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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Minneapolis, like all but the oldest cities in the US, is a disaster of car-centric urban planning. Just because you don't have a walkable city doesn't mean a city can never be walkable. Minneapolis is perfectly walkable. It's just got bad weather a lot of the year. So they built things like the skywalk system for significant chunks of downtown with retail often up on those second or third level floors.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:31
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:The thing about Actual Cities is shopping isn't inconvenient, because your homes are above the stores, not 20 miles away in a bedroom community filled with SUVs. This is why I like shopping in a proper "actual city" because it becomes a relaxing social experience. The walk between the stores is the fun part, being outdoors, running into people I know, interacting with other humans, looking at pretty buildings, looking at pretty views, just generally seeing things and my senses being stimulated. In a fully enclosed mall everything looks the same, everything is tightly controlled, no windows, everyone is there just to shop. It feels like a stifling oppressive environment and all I want to do is run and escape. In fact when I know my mall shopping is done and I'm trying to get out I almost have a feeling of panic as I try to find the way out because it all looks the same, all the shops are the same, there's no landmarks, no sun or mountains or sea to orient yourself. Then we you do get out you're greeted by a new hell, the mall parking lot. In the city, shopping is just incidental to enjoying your time walking around. It's a place I want to be that also happens to have shops I can buy things at but I'm quite happy to be there even if shopping is not on the agenda. My wife works at a huge suburban strip mall in a neighbouring city and it's horrible. People actually do drive from store to store. All the sidewalks are actually really narrow and all the signage is huge and facing the parking lot but can't be seen from the sidewalk so it's impossible to navigate by foot. A lot of these new strip malls that plant some trees in the parking lots and call them selves lifestyle centres are like this. They even sort of try to ape a proper pedestrian environment but still fail due to all the little things, like signs you can read on foot vs from the parking lot. But in terms of the death of retail, I really do try to support local business but so many don't make it easy. Their price will be literally twice as much as online, they'll pay their entirely part-time staff that they constantly mistreat minimum wage then write letters to the editor about how we need to relax all these business-killing labour laws, and then they'll form an alliance of uninformed reactionary small business owners to protest the new bike lanes or sidewalk improvements. Most of the poo poo I buy isn't poo poo you need to be able to see in person, it's like electronic parts or scale model poo poo. Local economies are super important, but gently caress most small business owners. They'll plaster their "support the community, shop local!!" stickers on their window then give nothing back while whining about having to treat their staff properly or pay their taxes.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:33
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fishmech posted:Minneapolis is perfectly walkable. Again, if you are going to try to lay down blanket statements like that you are going to have to provide parameters and hold yourself to them because I'm not playing Find the Goalpost with America's Smartest Tween. Baronjutter posted:This is why I like shopping in a proper "actual city" because it becomes a relaxing social experience. The walk between the stores is the fun part, being outdoors, running into people I know, interacting with other humans, looking at pretty buildings, looking at pretty views, just generally seeing things and my senses being stimulated. In a fully enclosed mall everything looks the same, everything is tightly controlled, no windows, everyone is there just to shop. It feels like a stifling oppressive environment and all I want to do is run and escape. In fact when I know my mall shopping is done and I'm trying to get out I almost have a feeling of panic as I try to find the way out because it all looks the same, all the shops are the same, there's no landmarks, no sun or mountains or sea to orient yourself. Then we you do get out you're greeted by a new hell, the mall parking lot. In the city, shopping is just incidental to enjoying your time walking around. It's a place I want to be that also happens to have shops I can buy things at but I'm quite happy to be there even if shopping is not on the agenda. Yeah, that's what I love too  Lately I've been thinking a lot about Melrose Ave. in LA, which is a string of bougie clothing stores and vintage shops and bespoke tattoo parlors and very easy to make fun of, especially since the current trend in storefront design is to literally provide a background for your Instagram selfie, but it's so charming to see a street in car-crazy LA buzzing with pedestrians and people popping in and out of shops and restaurants, all sharing the same interests and talking to each other and putting sunglasses on their dogs. Sometimes when I go by I see dozens of people posing for Instagram on a single block, sometimes with a friend standing by with costume changes and props, and yeah it's all a little ridiculous but also... youth. It's a place and a cultural moment that might not exist even five years from now, and it's special to see.
