Behold the vast emptiness of the Global Mall

Global Mall

Once upon a time the mall in Antioch was the hip shit. I know because I purchased basically every Christmas present there between 2000 and 2004. At some point after I graduated and moved to Memphis, the mall fell into some hard times and reported gang activity, and it closed down. Which is pretty surprising; it was a bustling area back in the day.

The mall is open again, and it’s rebranded as Global Mall at the Crossings. The whole idea is that it’s a melting pot of Latin, Asian, and Middle Eastern cultures, which is pretty brilliant given Nashville’s changing demographics. It hasn’t been open very long and they are currently trying to fill up the empty shops.

We stopped by the other day to explore and so I could take a trip down memory lane, since I hadn’t been in that mall in nearly a decade.

It was incredible. Huge areas of the mall are still completely empty but you can walk around like it’s no big thing. It’s unsettling. Almost like you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. I let my kiddo run around like the whole place was a playground. He found the shop that used to be a Gymboree or some such and had a blast making faces at himself in the kid-sized mirrors. I, on the other hand, tried hard to remember which stores had been where. To try to tie together my foggy memories of the place with the actual echoing building I stood in that day.

All I could think about, really, was how amazing it would be to shoot some archetypal zombie footage in that place.

I hope it grows and thrives and that they get all the vacant shops filled up, but if you get a chance to go see the mall while it’s still relatively empty, you absolutely must. Because how often do you really get to be inside a dead mall that’s taking its first post-resuscitation breaths?

Here are some (crappy iPhone) pictures of how it looks now.

First the purging, then the nesting

yardsaleweb

I have the strangest feeling that this flyer is missing crucial information. Date, time, general location, check. Warning for early birds, check. General idea of what’ll be for sale, check. Hm.

‘Dell’ rhymes with ‘fail’ when I say it

I know better than to ever try to purchase or own a Dell again. I have known better for YEARS. And yet … I was seduced by high-end specs on special.

Okay. The story. Because everyone cares.

My parents bought a Dell desktop eleven or so years ago. It was a fairly snazzy machine back in the day, but its innards would be laughable to the average 15-year-old in 2011. I don’t remember how large the hard drive is but I do know the RAM chugged along at 256mb. (Funny story: My dad maintains to this day that that machine “would run circles” around my mom’s newish laptop and my 2004 pre-Intel iMac “if it didn’t have all that shit on it.” “That shit” meaning, of course, Weatherbug and my mom’s dozen PopCap find-the-items games. Heh.)

Anyway, a decade’s worth of crap got loaded onto that computer, including large photographs from Dad’s DSLR. So, as you might imagine, its performance really took a nosedive and got to the point where sometimes you would wait minutes between mouse click and action. But we are a thrifty people when it comes to buying useful things as opposed to, say, giant paintings of Civil War notables. So it took until 2011 for my mom to decide that enough was enough, and we would be getting Dad a new computer for his birthday. She asked for my recommendation, so I started nosing around and trying to find deals. I decided not to have one custom built since I wasn’t sure that my Dad would perceive that as a better value and not just a computer cobbled together from spare parts. I got drawn in by a deal Dell was having for a few days, where I could get 1TB of storage with an Intel Core i5-650 and 6GB of RAM, plus a bunch of other good stuff (23-inch monitor, Photoshop Elements, etc.), all of which totaled less than $900. That came in under the budget I was given, and was a better deal than I was able to create at some other company sites, so I figured it was pretty good, and would give my dad a souped-up machine he could not complain about for a few years at least. (This is the part of the post where I hesitate to give these specs to the internet, because someone far more knowledgeable about this shit than I am is going to assume I am an idiot, despite the baseline thesis of this blog being “I AM AN IDIOT.” So, carry on.)

So I sat down with Dad when I went home to visit the family for his and Mom’s and my youngest nephew’s joint birthday celebration. We paged through all the options and I made sure that my recommendations worked for him. Then I bought the damn thing via the Dell website so I could make sure it had the specs I wanted, WITH NO GODDAMNED UPSELL. Easy, right?

The next day at work I got the obligatory phone call from my credit card, verifying a suspicious purchase (I suppose they consider anything not from Buster’s to be suspicious). I verified with a smile then went about my business for two weeks, as I had remembered that the ship date wasn’t until the 23rd or so, and because I had chosen free shipping, it wasn’t scheduled to arrive until the 29th.

