Westfield, Britain’s third biggest indoor shopping mall, opened Thursday. Though the real opening was today, Saturday.
It’s cold, grey and raining but that, seemingly, has not deterred anyone.
A huge number of people have been drawn to this new place. There are stewards, as you might find at a football match, guiding the crush in an improvised contra flow.
Guided in to the new shopping experience
When you finally arrive at an entrance, and get a glimpse inside, it truly seems like a palace of wonders. The designers have succeeded horribly well in making you feel you’ve found somewhere shopping dreams really do come true.
It’s so spectacular, in fact, that for a while you think, surely we don’t deserve such a place. Later it catches up with you that actually this place only exists to take our money.
My reflection in the ceiling, what a wonderful place!
If you have come to hate the Oxford Street experience, because the of elbows, the argy-bargy, the exhausting waits, the extremes of cold and heat – the sad news is Westfield seems to offer that same experience, turned up to eleven.
People were pushed, shoved, funnelled into jams and all whilst being bombarded with visual spectacles they instinctively wanted to stop and take in.
If you need a break or are hungry, just like Oxford Street you must join a 20-minute queue for the privilege of rest.
Doing the Shopper Shuffle: dense crowds in Westfield
There’s next to nowhere to sit for free except the floor.
I saw red-faced, ‘bushed’ older ladies doing just that, sprawled at the bottom of some escalators, their plastic bags fanned around them, cruelly imitating pillows.
It’s such a massive site it’s hard to comprehend. You are bombarded with glittering, elegant stimuli and are lured by possibilities around the next corner.
But despite the scale and the billions spent, there’s not green space, no calm corners. Every square inch is making money.
I bought a scarf in M&S. Given the shop was crammed, there were surprisingly few people actually queuing to make a purchase.
The girl who served me said that she was local and for years had found it hard to find meaningful work. She told me she was glad for the opportunities the new mall had brought.
The Westfield Gridlock, just as predicted
Outside the West Cross Route was gridlocked northbound, just as the environmentalists said. Shepherds Bush roundabout is a tangle of cars, horns bleating in frustration.
As I left, carried along in a river of people, a steward with a bullhorn was announcing that Shepherds Bush Tube Station had closed, I assume because it just couldn’t cope with the numbers. People with Prada bags were cursing in the rain.
We make our environments, then our environments make us.