Tiny Brontosaurus fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jun 13, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 23:33
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Again, if you are going to try to lay down blanket statements like that you are going to have to provide parameters and hold yourself to them because I'm not playing Find the Goalpost with America's Smartest Tween. So you've never visited Minneapolis then, OK. You could just admit you know nothing about the place or its nationally famous harsh weather for a lot of the year, which makes being outside quite often unpleasant, and is why they built the skywalk systems.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:40
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fishmech posted:So you've never visited Minneapolis then, OK. You could just admit you know nothing about the place or its nationally famous harsh weather for a lot of the year, which makes being outside quite often unpleasant, and is why they built the skywalk systems. I in fact have, but nice dodge! Now let's hit the reset button and pretend I'm the one who said "Minneapolis is walkable" and watch your fishmechanizations do an about-face. Hell if I had search I bet I could find you doing that already. You have no real opinions, only the opposite of whatever anyone else has said, because you're smart and everyone in the whole world is dumb, so the opposite of whatever they say must be true.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:45
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I in fact have, but nice dodge! Now let's hit the reset button and pretend I'm the one who said "Minneapolis is walkable" and watch your fishmechanizations do an about-face. Hell if I had search I bet I could find you doing that already. You have no real opinions, only the opposite of whatever anyone else has said, because you're smart and everyone in the whole world is dumb, so the opposite of whatever they say must be true. Nice meltdown. Minneapolis is fine for walkability.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:49
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fishmech posted:Nice meltdown. Minneapolis is fine for walkability. Dude, just answer her loving question, it's not that difficult.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:49
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Solkanar512 posted:Dude, just answer her loving question, it's not that difficult. There's no question there, there's just being mad because she forgot Minneapolis' primary problem for street level retail is truly unpleasant weather.
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Jun 13, 2017 23:54
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:The thing about Actual Cities is shopping isn't inconvenient, because your homes are above the stores, not 20 miles away in a bedroom community filled with SUVs. (1) Spending hours walking around and shopping (2) From your already-expensive apartment (3) In hopefully-good weather (4) In areas with the most homeless people per square foot, (5) While not getting a good price (6) Or good selection ... Is not all that convenient, sorry. The novelty of malls both with and without indoor walks is not exactly incredible, either. I appreciate that you enjoy being part of the modern young up-and-comers society, but that's not everyone's bag. Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I in fact have, but nice dodge! Now let's hit the reset button and pretend I'm the one who said "Minneapolis is walkable" and watch your fishmechanizations do an about-face. Hell if I had search I bet I could find you doing that already. You have no real opinions, only the opposite of whatever anyone else has said, because you're smart and everyone in the whole world is dumb, so the opposite of whatever they say must be true. Minneapolis is perfectly walkable, especially with its marvelously inexpensive public transportation, but keep tilting at that fishmech. Name Change fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 13, 2017 23:59
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drat you're all some goony fucks. Yes, if you know you want or need some specific thing, buying it online is convenient and easy. Sometimes though, you want to get out and do something with someone you enjoy spending time with and just browse through a shop and find things you didn't know you wanted or needed.
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Jun 14, 2017 00:06
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Jun 14, 2017 00:07
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Minneapolis, like all but the oldest cities in the US, is a disaster of car-centric urban planning. Just because you don't have a walkable city doesn't mean a city can never be walkable. So unwalkable they connected every building downtown on the 2nd floor? 
