Showing all posts about trends
Mall Walking, a popular though unofficial sport
18 July 2022
Image courtesy of Steve Buissinne.
Say what you will about large shopping centres, those monuments to consumer greed with maze-like floorplans (quite deliberate by the way), but they have their adherents. And not just those hoping to be spotted in the queue as they await admittance to one of the centre’s luxury retailers either.
For a time in the 1980’s and 90’s large shopping centres were hugely popular among people looking for safe, sheltered, places to exercise, relax, and socialise, says Alexandra Lange, writing for Bloomberg.
It’s not hard to see why either, especially for avid walkers. The size of larger centres — where walkable floor space, split across multiple levels, can potentially amount to several kilometres — make for ideal all-weather exercise circuits, for those calling themselves mall walkers. Back in the 80’s and 90’s when the popularity of mall walking was at its peak, organised groups of walkers would descend on the malls daily, usually soon after opening time.
The mall, in its quiet early hours, provides affordances most cities and suburbs cannot: even, open walkways, consistent weather, bathrooms and benches. The mall is also “safe,” as Genevieve Bogdan told The New York Times in 1985; the Connecticut school nurse was “apprehensive about walking alone outdoors early in the morning before work.”
This is something I partake of during lunchbreaks, when I’m in Sydney, and working from the food court of a shopping mall in the city’s east. It takes about twenty-five minutes to complete a circuit, and on a quiet day I might go around twice. By my estimations, I might cover close to five kilometres.
While I’m not there so much post pandemic, I used to notice others clearly doing the same thing. I’d regularly see the same people, pacing the walkways, during what I supposed was their lunchbreak. I’ve also seen one or two people posting on Twitter, saying something to the effect of “I’m doing a lap or two of the centre.” I’m not sure if organised walking groups are present though, as I’m usually there later in the day, and it sounds like they’re active earlier on.
But the future doesn’t look hopeful for latter-day mall walkers, at least in the United States. In 2020, CNBC reported up to twenty-five percent of malls in America face closure over the next few years. I’m not sure what the outlook is for shopping centres in Australia. I would say we’ll see some closures, as American trends tend to copy over here, even if there’s a lag of several years.
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Australia today, some highlights from the August 2021 Census
28 June 2022
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has begun releasing Census data which was collected in August 2021. Items catching my eye included the revelation there are now as many Millennials, people generally aged 25 to 39, as there are Baby boomers, who are aged 55-74.
There’s also been a significant increase in people stating they have no religious affiliation, with the figure up almost ten percent on the previous Census in 2016. Here’s a rundown of these, plus other, highlights:
- Sydney is Australia’s largest city by population, with 5.2 million inhabitants
- NSW is Australia’s largest state by population, with almost 8.1 million inhabitants
- Australia’s total population is 25.5 million. It has doubled since 1971, when there were 12.4 million inhabitants
- Australians have a median age of 38 years
- There are now almost as many Millennials, 5.4 million people, as there are Baby Boomers
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 3.2% of the population
- English, Australian, Irish, Scottish, and Chinese, make up the top five ancestries of Australians today
- Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Cantonese are the top languages spoken after English
- Almost 39% of Australians have no religious affiliation, up from 30% in 2016
- About 44% identify as Christian, down from about 52% in 2016
- Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Judaism are the top religions after Christianity
- There are over one million single parent families in Australia
- There are almost 25,000 same sex marriages
- About 31% of Australians either live in rental accommodation, or outright own their dwelling
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New normal has become a longer term vibe shift
24 March 2022
Elamin Abdelmahmoud writing for BuzzFeed News, about what he refers to as “that funny feeling.” New normal was a term bandied about at the beginning of the COVID pandemic two years ago. At that point many of us took “new normal” to be a temporary state of affairs. But in light of other recent events, the Russian invasion of Ukraine for one, new normal is going to be ever changing, and far more permanent than some of us thought.
We are undergoing a colossal vibe shift that extends beyond taste, aesthetics, politics, fashion, or policy. The world as we knew it is not coming back, and it’s entirely reasonable that we may find ourselves plagued with a general restlessness, a vague notion of disorder. It’s that funny feeling.
