Malls 'N' Palls

[mallorys_camera]

Wrapapalooza at the mall is every bit as depressing as you can imagine it might be.

Not very profitable either. There weren't very many people at the mall yesterday, and those who were there didn't seem to be buying things.

This kinda coincided with what I used to observe a million or so years ago back in the days when I was a retail business owner: Sunday is hardly ever a good retail day. A little bit better than Monday (an absolutely putrid retail day) but only by the thinnest margin.

Other operative trends affecting real-time sales now as well.

Book buyers, of course, are notorious for dropping into bricks-and-mortar stores, spending an hour or two browsing through opening chapters and then ordering the books they like through Amazon. (No sales tax so cheaper --although that's gonna change this year. Still, once they catch the online buying habit, they catch the online buying habit.) This year, it looks like that trend has caught up with other types of businesses. More than half the people walking through the Galleria yesterday had no packages in their arms. Clearly, they are browsing in the stores; presumably, they are buying online.

Also, the general buying public has become so brand conscious that the shopping bags that stores like Victoria's Secret and Tommy Hilfiger package their goods in are much more desirable than gift wrap.

"It's all good," said Jeremy. "It's all good." He seemed dazed. I think the fact that he picked a college major (sports management) that will be utterly useless in terms of netting him employment is finally beginning to dawn on him, the horror of a lifetime of dysfunctional employment situations baring its fangs in his direction.

If I was Jeremy's mother, I would say to him what I've said to Max: An undergraduate degree makes you eligible for three types of jobs: Sales, marketing and IT. Honestly? You don't have a talent for any of those three things. And that's why you have to go back to school.

But I'm not Jeremy's mother.

I just hunkered down and read The Goldfinch. The hours slipped away quickly. The Goldfinch is a beautiful book, a profound book but a sad book, and perhaps not the best choice of Christmas reading material for someone who's always trying to connect the dots to decipher ideograms in the clouds. I'm up to Theo's horrifying sojourn in Las Vegas, his friendship with Boris. Yes, yes – I see the homage to Oliver Twist, but I don't think Dickens concerned himself overly with the subtext of his characters' emotions, you know? (And I'm not going to reread Oliver Twist to fact check.) Tartt chooses her words as carefully as oil paints. Under the null grey surface of Theo's life, you catch every lurid nuance of his emotional pain. I'm having to put the book down often to shake myself loose from that effect.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

A while ago, I read an article where someone made the point that bricks-and-mortar stores--especially those in conspicuous but expensive locations--are increasingly being treated by firms more as street-level billboards than anything else. Doesn't work well for bookstores, but it seems a viable model for, for instance, clothiers.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

That sounds right.

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

can't say this for sure, but i think most of dicken's novels were serials. oliver twist, his first blockbuster, i think, was a serial novel. so it was written with plot twists and suspense in mind, so people would line up to buy next week or next month's magazine much like how ppl did so for harry potter. in a day before internet and advanced media, one can imagine a writer like dickens being relatively unrecognized. he could walk anonymously through saloons and eavesdrop on conversations about what people would speculate on where oliver would end up next. no doubt, that was much more satisfying and exciting to him than brainstorming on his own.

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

i think the point i was making was that emotions and consistency mattered less than ratings for dickens. much like lost, the result was a complete mess of plot twists, half of which went nowhere.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

You're entirely right about Dickens.