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Jun 14, 2017 00:11
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Baronjutter posted:This is why I like shopping in a proper "actual city" because it becomes a relaxing social experience. The walk between the stores is the fun part, being outdoors, running into people I know, interacting with other humans, looking at pretty buildings, looking at pretty views, just generally seeing things and my senses being stimulated. In a fully enclosed mall everything looks the same, everything is tightly controlled, no windows, everyone is there just to shop. It feels like a stifling oppressive environment and all I want to do is run and escape. In fact when I know my mall shopping is done and I'm trying to get out I almost have a feeling of panic as I try to find the way out because it all looks the same, all the shops are the same, there's no landmarks, no sun or mountains or sea to orient yourself. Then we you do get out you're greeted by a new hell, the mall parking lot. In the city, shopping is just incidental to enjoying your time walking around. It's a place I want to be that also happens to have shops I can buy things at but I'm quite happy to be there even if shopping is not on the agenda. Malls are specifically designed to make hours melt away and have the exits be as low key as possible. Obviously they require exit signs by law but any way out of the mall is meant to be far less attention grabbing than the stores. Of course they're unnerving and make you feel trapped; they're designed to trap you psychologically. That's why there are no ways to see outside in a lot of (most, I think?) malls and no clocks. You aren't meant to know what time it is. You aren't meant to do anything other than look at the stuff. They're built to get you to spend as much as possible while you're there. This is also why there's long stretches of stores between actual exits and why the exits can be a pain to find; you're meant to see a bunch of other poo poo you might want when you're going absolutely anywhere. Malls use a lot of horrifying psychological tricks to gently caress with your brain. There are people whose job is literally "figure out how to get people to spend more at the mall" and they don't care about how terrible the tactics actually are. There is money to be made and they must have it. Malls are overwhelming as well simply because there's just so much marketing noise. If one store has the brightest sign in the mall then suddenly another store has to have a brighter one. Each store is trying to get your attention more than the others so they'll all be visually shouting over each other. This is another reason why they can be unnerving; they're just plain overwhelming with the amount of information and visual noise being plastered everywhere. So there you are, stuck in this cage, not entirely sure exactly which way is the right way out while a thousand marketing experts are screaming at you "BUY! BUY OUR STUFF! YOU CAN'T BE HAPPY WITHOUT OUR STUFF! BUY IT NOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!" Meanwhile the advertisements have awful content as well. You're too fat so buy this pill to make you thinner. You're too ugly so buy this makeup to make you prettier. Your breath is too stinky so buy this toothpaste to make it smell nicer. Your clothes are too out of fashion and everybody thinks you're a tool. Buy our clothes so you can be fashionable and likeable. Nobody will want to gently caress you if your shoes are too old so buy new ones. Nobody will know if you're a member of the right sports tribe so buy this $300 jersey to let people know you're in the tribe. If you don't own a $1,000 handbag people will think you're poor and shun you. Lucky for you we have racks and racks of them. You can't be cool unless you have a guitar and $500 shades. Luckily we have both! But you're never good enough. You can't be good enough to an advertisement. There's always somebody prettier than you or somebody that has something more expensive. They are better than you so come to our store and one-up them. It's everything wrong with America surrounded with steel and concrete. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jun 14, 2017 |
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Jun 14, 2017 00:12
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A big problem with the US (or north american in general) retail situation is that the US has about 6x the per capita retail space compared to say europe. When your retail space is part of a pedestrianized high street with great transit access and integrated into the urban fabric of your town or city and part of every day life I think it's much easier for those places to survive than some mall out in the middle of nowhere that generally only lasts until it's no longer shiny and new. The US has far too much retail space, and that retail space is often very inflexible and temporary. It's very "course grained" development, which is generally inflexible by nature. Walkable areas with high granularity are able to respond to changes better (when they aren't stifled by zoning). Less detail demand? Ok the ground floor retail are now town-houses. More retail demand? The ground floors are retail again. But either way, the buildings are being used and generating wealth for the area. A huge mall that's lost its anchors is hosed quickly becomes a blight. Here's a little article on "granularity" in cities and how it's important for local economies and the ability for local retail to survive. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/10/21/granularity
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Jun 14, 2017 00:26
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ReidRansom posted:drat you're all some goony fucks. Yes, if you know you want or need some specific thing, buying it online is convenient and easy. Sometimes though, you want to get out and do something with someone you enjoy spending time with and just browse through a shop and find things you didn't know you wanted or needed. If the most meaningful and fun thing you can think of to do with someone else is buy things you don't need it might be you who is the goony gently caress.
