Flâneur’s Diary
This section is a brief paper I wrote contrasting my experiences going to an upscale mall and a swap meet. While this was done in the Phoenix metropolitan area and not Beijing, the idea is to illustrate, from first hand experience, the difference between highly developed shopping centers versus grass roots market places, as a way to extrapolate what a similar experience may be like, exploring poorer and richer area of Beijing. The methods I used were based off of Flâneurs - Victorian area wealthy men who would walk the streets in urban centers to people watch and notice how cities were developing.
I got to Scottsdale Quarter at 8 pm on a Saturday night, and I was with a friend. Since it was only an hour before closing time, I was not expecting it to be busy, but to my surprise there was still a lot of people shopping and walking around. The first thing I noticed was white Christmas lights hung on the Palm trees. Everything was clean, neat, and orderly.
The first store I went into was Sephora. A staff person greets us as we walked in. We just walk around and looked at all of the products, and several workers asked us if we need help as we walked through. At first I said I was just looking, but then I told my friend that “I am looking for dark lipstick.” I asked a worker if they had Mac products but they did not. As I continued to walk around, looking at lipstick, I asked a staff member if they had dark lipstick. She asked me for more details and then she suggested Kat Von D. brand and directed us to it. A young, well made up blonde woman helped me and suggested different lipsticks. I tell her which ones I like. Then I asked if they have red eye shadow. She says she needed to go check in the back if they have the specific shade I wanted. While she did that, I take a moment to look around and notice the people.
Everyone in Sephora was either a young female adult or a middle aged woman with her teenage daughters. There were a few heterosexual couples. One woman wore a haircut that appeared “queer” to me, and she was with another woman. Everyone is white and primarily blonde.
The young woman who was helping came back and said they only have one sampler left of the shade I wanted but she scrapes some off and gives it to me for free. I expressed my gratitude and left. Back in the outdoor mall I paid more attention to the people. There were a lot of kids with their families, young adults or teenagers. Mostly all upper middle-class in appearance. Mostly white, although I see upper middle-class black couple. It was approximately 8:20 and two security guards walk by as I take pictures of the water fountain but they did not say anything. A group of Middle Eastern people walked by, it appears to be a family, one older couple and a younger couple. The older woman was wearing a beautiful, traditional red dress with a hijab, and the younger woman was dressed more western, in a dark blue pants and blouse, casual but professional and upper middle-class. The older couple stops to take a picture of the younger couple. My general impression of the mall was that it was for upper-class white people. I felt like people only cared about me as a consumer. The woman who gave me the free eye shadow was incredibly nice though, but even that felt somewhat cold and professional.
The swap meet I went to was called Apache Trail and it was in east Mesa. I brought my little brother along with me. All the shops were set up on a dirt lot. I got there at about 3 pm so a lot of shops were closing down. Everything was handmade or antique. These were not corporate stores, quite unlike the mall. Everyone was dressed in working-class and simple garb.The racial demographic seemed split 50/50 between white and Hispanic. There were a lot of conservative, anti-government, and pro-gun stickers at many of the shops.
We stopped by the food stand. They were not making food anymore but my brother got us water, a soda, and two bags of chips for only 3$. The woman who served us was middle-aged, white, and courteous.
We get to the other side of the lot and there is a guitar store called “Sunnybaby’s Geetar City.” It was ran by a baby boomer hippy couple. I asked about bass amps and the man got one out and let me play one of his basses. His name was Sunnybaby, his wife/partner was busy packing so I did not catch her name, and they had a cute dog who looked like a heeler mix. He offered me the bass amp for 90$. It was a medium size Crate and that was a good price for the amp, but then he got excited and showed me a Flying V bass guitar made by Honda. He offered them both for 250$ and it was too good for me to pass up. A few months after I bought the amp, it started cutting out. I took it back and he loaned me a different amp while he fixed it free of charge. Every time I have been to his store he was always incredibly personable!
The atmosphere of this shop was quite different from the rest of the shops. There was a sign that said “Notice: We reported all sexual harassment.” A lot of classic rock posters decked the walls, including Pink Floyd and AC/DC. The guitar shop was not completely out of place, but it did not exactly fit either. They gave me a card as I leave and tell me to come back anytime. They made me feel like family, unlike the mall where I was just another consumer and people were not only nice to me if I bought something.