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Is home streaming films the new normal cinema experience?
11 October 2021
Image courtesy of Yousaf Bhutta.
Life in this part of Australia, New South Wales, begins to return to some semblance of normal today. After months of lockdowns many residents will no longer be subjected to the restrictions they’ve become accustomed to recently. Cafes, bars, and cinemas are among a slew of businesses re-opening, which will be welcome news to many people.
While getting out to a cafe, and maybe a bar, is something I’ve been looking forward to, I’m not so sure about going back to the movies. And it’s not because of the possible risks of being seated in a confined space with several hundred people for two to three hours. If the past eighteen months has shown me anything, it is how convenient streaming films online is.
Home streaming films may not offer the big screen experience of a cinema, or the enjoyment of being out with other people, but it’s still going to be hard to walk away from. For one thing, you’re not bound to a schedule. If say you’re streaming the latest James Bond movie, the show starts exactly when it suits you, not someone else.
There’s also advantages I’d never thought of until we started streaming regularly. Unlimited pauses are one. Anything goes; there’s time to grab a snack, take a phone call, text someone, google a point of interest in the film that’s on, or tap in a few notes for the article I need to write for work tomorrow. And then there’s the in your own home comfort of the whole thing.
Imagine no inconsiderate fellow patrons, talking loudly, texting incessantly, scrolling their socials (with the screen set to maximum brightness of course), or making or taking phone calls mid-session without leaving the auditorium (I’ve seen it happen). And let’s not get started on noisy food wrappings, or people who don’t understand allocated seating.
Of course the comforts of our would-be home cinema causes me to feel some guilt. Staying home could have an impact on a cinema’s viability. Staff may have to be let go. Their bottom-line is still being affected even though I may be paying to watch films from said cinema’s stream service, but they’re missing out on my vital for them coffee and pop-corn purchases.
But who knows what might happen? In six months we may have traded the simple joys of watching movies at home for the big-screen, cinema auditorium extravaganza. Regardless, I think the post pandemic lockdown period will be pivotal for the cinema industry. And if the worst comes to the worst, it could be the home cinema will become a permanent feature after all.
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All your emoji are belong to us
1 October 2021
Soon another thirty-seven new emojis will be available for use on your favourite oblong shaped device, says the Unicode Consortium. One, the melting face emoji, a representation of climate change, has quickly become a crowd favourite.
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How do bookshops stay in business in the e-book age?
21 September 2015
By rights bookshops should have long since ceased to exist. Swept aside by e-books, electronic publishing, and online communication, and square into the dustbin of history. Indeed by now these quaint shelf lined emporiums should only be recalled via dwindling references, solely in nostalgic exchanges between older and younger generations, about the way things once were.
But that’s not quite what has happened. Booksellers are still with us. And rather than going into retreat, some are expanding, and opening new shops even. For all their convenience then, why have bookworms refused to wholly embrace the electronic successors of the bound paper volume? So what is it that bookshops are doing today to prosper, and remain in business?
Rather than attempting to extract trade secrets, or delve through annual reports, I asked myself what I could learn from booksellers, simply by looking at the way they appear to be operating, on the basis I was going to open a shop. So consider this more of a thought experiment, and a series of deductions, rather than in-depth or scientific research.
Paperback is the new black
In order to broaden their customer base, booksellers have become more exclusive by making a concerted effort to appeal to a more select band of consumers. These are people who favour the paper over the electronic, and see the endangered species that is the paper book, as having a certain desirability. But that’s not the only way booksellers define customers.
Harry Hartog, a name that somehow sounds like it should be familiar, is very much the new kid on the block when it comes to bookshops, having only opened in Canberra last October, and then Bondi Junction, Sydney, last month. But they have no doubt as to who their clientele are, being a “shop for the adventurer, the student of life and the next generation of reader”.
