Back when there were neighborhoods with main drags where most of the shops, cafés and bars were located, on hot summer evenings, or when someone was having a wedding, and on weekends, people from the community poured out into the streets, drank a beer and talked with friends, played cards, and shook hands with people they may not have seen for awhile. Kids could hang out with their friends under the watchful eyes of parents, at least until they snuck off behind some building to neck, or maybe once in awhile a little more. Outside of true neighborhoods in some major cities, that has mostly disappeared. Lots of people have been bemoaning the lack of sense of community. Newcomers in particular, always upwardly mobile looking, enjoy frequenting places that remind them of what their life may be like if they succeed in this incredibly difficult country. Like walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City back with the influx of immigrants, no one expected to actually shop there, but it was like having their nose pasted up against the window glass at the candy store. The nearby Rosedale Center shopping mall is an interesting exercise in diversity on weekends, especially Sunday afternoons, that somewhat sadly, serves some of the functions of the neighborhoods of the past. A mixture of multiple racial and ethnic groups use the mall as a congregating place. Teenagers to be sure come to the mall to escape family scrutiny, where their butts can stick out of their pants like the other cool guys, and they can flirt with girls or boys without a parent scolding them. But large families come there as well. It is common to see families of six or eight walking one behind the other, or more often in two or three rows across one of the corridors, a stroller, one grandmother, two parents, an auntie and several kids of various ages wandering the corridors as if they were looking at Giraffes and Tigers. The Twin Cities have become home to large populations of immigrants who include Somali, Hmong, Korean, Chinese, Mexican (from Mexico), Nicaraguan, Viet Namese, Nigerian, Kenyan, Ethiopian, several Middle Eastern countries, a small handful of South Asian Indian and Pakistani, as well as domestic African and Native American folks. The latter comprise around 18-20% of the core cities’ population. As I sipped my coffee, at the next table at the Caribou Coffee shop were four young people, roughly college age animatedly talking. They included an African American male with an Afro and his cap on backward, a Native American female wearing an ethnic T shirt, a middle Eastern Muslim female wearing a head scarf and a Midwestern looking Caucasian female looking, well, Midwestern, all hanging out, texting with their smart phones and doing what people their age do. As I did my daily walk around the mall for exercise, I kept thinking that what I was seeing must mean something, but what? If this mall replaces the old main drag of the small town or community neighborhood, heaven help us. Does this really substitute for what used to be our community? Is this really what America is about? When you figure all of this out let me know.
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 22:04:42 +0000
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