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Jun 14, 2017 00:51
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NihilismNow posted:If the most meaningful and fun thing you can think of to do with someone else is buy things you don't need it might be you who is the goony gently caress. The most meaningful thing I do is spending time with the person I love, whatever it is we might actually be doing together.
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Jun 14, 2017 01:00
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NihilismNow posted:If the most meaningful and fun thing you can think of to do with someone else is buy things you don't need it might be you who is the goony gently caress. Beep boop delete shopping
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Jun 14, 2017 01:03
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Tiny Brontosaurus must have a brain like in Inside Out, except she just has five Angry emotions.
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Jun 14, 2017 01:24
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Lay off Tiny Brontosaurus. She gets poo poo on way more than she deserves, and is usually actually a pretty funny poster. I really liked the post she was probated for. Yeah, sometimes she seems a bit over the top, but she's right at least twice as often as she's wrong -- and I know I've been one of her "targets" for lack of a better word, and yeah I've deserved it. Stop being such a bunch of babies, jesus christ.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:02
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Peachfart posted:Tiny Brontosaurus must have a brain like in Inside Out, except she just has five Angry emotions. She's usually fine and right about stuff but gets mad about the internet way way too easily She earns the forums a lot of money, the custom avatar retail game is BOOMING.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:23
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Baronjutter posted:Walkable areas with high granularity are able to respond to changes better (when they aren't stifled by zoning). Less detail demand? Ok the ground floor retail are now town-houses. More retail demand? The ground floors are retail again. Er, what? You really think it's just that easy to do that, and not the sort of undertaking that could take years to be brought up to code for a different purpose, especially in older buildings? Particularly when you're talking about going from a long time commercial space into residential space, you don't get the sort of leeway a similarly old building that was all-residential from the start will get.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:25
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youre loving retarded fishmech (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 14, 2017 02:30
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Baronjutter posted:She's usually fine and right about stuff but gets mad about the internet way way too easily She earns the forums a lot of money, the custom avatar retail game is BOOMING. Again online shopping kills brick and mortar 
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Jun 14, 2017 02:30
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PT6A posted:Lay off Tiny Brontosaurus. She gets poo poo on way more than she deserves, and is usually actually a pretty funny poster. I really liked the post she was probated for. TB is a rereg of LF superstar Slashie who had a breakdown on the forum. She got into trouble for being a white jewish girl that claimed to be black and beat a man with a metal rod for catcalling her. I think she is a pretty good poster, but it is totally fair to make fun of her. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 14, 2017 02:36
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RBC posted:youre loving retarded fishmech Still freaking out about how oyu don't understand what incurs loss, I see.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:36
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:TB is a rereg of LF superstar Slashie who had a breakdown on the forum. She got into trouble for being a white jewish girl that claimed to be black and beat a man with a metal rod for catcalling her. lmao holy poo poo if true. I usually agree with her even if she's loving insufferable but that's just so god drat dumb. The pretending to be black thing, obviously. More men should get beat with metal rods for catcalling until they knock that poo poo off.
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Jun 14, 2017 02:51
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I think we can all agree that Minneapolis is cold in the winter, but some of you might not agree with my belief that Minneapolis is on the East Coast.
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Jun 14, 2017 03:01
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glowing-fish posted:I think we can all agree that Minneapolis is cold in the winter, but some of you might not agree with my belief that Minneapolis is on the East Coast. Part of Minneapolis is east of the Mississippi; checks out.
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Jun 14, 2017 03:06
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:TB is a rereg of LF superstar Slashie who had a breakdown on the forum. She got into trouble for being a white jewish girl that claimed to be black and beat a man with a metal rod for catcalling her. All of these accusations say so much about the person making them.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:22
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Brainiac Five posted:All of these accusations say so much about the person making them. Yeah, I've seen that accusation before and it occurs to me that: if it were true, surely there would be some evidence the proponents of this theory would like to put forward in support of it. I've yet to see any, so I take it with a very large grain of salt.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:45
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Saying that TB is angry all the time doesn't mean she is a bad poster. She is a good poster(imo), but she does get really really mad for almost no reason.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:52
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Fishmech recently got extra kidneys installed to be able to dominate in pissing contests.
