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Writer & Columnist | Santa Barbara, CA
Shakespeare never had to put up with this crap. I sit down at my computer this morning with a hot cup of fresh coffee and grand plans. I mean grand. I need to post my latest column, answer questions from confounded students, confirm an interview for tomorrow, check who’s coming to one son’s birthday party, find out who’s coming to the other son’s band practice, and complete research for a story that’s due today.
These are all tasks I accomplish online, so when I discover that my Internet is down — defunct, dead — I panic.
I call Cox for an explanation, and a recording tells me they’re having technical problems in my neighborhood. This is not news to me; this is what I called to tell them. The voice does not explain what they plan to do about it.
I click my “get mail” button just in case the connection has resumed while I was busy pounding on the phone (who uses the blasted phone anymore?), trying to find someone to shriek at.
Nothing happens. I click it again — “get mail,” “get mail,” “get mail” — hoping it will miraculously, spontaneously decide to obey. I am impotent. I am a eunuch. I am flipping the freak out.
The sad truth is this: I’d rather be at a mall than almost anywhere.
As a teen, I logged more hours at the Sherman Oaks Galleria than I did in trigonometry class. Later, as a new mom, I’d schlep my infant to the Pacific View Mall in Ventura — through wretched rain — just to have somewhere dry to stroll.
Malls are the 3-D version of thumbing through your favorite magazine: At best, you find something delightful inside. At worst, you learn what’s current, what other people are interested in. And if you’re crazy-lucky, there’s a Hot Dog on a Stick in the food court.
On sunny days, I used to take my son to La Cumbre Plaza and amble. We’d buy a Mrs. Fields cookie, toss pennies in the fountain, pick up cards at Hallmark, and happily sniff the incense wafting from The Body Shop. It was our mall.
But we don’t go there much anymore. Ever since the recent “enhancement” project — which sent no-frills staples like KB Toys packing and welcomed high-end boutiques like Tiffany & Co. and BCBGMAXAZRIA — it feels like we’re trespassing on someone else’s mall now. Someone with far nicer shoes and a standing facial appointment.
“I don’t think it’s improved at all, just more overpriced stores that squeeze out us regular folks and cater to Hope Ranch,” says a friend of mine. “I’m just waiting for Sears to be replaced by Neiman Marcus.”