The mall experience
Post last updated 2 hours, 29 minutes ago
With A. gone to coffee with some of her friends, I had some spare time in which I decided to check off some things of my to-do list.
- Primary quest: get some groceries for dinner.
- Side quest I: check out some new shoes for summer.
- Side quest II: throw an eye for some shirts and pants.
- Side quest III: see if there any interesting books to buy.
Then I thrown myself into the labyrinthine mall.
Polyester, polyester everywhere
For a while, I've made a goal to have as much garments made out of natural fiber as possible, you know, mostly cotton and linen, some wool here and there, occasionally a bit of silk and cashmere. I'm not absurd and I would buy synthetic fibers for things like outerwear if needed.
So I went into a newly opened store in the mall and was pleasantly surprised to see some good looking clothes1. They were feeling good to the touch and were not too pricey, but when checking the label, a good chunk of the item was out of polyester. Over and over, pants, shirts, sweaters or cardigans, at prices that should've had full natural fiber items, I'd find polyester.
I went out the proverbial door with a deception.
Do you have my size?
Next on the list, shoes. Here, every second store is a shoes one, from different brands, but they all basically have the same models and prices. I've been to this circle of hell numerous times and seems like I haven't learnt my lesson yet. The criteria were, to me, quite humble: white shoes, wider toe box, to not look like a spaceship or like I have hooves.
The Sambas seemed good looking, but they are damn tight even at 2 sizes bigger than my usual (and of course they were very long in this case). Next. Same story with the Spezials. Next.
Some Air Jordans low cut were pretty, but cost almost half the minimum wage here and the glue looked poorly applied. I started to lose hope. Next
From afar a pair of New Balance were interesting, but at a closer look, they had a tad too weird of an outersole. Next.
Another pair of New Balance, the 408s were almost there: comfy, looking decently good and not costing an arm and a leg. Might hunt these for a discount only now that I know the size.
No wonder no one reads anymore
I still have some unread books on my shelves, but I like to look around to find potential new additions. This time I was looking mostly for photography, history or philosophy books or anything else that catches my attention really.
At the photography section there were about 2 books about photography and the rest were either architecture, design, movies or whatever. Great.
The history section had many books and I noted some for reading, but didn't find anything that screamed READ ME NOW.
The philosophy section was horrendous: the same 3-4 guys (and Hannah Arendt, which was a pleasant surprise). Disappointed.
A bonus: I saw Carl Sagan's Cosmos at the science section. I put it on my to read list and then took a step back. Next to the science section was the "Religion and spirituality" one. I took one more step back because this section wouldn't fit in my field of view. And there it was: religion (mostly new age bullshit and lunatic conspiracies) occupied almost double the space of science. Guess it explains at least in part why the world is going to shit.
At least the groceries went quickly.
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Not to sound like a snob, but I think the fashion nowadays is really garbage.↩