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Jun 14, 2017 04:57
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I recently encountered a mall with a chain grocery store. I'm in the DC area, have lived all over, and am not sure I remember seeng this before. Is this prevalent? Fwiw, I mean like a Safeway or giant, not like trader joes or whole foods. And an indoor mall, not the shopping center kind.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:18
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Peachfart posted:Saying that TB is angry all the time doesn't mean she is a bad poster. She is a good poster(imo), but she does get really really mad for almost no reason. TB posts more good than bad but holy hell does she need to learn that sometimes you just need to let go and stop posting about a thing.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:20
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WrenP-Complete posted:I recently encountered a mall with a chain grocery store. I'm in the DC area, have lived all over, and am not sure I remember seeng this before. Is this prevalent? Fwiw, I mean like a Safeway or giant, not like trader joes or whole foods. And an indoor mall, not the shopping center kind. That sounds a whole lot like H-mart. An old Ross building converted to an indoor mall with a bunch of tiny shops, great Asian food court and large Asian grocery store.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:25
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WrenP-Complete posted:I recently encountered a mall with a chain grocery store. I'm in the DC area, have lived all over, and am not sure I remember seeng this before. Is this prevalent? Fwiw, I mean like a Safeway or giant, not like trader joes or whole foods. And an indoor mall, not the shopping center kind. WTF? Which mall is this? I know there's that weird sorta shopping center down in Pentagon City that has a Harris Teeter attached but it's outdoor. In additional DC mall chat, there's a bunch of shops out in Tyson's Corner (which is something like a half hour drive from DC) that recently started charging for parking. Suddenly everyone stopped going since there are no less than like 700 options closer than that. Maybe there really is some evidence that retail collapse is being caused by property owners being really loving bad at their jobs.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:29
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WrenP-Complete posted:I recently encountered a mall with a chain grocery store. I'm in the DC area, have lived all over, and am not sure I remember seeng this before. Is this prevalent? Fwiw, I mean like a Safeway or giant, not like trader joes or whole foods. And an indoor mall, not the shopping center kind. I've seen it in a few places, for sure. The only one I can think of locally is sort of a hybrid mall -- most/all of the larger shops have exterior entrances as well as being accessible from the interior of the mall, but I've also seen traditional indoor malls with supermarkets in them in other cities. I've also seen grocery stores on the ground level of residential buildings, which I think is a great way to go.
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Jun 14, 2017 05:31
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WrenP-Complete posted:I recently encountered a mall with a chain grocery store. I'm in the DC area, have lived all over, and am not sure I remember seeng this before. Is this prevalent? Fwiw, I mean like a Safeway or giant, not like trader joes or whole foods. And an indoor mall, not the shopping center kind. Yes it's getting common these days. A lot of malls find that they can't replace one of their closing anchor stores with another "traditional" anchor like a Sears or JC Penney, so they decide to bring either like a Target with the full grocery inside, or straight up a supermarket. A big advantage of this is that such stores tend to bring people to the mall on a regular basis, even weekly, which increases the temptation to go check out other stores in the mall. The biggest mall in all of New England, the Natick Mall which is to the west of Boston, is doing this - the 3 story JC Penney that left in 2016 or so is being replaced by a 2 level Wegman's and then the Wegman's will sublease the remaining floor to other tenants as well as using it for administration offices. The Natick Mall is also one of those malls that has condos that have direct access to the mall's interior: http://www.luxuryboston.com/Nouvelle-Natick Honestly I think living like that would be pretty boring and a hassle for commuting anywhere else.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:23
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NihilismNow posted:If the most meaningful and fun thing you can think of to do with someone else is buy things you don't need it might be you who is the goony gently caress. Sometimes it seems like y'all could never enjoy any retail experience, ever.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:33
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For most people, convenience + price are going to be the overwhelming factors in determining where and what they buy. The data bears that out. But there are tons of people who like an "experience" and it just as goony to pretend that you can't possibly comprehend that perspective. Disneyland is not the most popular theme park in the world because of its amazing rides or reasonably-priced Turkey legs and vanity license plates.
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Jun 14, 2017 14:52
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