susceptible to the same attraction to this brand or that that we ordinary folk are. In which case, maybe they ought not to look down on us for a foible they share with us, don’t you think?

In any event, these are the things that go through my head in situations and places like these, honey. Once upon a time, I’d be telling them to you as we would walk side by side through them; now, this is the only way I can do that. I guess it’s nice to finally keep a record of these thoughts, as opposed to uttering them once and just letting them dissipate into the ether, but I’d trade that for having you back to tell them in person, and having you understand it all, having been with me each step of the way.

For now, though, all I can do is to ask you the continue to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’ll continue to need it.