Even though I don't go to malls nearly as much as I used to, I still understand the allure of the mall. While the air-conditioned comfort is a no-brainer, I love walking among the books, magazines, comics, restaurants, DVDs, games and toys, even if about five times out of six, I don't buy anything at all.
Since my late adolescence I've come to look at shopping malls a source of comfort, a place where I can get away from the difficulties of life, which came into sharper relief when I was on my own and supporting a family.
I take some solace knowing that I still find more comfort sitting in empty or relatively quiet churches, and sometimes, in my office, after a long day's work, than I do walking around a mall looking at items I usually can't afford, but the urge to walk around malls and window shop incessantly still exists. I mean, I don't think I've ever bought anything at Bonifacio High Street, but I still go there, pay the 35 peso parking fee, and walk up and down, alternating between Fully Booked, Hobbes and Landes and Maxitoys, just staring at all the stuff, whether they be books, magazines, resin sculptures of pop culture figures like the Lord of the Rings characters or Spider-Man, or astronomically priced 1/18 and 1/43 model cars.
It's hardly a religious experience, nor is it exactly the same thing as standing in an art gallery or museum (though it's closer to that than to standing in a church), but there is a gratification in being able to just stand in a nice, cold room surrounded by a bunch of beautiful products, whether or not I ever actually buy them.
In fact, as bizarre as this may sound, sometimes there is a gratification in not ever even buying these things, because these stores in which I browse these items, with their air-conditioning, lighting and comfortably upholstered furniture (in some cases) are like refuges from the trials and tribulations of the outside world. It's not quite the sanctuary that home (or an empty church) is, but there is something comforting about standing in one, and seeing the cars lined up in their shelves. I have no such shelves and my cars are stacked up in boxes. When I want to admire or photograph them for my galleries I have to take them out and painstakingly unpack them, in some cases even having to unscrew them from plastic bases. Even if I had shelves to keep or display them in I'd have concerns such as dusting them or keeping them at cool temperatures so that their rubber tires would not melt and stick to the surfaces on which they are displayed. In the store, there is no such concern as the stock is, during the hottest times of the day, stored in full-airconditioning and yet remains on glorious display. To remove them from these safe havens (even assuming I were willing to pay the exorbitant prices charged by Hobbes and Landes) and expose them to the dust and elements that I mentioned earlier is not a prospect I relish in the least. Of course, there are a number of cars I dearly want to take home and in a few instances I do (albeit from the much cheaper Greenhills merchants) but the times I don't buy anything far outstrip the times I actually plunk down the money for a new haul.
Window-shopping remains, for the most part, a preferable alternative to actual shopping, no matter how much money I have in my bank account. I may go home most of the time without anything, but at least it means I have one less new item to worry about storing, cleaning, or in general just maintaining somehow. And of course, I still have money in my wallet.
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