Bright (Plaza) Lights, Big (ish) City
The lights at the Country Club Plaza
I forget, because I actually have stuff to do in the area, that the Country Club Plaza is insane at Christmas time. What is the Country Club Plaza, one might ask?
Well, what isn’t the Country Club Plaza?
It’s got restaurants, shops and fake Spanish architecture. Fountains and sculptures and parking garages that smell like urine. It was the brainchild of the man who single-handedly engineered white flight in Kansas City and built covenant-only suburbs that excluded African-Americans, Jewish-Americans and Hispanic Americans (unless they were live-in maids. How nice.) Mostly, rich people go there to shop at places no one else can afford, and other people go to walk around and pretend that they’re shopping at places no one else can afford. Or, if you’re like me, you go for the coffee, since it’s the closest source of non-McDonald’s coffee to my house.
And in the winter, it’s got lights! With an exclamation point! Lights!
And everyone says to one another, “Let us go and look at them!”
Now, I’m not really mocking the lights. They are pretty. The whole Plaza is pretty, really, when I suppress my natural inclination to judge the place for its creator. Also, I’m only gently mocking the people who go to see the lights, because it is fun, especially for kids, even though it’s cold and crowded and you have to watch out for the horses trotting grimly along and the occasional violent teen riot.
What I’m whining about is the fact that I am now a coffee-shop vagrant, wandering from place to place, just looking for a table, and sometimes when I’m extra needy, an outlet, and I’m a stranger in my own cafes since they are flooded with shoppers and light-gazers. AND, since the other students/writers/hipsters who normally frequent the coffee haunts are also being driven out by the crowds, the coffee shops surrounding the Plaza are packed too. Where’s a lady to write?
Her house?
Psh.