(Picture and captions courtesy of New Raleigh, who posted an article a few days ago about North Hills' ever increasing expansion.)I would be able to laugh at this picture a lot more if it weren't so accurate. Every time another bland, trendy outdoor mall full of box stores pops up in town I cry a little inside for what Raleigh could be but shows few signs of becoming.
As New Raleigh points out, John Kane (the North Hills developer) deserves some credit for building apartments and shops and restaurants side by side to create a "mixed-use" space. But why the cheesy architecture? And why all the white people milling around in Lilly Pulitzer's Summer '08 line (which, by the way, looks remarkably similar to her Spring '08 line, Winter '08 line, and Fall '07 line), sipping sweet tea and saying "y'all" a lot???
Okay so that last part was just a guess, but honestly: Wealthy white people of Raleigh, I'm not even asking you to sell your Suburbans. I'm willing to compromise. But when you're hanging out in "Midtown," can't you just eat your chicken salad sandwiches at the same places as black, hispanic, middle-class and poor people? At restaurants that aren't beige?
3 comments:
But Acree, beige is the color of progress! Of prosperity! Of going your entire life only interacting with people exactly like you! BEIGE IS THE FUTURE.
It looks a lot like Bay Street, the terrible development in Emeryville that I took you and V to so you could shop at the only H&M close to my house. It is also supposed to be a mixed-use, live-work-shop type deal, but I highly doubt that anyone actually lives there. Some people have said that they've seen shadows in the windows of the "apartments" above the shops, but I think they MUST be mannequins put in by the development group. Or maybe animatronic statues, like the ones at Disneyland?
If I ate a whole watermelon - the entire freaking thing, rind and all - I would probably puke. And that puke would probably remind me of lilly pulitzer.
Don't insult Emeryville Shosh and Atlantic Station for that matter. We will all be living in mixed use zoning eventually... on Mars with rocket pants (AD reference).
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