The Country Comes Into Focus in the Mall of America
On a drive from the site of the World Trade Center to the Pentagon to the Mall of America, a guy has a lot of time to think, look and listen. Flags hang from overpasses, farmers bale hay, summer turns to fall, and the newsreel is narrated by preachers, poets and pundits.
Public opinion, called into radio shows from the far corners of 50 states, comes in every accent and runs from dove to hawk, with lots of strange birds in between.
Mostly, though, there is undivided love of country, warts and all, and a bucking up in a time of fear and uncertainty. You cannot drive 10 miles without a highway road sign telling you America stands united and has been blessed by God himself.
Now here comes a Wal-Mart, and there’s a Starbucks at the next rest stop.
And then you come to the Mall of America.
Just looking at the galactic enormousness of the place, you have to figure annual sales here rival the gross domestic product of Afghanistan. If the World Trade Center was the symbol of American capital, the Mall of America is our grandest temple of materialism. This culture of excess, which helped create a McWorld, is both admired and reviled in other countries. That’s why security here has been tightened.
“The guards came one day to this table to check all the drawers,” says Hiro Chandiramani, an Indian-born vendor with a “Simply Sterling” jewelry kiosk that sells “Michael Jordan” earrings for $24.95. He wasn’t talking about his own kiosk, but the one next door, which sits empty. “I thought, ‘My God, anybody could put something in one of my drawers when I’m not looking and I could be blown to smithereens.’ ”
Business is down about 30%, several merchants told me. People are holding onto their money right now and avoiding places that could be targets for terrorists. Also, Northwest Airlines’ hub airport is 10 minutes from the mall, and the announced layoff of thousands there isn’t helping business.
But still, can any force, anywhere, defeat a country where, in relative hard times, people still shop for 60-inch television sets at Sears and sit like Buddhas before mountains of chicken wings at Hooters?
I couldn’t get a parking space closer than 75 yards to the mall, which has 71 restaurants and food shops, 520 specialty stores, four department stores, 11 toy stores, 14 movie theaters, a post office and a Camp Snoopy amusement park.
“Mall of America is the largest fully enclosed retail and family entertainment complex in the United States,” proclaims the seven-section fold-out map and directory.
I saw a family of four, Dad in a cowboy hat, Mom with a Victoria’s Secret bag, stroll past an Indian Sikh in a turban selling “God Bless America” T-shirts on their way into the FAO Schwarz Barbie toy store.
If I had a camera, I’d have taken that picture and sent it to the Taliban and all the terrorists, and they’d have no choice but to surrender or take their own lives.
“I don’t personally live a life of excess and luxury,” says Sue Toibola, another kiosk merchant. “But I do appreciate what it means to be a woman, an American woman, who can become an entrepreneur, study for a doctorate degree if she wants to and do anything else she chooses. I value that and I support any effort to preserve it.”
The family that walked into the Barbie shop comes out empty-handed. Josh Bieber, a South Dakota rancher, says his family drove to Minneapolis to get a checkup for 5-year-old son, Jacob, who beat cancer as a toddler.
They always bring the kids to the mall on the medical visits, Bieber says, because there’s nothing like it back home, where the county population numbers less than the 6,000 who were killed in the World Trade Center towers.
“Yes, we do have more excess and freedoms here than people have in other countries,” Bieber says. “But if that’s a bad thing, why do so many people want to live here?”
Because most people in the world are less interested in politics or nationality than in raising children who grow up in relative safety and with ample opportunity, regardless of country of origin.
Yes, we’re guilty of excess, as the 20 health and beauty shops in the Mall of America suggest with ringing clarity. Yes, we’ve got vast inequities and division. Yes, we’ve got hypocrisy in everything from religion to foreign policy.
But crossing the country, you get an immutable sense of how deeply people value the freedom to succeed, or fail, in missions of their own making.
Hiro Chandiramani, owner of the Sterling Silver kiosk, grew up in a house in India with no hot water and no toilet, and he wanted more for his children. Now he is raising three teenagers in a five-bedroom house with four bathrooms, and he wears a shirt with an American flag on it to the Mall of America to run his business.
“I’ve traveled to many places in the world,” he says. “It always feels so good to come home.”
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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.
