Lorraine O'Connell Activity 1 -Be a Flaneur

Being a Flaneur is something people take for granted. Living in this fast paced unsettled city of New York, we don’t often get a change to just explore for the sake of just exploring and getting familiar with something we normally take for granted. At first when receiving this task I was told to go to one of the choices outside of where I live but with much consideration I reconsider the initial task. We were told to go somewhere we normally don’t go and that’s what I did. Although I live in Queens I rarely go to Queens Center Mall. It is not the mall of my choice and I have visited it no more than ten times. So I took the opportunity to familiarize myself with something within my own community thinking it would have more of an effect on me so that is what I did.
Queens Center Mall is beyond huge and unnecessarily large. I spent two hours on a Thursday between the times of 12:30 to 2:30 not thinking it would the experience it turned out to be. I anticipated that it wouldn’t be too busy but busy to the extent where I had something to work off of, but little did I know it would be as busy as it was. I assumed because it was a week day and during work hours it was would be considerably slow but with my school and work schedule I had little choice in the time frame I went. It was a beyond interesting experience I didn’t think sitting in random spots of the mall would bring such funny experiences. It also made me aware of the different aspects of the mall as in who attends in, age range, sex ratios, and much more. Queens is supposed to be the most diversified city out of America in general but never did I think I’d find it in one spot.
I started with sitting in the sitting areas where typically the husbands and boys sit as their wives or girlfriends shop. This was an interesting spot to sit because yes the majority of the people sitting there were men but they also were also watching over their children which turned out to be fun experience. I watched over one family in particular for about an hour or so. The man looked in complete shambles trying to watch over his two children, one looked no more than eight while the other was at least four. By the looks of him I obviously knew this task was not something he was comfortable or confident in doing. Luckily for him there was a television in the sitting area that kept the children preoccupied for a part of the time while the other half he was busy chasing them around and keeping an eye on them. Although I was supposed to sit and observe it came to the point where I assisted the man in keeping track of his children and preoccupied one of the children with a game. But what kept going through my head as I watched this family and the surrounding people walking the mall is why are there so many truants. These children should’ve been in school along with a lot of the other children or teens I saw walking the mall on a school day during school hours. It came to a point where I was in the food court observing the overwhelming crowd of people eating on their lunch hour, when I saw one of my students. I teach as an afterschool teacher for an afterschool program and I saw one of my students with his friends eating in the food court. He took no notice of me but it was an interesting thing to come across. Not only did I observe him but there were plenty of people walking the mall that I have seen in other places and it took me by surprise because I didn’t think the mall was such a center for a community.
Another aspect of the mall that I found hilarious was not the people aspect but about the amount of stores and sitting areas there were. The mall was so large maybe even unnecessarily too large. It proved my thoughts and feelings on capitalism and material goods ruling the majority of Americans lives which left me depressed and itching to change these ways. But none the less I understand it is a mall but I don’t see the need for there to be so many of them and for them to be as large as they are instead they should be replaced with things of importance and of substance. Teach the generations about politics or something of general concern since the way our country is going in their education level it has gone past unacceptable.
But the adventure was an interesting one because it allowed me to realize the overwhelming diversity of the communities, not only in race but in age sex and in other aspects. I got the chance to see everyone and anyone in that mall and it was all by just sitting there. Because I know for a fact that when I do go shopping in malls I don’t take much notice about the people surrounding me but this experience will hopefully change that habit because I’m missing out otherwise.