I was running errands Monday when my dad called to say he’d not seen a computer yet. It dawned on me that the only e-mail I had received from Dell was an order confirmation. No “Your order has shipped!” update. So I came home and found my original confirmation e-mail and followed a “track my order” link, which led me to a page saying my order had been changed or canceled. Bokay. So I made a phone call to India to be told that my order was canceled and they didn’t know why. I was asked to call another number in India to try and find out why. That nice young man told me, simply, “fraud.” I tried to explain that I had verified the purchase with my credit card company and that I had a confirmation number from Dell, and no one had ever told me about the order being canceled. He transferred me to customer service, whose robotic menu shit the bed and spat out an error and hung up on me. I called one of the previous numbers and got a third person to try and explain my issue to. A lot of nice “sorry about your luck, ma’am” and “our system will not let me see why your order was canceled” but not a lot of “let me fix this for you.” I finally got transferred to a gal named Courtney in Nashville, who was just so super nice and seemingly sympathetic. I explained to her that I wanted the same specs for the same price I had agreed to before (a true hardass would have lobbied for a discount), and when I e-mailed her a list of the specs, she put me on hold and came back and told me she’s sorry but there’s just no way she can do that for me, and, after trying to sell me on some insane Dell membership something or other that I WOULD NEVER USE BECAUSE I FUCKING HATE THE COMPANY, proceeded to try and downgrade all the specs to get under the price point. I explained that that did not work for me.

She explained that the computer system was acting weird and not letting her access the information she needed to potentially work with me, so could she call me back tomorrow at 10 a.m.? Oh, SURE! I said, and gave her my phone number. I even asked for her e-mail address so I could e-mail her the spec list to make sure she didn’t miss anything. Of course, she did not call. Because “the computer system is acting weird” is code for “your $915 means nothing to this company, you worthless peon.” So obviously my dad still has no birthday present and I can’t stop fantasizing about burning Dell Inc. down Milton style, because what the fuck?

I realize I should call back and demand to speak to a manager, but I wasted an hour Monday just trying to get someone to acknowledge that what they had done needed rectifying (no one ever did). I will not be giving any money to Dell, ever. In some ways, I thank the Universe for reminding me of what I already knew: That Dell is a soulless shell of a company and that no one in my family will ever own another one of their products, if I have anything to do with it.

Day 59/365: Eliza is Bewildered by the Winchester Farmers Market

Day 59/365: Eliza is Bewildered by the Winchester Farmers Market

As are we all. In the good way, of course. Aisles and aisles of fresh produce at sane prices. Huge fish. Animal organs. Giant bags of rice. So much hot sauce to choose from. Piñatas!

[Project 365]

Score

new furniture

The weekend I visited my parents for Father’s Day, my sister and nephews and I took a let’s-get-out-of-the-house sashay down to downtown Saltillo (I will NOT admit to accidentally leaving my brother’s giant diesel truck’s emergency brake on during the entire trip, and wondering why accelerating was such a pain in the ass), which included a trip into the Saltillo Landing Cafe/Grocery as well as a peek inside the Robertson family’s antiques store, which I had not been in before. Last time I went into the building, it was a gameroom-slash-knickknacks store being run by Clifton, an enterprising young man I had graduated high school with. I’m told he has run off to California — smart boy — and now his parents run the space and keep it stocked with some actually freaking awesome wares for reasonable prices (check out that link for a glimpse of an amazing baby blue vintage fridge; also just out of the frame is a $125 functional? floor radio from EONS AGO). My sister, always the one in our family to sniff out a deal, asked if we could sneak into the back room and see what wasn’t yet on the showroom floor. We’re sweet-talkin’ Southern gals, so naturally we got our way. And lo and behold, we stumbled upon that dresser (which I will henceforth refer to as a sideboard) above, as well as this chest of drawers. They were marked down from $40 apiece to $25. That’s right, math-heads, $50 for the set. I cleaned up the joy piss that ran down my leg an after some obligatory DO-I-REALLY-NEED-THIS-HOW-WILL-I-GET-IT-HOME hemming and hawing, I was leaving my number with the fill-in clerk (the proprietor’s mother-in-law, adorably) and a few days later I got the call that I could indeed have the pieces.

My brother delivered them to the house Saturday on the honor system; I haven’t paid a dime for these beauties yet, and the seller even sent along a can of paint for touch-ups, as she had planned to paint the pieces before selling them. While they could use some work — there are cigarette burns and some water damage and they both smell musty — I just kind of adore the color that they are, even if it clashes with my wall. There’s something sunbursty about that color, the way it darkens at the edges. And don’t even get me started on the hardware.

