In a six-story mall in Berlin. Exotic, asymmetrical, grand Mayan revival architecture, with tall vertical metal pylons repeated in a semicircle over an open courtyard. Comfortable walking spaces outside stores with benches and landscape detailing — almost a zen garden feel. The bottom-most floor has a moat-like pool environment with fantastical fossils embedded in the wall, giving an impression of the underworld. A restaurant with glass windows sits at that level, affording views both above and below water. Watching a promotional 3D documentary that zooms through the space excitingly as if from the perspective of a quadcopter, lurching so dramatically it’s regarded as an accomplishment to finish watching. It would’ve been so much simpler to see a human dive instead.
I’m wandering by myself on the ground floor of the atrium courtyard, trying to navigate by learning about the place in the past. I’m able to spot escalators that are closed, blocked off and partially demolished, with a meager sign at the top. I travel some distance riding a smooth-bottomed sledge across an almost too quiet expanse of open mall, at one point skidding noisily over the grating around a single tree planter. The Germans around me politely pretend not to notice.
Just up a single fight of stairs, I come across an isolated second floor balcony where I can appreciate the gauzy indoor sunlight illuminating the large space. Available there is a specialty video service which I peruse, almost all documentaries. I scroll through the acting credits, looking to confirm someone’s claim from an earlier conversation — that even in an ego-centric milieu like Hollywood there’s always going to be one ego that sticks out for every project. On this list I find an elaborate headshot of William Shatner posed with his dogs, which seems to prove the adage.
There’s also an organized section with global syndicated newspapers, even one from Sacramento in fact. I open up the interface and the very first story is about North San Juan (a small town I visited in June to look at a house). The District Attorney’s office is being refurbished in anticipation of a new DA, and someone is writing to complain. Apparently, although the office is the size of a shack, it has a large flat yard where someone has been scraping out valuable ashes for agriculture. Tragedy of the commons type thing, but with the twist that the DA that would prosecute isn’t there yet. It kind of blows my mind that I immediately find such a local story in such a faraway place.