What did people do before malls? Where did they go to escape time and space and feel as if they were living in a sort of low impact limbo? The modern mall offered some third space in between the comfort and privacy of home and the untamed stimulation of the streets with its weather, noise, and unpredictability. In my little town that had not yet reached maturity there was almost nothing open and very little to do. Just miles and miles of undeveloped fields and the occasional unassuming strip mall. Fairview Mall was one of the first of its kind and felt like a new kind of future. Sheltered from the harsh Canadian winter it was climate controlled and free of pollution, dirt and Nature's animal energy. Entering it changed you subtly. Deadened your senses a little, which could feel calming or numbing depending on your perspective. There was a particular acoustic quality too. Almost like the artificial background noise you'd hear in films and TV shows. A sort of white noise of blandness. Besides television and the one small two-screen cinema on the outskirts of the mall's parking lot, for us it was the outside world - shrunk and packaged inside a series of rectangular stores selling shoes and trinkets and record albums and the mysterious orange liquid that emerged from glass containers at the hot dog stand. 

In my twenties and thirties, living in downtown Montreal as a student or semi-employed freelancer, I'd find myself in the city's underground malls, all of them connected like a rabbit warren of artificially-lit tunnels at highly off-peak times. 3:15pm on a Tuesday, say, where it's unlikely I'd see anyone I knew. It was a way to be in public while remaining invisible. I'd sit at food courts munching on shawarma or Chinese food, disappearing into a book or magazine under the hum of neon lights.  Looking up occasionally I'd see pensioners shuffling past or other like-minded refugees from the hustle bustle going on above our heads.

Recently, with some time to kill in the city of an evening I couldn't think of where I wanted to go. Bars seemed a littler gloomy on a rainy July night...chain restaurants felt uninspiring and the cafes I like to visit were all closed. I remembered an upscale food court I had visited once and was relieved to find that not only was it open, it was teeming with people having after work drinks and solo diners hunched over laptops. Settling in to my table under the gaze of no one I looked up at the high ceiling and its constellation of landscaped lights, and felt suddenly tamed.