Stayin’ Alive in the Mall

As we’ve previously observed, malls are as dead as disco in the US. But we’re in Merida, Mexico, on the Yucatan peninsula, and neither the mall nor disco is dead here. As a matter of fact, you can hear disco on the PA system in the mall. If you’ve got a hankering to sit in the food court while listening to Stayin’ Alive, Merida has you covered.

In many ways, Merida reminds me of the US in the sixties. Big, extended nuclear families go to the mall. The little boys hair is slicked down, the little girls in pony tails. Mom and dad are well-dressed. A slovenly man, woman or child is a rare thing at their mall. Well, present company excepted.

The little boys mug for a picture in front of the full-sized Iron Man statue in the toy store while dad snaps away with his phone and mom rolls her eyes. There are things for tots to ride around the mall. Scooters, and little dinosaurs and other assorted extinct creatures. Of course to our USian eyes, everything in the mall is like a glimpse of extinct creatures. Everyone is married and has children. The few tattoos you see indicate waitstaff, not biker gang.

The malls are in the northern reaches of the city. Like many American cities like Houston, or even Boston, there’s a ring road (the periferico) that defines what’s the city proper, and what’s the outlying burbs. The malls are inside the northern rim of the periferico, but just. After that, it’s a half-hour straight shot to Progreso Beach, and the Gulf of Mexico. Er, America. Um, Mexico. I give up.

If you were born in the sixties, this mall would be deja vu for you, except all the shoppers are tawnier than you remember. It’s spotless and orderly, like life used to be for norteamericanos. Here’s an American expat from Chicago, I think, wandering in all three of the big ones:

The mallers are certainly not the lower financial class in the city. The northern reaches of the city are generally newer, more desirable, and more expensive than the centro or especially the southern regions of the city, where you can still get your fill of rubble, if you’re so inclined. I’ve mentioned that most everything in Merida seems quite affordable, if not downright cheap to extranjeros like us. A good (great, really) meal in a restaurant for two, with drinks and everything else we can think to order included, is commonly just forty bucks. If you’re more adventurous, street food and market stall comestibles are a fraction of that. I’m not that afraid of Mexican Delhi belly, but I’m allergic to things, and my Spanish is poor. They might give me extra shrimp in my taco because I told them it would kill me in incomprehensible Spanish. Or maybe they’d give me extra shrimp on purpose just to stop me from desolating their language any longer. Either way, I can’t chance it.

But up there in the mall, I finally encountered eye-watering prices on things. Some people have real money here. We were in a department store which reminded me of the glory days of Jordan Marsh and Filene’s in the Boston of my childhood. I looked at a pair of sunglasses in a display case, and did the math that pesos require. Whoah. I can’t afford $650 sunglasses in Mexico, because I can’t afford them in the US, either. Someone has money down here.

So how is the mall different than back in the states, you ask? I dunno. Does your mall have water skiing in it? If not, I’d stop snickering at Mexicans if I were you. They have waterskiing at the mall:

Of course all the malls don’t have waterskiing. The next nearby mall has ice skating in the middle of it. And a Radio Shack. Your move, America.