A Guide to Avoiding the Mall

Surely that person on your list needs a cowboy hat, a bowling pin or a secondhand thermos. Yeah...you can skip the mall and go to the flea market to finish off your list. (This one is held on Burnet Road some Sundays.)

Seriously, malls scare me. The big retailers organize so that once you get inside you can't find a path that leads either out of the mall or into the mall's interior. Once FFP and I were shopping (for linens if you must know) and we ask another couple how to get out of the store and they said they'd been trying for ten minutes to do it. An employee, when asked, looked like we had ask how to sign up to fly to the moon. We did escape, of course, because I'm here today blogging. But I'm not sure how.

I will finish this Christmas season, I hope, with no trips to the mall. Unless you count when we went to the AMC Barton Creek to see The Departed. The movies are right inside a door to the mall. Still we parked a long way off and even though I took note of the aisle marker when we were going in, there seemed to be no such sign when we came out. There was probably a hiked-up pickup or an SUV parked in front of it. We found our car, however. I had a companion. I never go to the mall without a companion to help lose the car. It helps to have someone to bitch about it with.

Nope...I stuck to shopping at places like Costco, Sam's, Container Store, World Market, Crate and Barrel, Target. You gotta remember where you park but you can find your way out. Actually, you can do a lot of shopping in smaller places. I shopped this year at independent toy stores and at a gift shop on South Congress called Monkey See/Monkey Do (I think). Also at Tesoros Trading, famous because they may lose their iconic location to a hotel. You might pay a little more, but there is some satisfaction in buying toys at Toy Joy or Over the Rainbow. While I scored my rubber chicken and egg at Terra Toys (no longer on SoCo but on Anderson Lane), that joint has gotten a little too chaotic for me. You can always shop on South Congress where, if you don't find what you want among the gift shops available on the dominant (west) side of the street, you can brave the crossing and go to Ten Thousand Villages where they sell things people make in areas where selling you some geegaws can be an important business. And when you are tired of looking, you can go to Guero's or El Sol y Luna or sit at the bar in South Congress Cafe or Vespaio or Enoteca and eat snacks and start the inveitable drinking.

I did shop online, too. For Game Boy Advance SP boxes and games for them. Shopping in a store for this wouldn't be an option. Because I was confused online and had to get the parents of the recepients to put the stuff in a wish list and let me pluck it out of there!

The mall? I don't think so. Unless, you know, to see another movie.