h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sounds amazing!
Does it have escalators? There is only one public escalator on the Isle of Wight, which opened to the public in 1997 - I remember it well.
There aren't any shopping centres on the Island, for good or bad.

It has escalators, although probably not as many as you may imagine.
There are lots of stairs, and far more lifts than would seem likely....
Shopping centres for good or bad???
Theres a question.

An almost totally irrelevant point but I was working in Manchester and Leeds when they were building the Centre, I used to pass it regularly on the motorway but it wasn't finished by the time I left so I never got to see it in all its glory. I imagine its a bit like Meadow Hall(?) in Sheffield. Just goes to show that shopping has become a real leisure activity for a vast number of the population. I can't see it myself but there you go

I've not been to the Meadowhall centre, so I don't know what its like. All its glory sums up the Trafford Centre, though, to me it seems alarmingly big and Technicolour.

How can it ever hope to compete with the Arndale Centre which upon opening was likened to 'the biggest bog wall in Europe" by no less an authority than the Grauniad. Such clarity of the projected shopping experience is hard to beat.

LOL! I can't help but think sometimes that that bomb should have demolished the whole thing..... although its not so bad with the natural light etc.

Is the Arndale any better now that they've done it up? It certainly used to be the biggest bog wall in Europe.
Anyway some interesting facts about the Trafford Centre that I was told...
The person who owns the land it's built on has a flat in there.
There was going to be a Marks and Spencers store but it didn't work out, so you get the market stalls bit instead.
The cinema does quite well out of showing indian language films as well as the mainstream hollywood releases.
These are three things I was told when I got taken to the cinema by someone who works for UCI, the cinema operator there

I think you all take shopping centres for granted too much.
If you'd lived on the Island, than even visiting the smallest centre (like Cascades in Portsmouth) would be a topic of conversation that could last several hours.

The Arndale still looks horrid from the outside.... horrid... but inside its passable, not noticeably horrid... I'd wondered about the lack of M&S in the Trafford Centre, its probably a good thing for Manchester shops that there isn't one there and there is that Massive M&S they just opened in the town centre.

BB, about taking shopping centres for granted, before they redid the Arndale, in 1989 when I was eight, we met a Russian lady who was visiting M/cr. We took her to the Arndale.... she had her camera and insisted on taking 'photos of it, because otherwise the people at home for her wouldn't believe how marvellous it was. She was also amazed by the checkouts in Sainsbury's in Wilmslow, her son had said there were such things in Japan but she'd never expected to see any herself.

She was a strange character, not a strange person but thinking about it from the point of view of a nineteen year old who's studied a little modern history the fact that she was here at all should have disturbed us some... but I saw the amazed look on her face.. its hard to fool a small child on that.

That's more or less the same view that children from the Isle of Wight have for the wonders of Mainland shopping centres, with lifts and escalators. Befioer the BHS Escalator of 1997, the nearest one was in Pompey, over the seas. And not everyone on the Island goes to the mainland anyway.

I liked the article, enough detail without going on and on. Have you submitted it yet? (I forgot to check and my modem is so slow that I couldn't be bothered going back.)

Talking about shopping centres It always amazes me how people can go to centres to just hang out. The hectic atmosphere drives me mad and I would only go to shop. Apart from that the Trafford Centre is one of the best places - it's absolutely huge. (UK wise that is)

SallyM

I wouldn't hang around a shopping centre - a nice park, maybe, but no-where built up. Doesn't seem normal, but I liked the film "Mallrats" though...
I'm going on a tour of a shopping centre next week!

I have to say that "painfully sad" is my general view of those who hang around shopping centres for no apparent reason.

and I did submit this article

Shopping centres (malls) should be there for one thing, and one thing only shopping!
Though being a thoroughly unreconstituted bloke I don't understand this retail therapy thing (unless it involves gadget toys )

I don't get retail therapy myself, well, not if its clothes shopping... I don't mind buying books, though, or gadgets, or thingies for my computer

But the Trafford Centre is a centre for entertainment too, with its cinema... I guess it tries to blur the line.

It seems that only we Brits (and may be Europeans) like are shopping centres to be shopping centre. From what I can tell from my few visits, American shopping centres need an "attraction", such as ice skating, or nobody visits them.

Here in Asia, visiting the shopping mall appears to be the main leisure activity. It seems just about impossible to go to the cinema without going to the shopping mall. Amercian style coffee shops, Starbucks and the like, are all the rage, yes, most of them are in shopping malls. Even the doctor's and dentist's surgeries are, yes, in the shopping malls !!!

On the plus side, every shopping mall has its own indoor food court with many different "stalls" selling a wide array of local and western food. No arguments about where to eat, even in a large group. Everybody chooses their own and then sits together to eat. Food courts seem to be making an entrance back in Blighty but the ones I've seen don't cut it.

It's starting to sound as though I'm one of those sad people who hangs around shopping centres. Got to rush - Got to find a life.

(-:

When people talk about retail therapy, all they really mean is clothes shopping. It kinda bugs me that people don't thing me shopping for books counts.

Especially my mum and my shopping mate Sarah who hate it when I have to go into Smiths for a book

SallyM

I find it's less of retail therapy, more of getting me more worked up when I can't find the book, CD, gadget, toy at the price I want. Or I can find it then I can't afford it

I just go to second-hand book shops for books.
As there aren't any shopping centres on the Isle of Wight, I am fascinated by the ones in Southampton, and spend ages looking around the West Quay centre to see what the newly built bit is. (It won't open until September). But I very rarely go into shops - I've never been in a clothes shop in my life and have no intention of changing that.

Second hand book or record stores, nice.

Wonders where BB gets his clothes from, if not clothes shops...