Malls in the Gulf States as Fantasy Social Centres

Malls are the new city centers in cities that have no center. The mall is air-conditioned and has all the entertainment a person could want, if you have money to spend and time to spend it. In a world of material excess, where progress means "more stuff" then malls are the epitome of joy and fulfillment. So if we accept as a premise that our lives outside the home are about the entertainment of more Stuff, and we socialize around Stuff, then the places where we get our Stuff need to be as entertaining and iconic as possible. The malls we have visited in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Doha have been not just museums of contemporary material culture. They have been positively shrines to materialistic excess and the fantasy that shopping euphoria transports a person to another world, nay, another dimension. Here is the mall where there is a ski slope called 'Ski Dubai'. When you go in to sled or ski, you get a ski jacket and pants with the Ski Dubai logo on it. Everybody is there wearing the same parka and ski pants. If I thought Perfect North Slopes was an entertaining joke, I stand corrected. It is practically an alpine paradise when one is confronted by Ski Dubai. There is a chair lift and 1k run, complete with a sledding hill and kiddie park. There is a 4 meter tubing run also. Whoo hoo. It is also lit with slightly blue tinged lights. People press their noses to the windows outside to watch, so it entertains not only as a ski slope but as a sort of strange reality show as well.

Then there is the aquarium and water fall at the Mall of the Emirates. You can visit the aquarium separately from visiting the mall, but just in walking around, a person can still enjoy the big fish tank. Evidently, the tale is told how it sprang a leak one day and the mall had to close. (insert Fear, Panic, and Boredom here). The water fall at the Mall of the Emirates has statues of men vaguely reminiscent of Ken dolls diving down it. It makes a lovely noise, and you can hear it far down the hallways of Stuff. Outside the Mall of the Emirates is a large pond with dancing fountains that people line up to see. It is evidently quite the popular family outing, rather like the drive in movies, which I also read in the paper that they are starting up a huge drive in out in the desert. There are reported to be little air conditioning units you can put on the window of your car so you don't have to leave your car running during the movie. Ah, the life of freedom in the desert. I am not making this up: they are going to show Laurence of Arabia as their first movie at this outdoor theater.

Doha has its own iconic mall: Villagios. This mall, in addition to having a lot of Stuff, also has a canal with gondolas that people who are tired of looking for Stuff can ride in. We went to Villagios on a Friday night, so it was packed, I am telling you, packed with families. Everybody wanted a ride down the 200 meter (more or less) canal. The gondolas are motorized, but there is a south east asian person standing on the back guiding the boat along the canal with a rudder attached to the faux gondola pole he is holding. The ceilings are painted with clouds, and along the mall path there are faux Venetian Ponte Vecchios periodically for crossing the path. But if the Venetian theme pales, you can go over to the food court and watch people at the skating rink. According to a sign there, the Gondolinas are the local figure skating team who compete there (with whom one wonders), but there is rumored to also be a hockey team organized by (surprise) the local Canadian ex-pats. The local Australian ex-pats have organized the surfers who like to chase the storm surges off the East coast.

Malls. Personally, they give me hives. The stuff stuff stuff. I feel oppressed by the material culture, but after awhile it gets humorous. We found a cell phone store that had gold plated and titanium cell phones for $30,000. The sales man said it was all about lifestyle. Yup.