I originally had it in my head after the first viewing that I had some art deco on my hands but I don’t think that’s the case. I’m terrible at identifying furniture and architecture styles, and the internet has been surprisingly unhelpful in my sleuthing efforts. If you can look at this and tell me the style (other than mid-century modern, which is my closest guess, which probably means it’s anything but), I’d be mighty grateful. I feel like I really lucked out here, and I want to reiterate that it was my sister who pushed me to go for it. She could taste the bargain victory whereas I was merely smelling whiffs of it (I have never been good at thrifting, and I will never be a Dave or Amy and I mostly accept that).

Pressing business (chortle)

french press

I was thrifting with AY-D and Amy on my glorious — and gloriously productive — Saturday off when Amy spotted this little number at that antique shop next door to the Mapco at Central and Cooper. (Gary’s?) $15 brand new. It’s a good thing Amy spotted it because I was too busy following Amanda around while wearing some wooden African sympathy pregnancy belly to notice a damn thing.

In which your narrator’s want-o-meter goes berserk

lights   doors   bricks

fishes

Here is how a girl knows she has gone over the deep end into the homeownership bit of adulthood: She gets absolutely beside herself about all the weird and cool and old stuff at Memphis Waterworks and Memphis Market Central. I’m talking ancient doors, crumbly bricks from historic Memphis buildings, enormous church windows, soothing fountains, coppery hardware, the whole bit.

I harbor no illusions that I will ever be able to afford anything from either store, but it’s fun to imagine Candace Olson taking pity on me and buying a truckload of house makeover accent pieces to incorporate into the design she’s going to implement pro bono because I’m such a swell gal.

In all seriousness, though, I broke my damned bird bath Sunday afternoon while trying to unclog the (new) pump. That bastard is an algae-making machine, I tell you. So now I’m short a water feature. THE HORROR. So maybe if I save up enough dough, I can actually go back to Waterworks with the intention of bringing something home with me. Or I can stow away and stay the night and just pretend like I live there among all that cool shit, whichevs.

knob plate things   O SHI

memphis waterworks

Also, kudos to the nautically themed booth operator’s designer for the hilarity, intended or not. (Although honestly, how could it not be?)

A little Tuesday whimsy

I ordered some stuff from Perpetual Kid recently, and when I opened the box, this is what greeted me, resting atop all those packing peanuts.

rawr!

It gave me a smile.

Day 349: Ol’ Greybeard

Day 349: Ol' Greybeard

Tuesday brought much milling about and squirreling away. Pigeon Forge is lined with places you never want to go into but that you always end up buying shit at. Why? I don’t know. It’s some kind of universal law involving the eventual depletion of your checking account.

Amber and I were sitting and waiting on the folks to meet us when my mom walked up to us. “Y’all!” mom started, then laughed. “I was going to say, ‘Y’all make a good couple!’ but that’s not what I mean!”

I looked at Amber and back at mom with a smirk on my face. “Well, actually, I’ve got something to tell you…” I said dramatically.

Mom froze in her tracks and a look of complete terror overtook her. I laughed, suddenly completely embarrassed. “I’M JUST KIDDING!” I screeched. Mom looked more relieved than I have perhaps ever seen her. Amber and I devolved into nervous laughter and I realized that my parents must actually wonder about my sexuality since I never bring boys for them to meet and I am creeping up on thirty, unmarried and unashamed.

We sat down for dinner at a place that will not only make your food, but will make the plates it’s served on. The food was great and Amber and I were really bad at being sneaky about paying the tab for everyone. Oh well. Free food is clumsy sometimes.

We spent the remainder of the evening at the outlet mall, trolling for bargains or shiny things to catch our eye. Part of me feels guilty for spending so much time shopping, but then I realized that A) What was I going to do? Camp in the woods? HA HA HA B) I was helping our battered economy! C) I was buying much-needed Christmas presents for friends and loved ones! D) My other cultural options were pretty much dictated by Dolly Parton’s corporate handlers. So. I deal with the guilt pretty easily.

At some point, I managed to take this photo, which cracks me up, without exception, every time I look at it:

hiiiii

Amber and I came back to the cabin with a car full of sweet sweet swag, and tucked in, determined to watch The 12 Men of Christmas since that scamp Stephanie had given me a review copy and I was determined not to let her down. We made s’mores in the fireplace and drank champagne and I yelled at the television when I realized that my protagonist was a 3-foot-tall, obnoxious PR hack with a supersonic voice. Fun fact: That movie had not a damn thing to do with Christmas. Or men, really. Or the number twelve. Except that there are 12 months in a year and that is roughly the amount of time it will take me to forget that this movie exists. Fun fact part two: There’s a token black dude who gets roughly seven seconds of screen time. Hilarious!

Two bottles of champagne, another s’more, and an untold amount of honey bourbon liqueur later, we passed out.

Vacation!

[Project 365]