the walls of Babel
We emerged from the parking garage into the bustling theme park that is the Grove in Los Angeles. Within the various corridors of the complex are boutiques, department stores, movie theatres, and farmers markets; a whole gamut of entertainment. The architecture is decidedly Las Vegas, evoking a strange sensation of a Disney World / Lake Como / San Francisco conglomerate. Tourists and locales alike wander through the complex, shopping for a new pair of sunglasses or dining at one of the themed restaurants. Vendors align the walkway like gypsies in Rome. And a ridiculous trolley spans the short distance between Nordstrom and the Banana Republic.
The Grove and other developments of so-called New Urbanism are merely approximations of the “good-life” which create (architecturally or non-architecturally, this is debatable) self-absorbed visual storyboards of times past. The resurgence of the Main Street is sweeping warm-climate cities by storm. Shopping malls are now passe, cold, oppressive; their glory days dwindled a few years ago.
A man, dressed in an olive green t-shirt and blas� denim, enters the Grove. His eyes are first fixed on the dancing fountain, spraying mist on passerbys. His eyes then dart toward the epic movie-theatre, a psuedo-Deco cinema topped with a Pantheon-esque dome. Street Vendors wheel around him, selling BoHo (bohemian-bourgeois, can you believe?) jewlery and afghans. Hollywood types then catch his eye, munching on calamari and martini olives at the Italian restaurant. He stands akimbo, frozen in astonishment, as if he had woke from a nap and realized he was no longer in his Koreatown studio, but in the Australian Outback, where a bonnet-wearing kangeroo recites the opening lines of Beowulf.
Should he brave the Grove and see the Star Wars matinee, or run for his life?
Context is everything in sophisticated development. We’re right smack in the middle of an irresponsible Renaissance, a violent reaction to post-modernism that drags disparate eras past and reassembles them with the skill of a toddler at a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces don’t fit, but its a cute effort, and people still laugh, giggle, and enjoy it. At least people still in love, young in optimism, or shacked up in a Brentwood citadel.
There is, however, something to be said for propagating the identity of a city. When a city looses its contextualization to a bustling, themed edifice like the Grove, or when it acquiesces to a mainstream globalization, the city slowly marginalizes itself, it’s strategy, and its methods for growing inward. Theme replaces identity, and the city becomes the parable of a child raised by a schizophrenic crack addict. Why disjoint an already disjointed city?
Don’t get me wrong, I love surprises that disregard context and normativity. I delight in Renaissance Fair jousts and the pirate (replete with an eye-patch and pantaloons) that frequents my local 7-11. I’m fascinated by the new wave black hookers, with their hot pink lipstick and green acrylic nails, that hussy around downtown. But all of these things are accessible, non-interfering, and not guarded by fortress walls and expensive parking garages.
I’m walking through the Grove for the fourth or so time, so its not quite as suspect or spectacle. The sun traces the contours of the stores around my friend and I, the sun so brilliant that the facades, in their silhouettes, are empty entities, evacuated from their commercial wombs.
I imagine the walls suddenly falling down, the massive temples to consumerism imploding. I imagine the people, the pedestrians, the shoppers exposed to the surrounding city, finally slugs in absence of the shell of priced items. But instead of trembling in fear, hiding the genitalia of their indulgence, they continue to shuffle through racks of invisible clothing. I see a woman holding a void in her hands, a smile sweeping across her face as she lifts the void higher, as she illuminates it.