That’s no shop, that’s a boutique
If shopping for books was ever a perfunctory task, and a visit to a bookshop was uninspiring, and something to be dreaded, it certainly isn’t anymore. It’s not as if buyers have to navigate bland rows of overladen shelves bleaching in the cold glow of harsh fluorescent lights. Indeed, a keen eye to aesthetics on the part of booksellers, has transformed book shopping in recent years.
It’s not just about books
Once upon a time a bookshop used to be just that, a bookshop. You may have been able to source items of stationery, and maybe there was a shelf or two bearing accessories of some sort, but that was it. Today booksellers stock just about anything you care to imagine, from chocolate, lamps, posters, ornaments, toys, board games, to DVDs, and more, but why should I go on?
Ariel Booksellers, in Paddington, Sydney is a case in point. Scan through some of the photos of their merchandise (Facebook page) and it becomes clear that booksellers are turning to diversification as a means of attracting, and retaining customers. Bookshops don\’t have to become one stop shops, but it can\’t be too bad for business to offer customers a few extra options.
Engaging customers
Social media, and the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are boons for contemporary bookshops. Here are platforms that allow them to quickly and readily connect with their customers, helping them maintain a vital edge. Online channels aren’t the only ways of fostering interaction though, and book launches, and community events, also play a role.
Small is better?
In the bookshop survival stakes, it might be thought the bigger operators have the upper hand, on account of being part of a wider chain, and the benefits that must bestow. Sadly, that’s not always the situation, as shop closures, some years ago, by high profile sellers such as Borders, and Angus and Robertson, illustrates. So if the big shops can’t make it, what hope do others have?
More than you might imagine. Smaller, independent, booksellers, especially owner operated stores, are probably more motivated to focus on their customers, and build up relationships, something that may not always be a priority for the bigger players. Buyers are also more likely to find staff at smaller shops better attuned to their interests, than they might elsewhere.
Electronic purveyors of paper
So far it’s been a case of the electronic supplanting the paper when it comes to books, but Sydney based bookseller Big Ego Books (Instagram page) have adopted another tack, they operate as an electronic, or online only, seller of paper books. Hardly ground-breaking, but perhaps their speciality, sourcing “rare and hard-to-find titles”, is. There’s market niche for you.
And there we have it…
Well, a few suggestions at least. I for one am not keen to see the end of bookshops, but it certainly looks like plenty are doing something right, so hopefully they’ll be with us for a long time to come. As to the notion of opening a bookshop, it could hardly be considered a lost cause, even if it might not be easy, but here at least are a few pieces of the puzzle.
Originally published Monday 21 September 2015, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.
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books, bookshops, ebooks, legacy, novels, trends
Independent self-publishing, or blogging, here to stay I’m afraid
16 February 2015
A prominent blogger, or independent self-publisher, if you will, decides to stop writing online, and next thing we’re hearing about the imminent demise of the medium.
Sure, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, and the like, have all come along and splinted the domain of the blog/personal website. But, as a media property, or communications tool, a writer’s own website has one distinct advantage over many social media channels. It belongs to the writer, and not some other autarchic entity.
And so, to be clear, when I speak of the “blog” I am referring to a regularly-updated site that is owned-and-operated by an individual (there is, of course, the “group blog,” but it too has a clearly-defined set of authors). And there, in that definition, is the reason why, despite the great unbundling, the blog has not and will not die: it is the only communications tool, in contrast to every other social service, that is owned by the author; to say someone follows a blog is to say someone follows a person.
Originally published Monday 16 February 2015.
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blogs, legacy, social media, social networks, trends
Artificial Intelligence, nothing to worry about, just yet anyway…
13 February 2015
Much is being said about artificial intelligence, or AI, and how AI powered entities stand ready to take over the world. Well, this might be a concern in the future.
But right now? Maybe not. That’s if Twitter page INTERESTING.JPG, “a smart computer looking at popular human images”, and the commentary it offers of the photos it sees, is anything to go by.
According to INTERESTING.JPG, this image is of a number of birds flying through the sky in front of a cliff. Mind you, INTERESTING.JPG can sometimes be on the mark, but not too often by the looks of it.
For now, at least, there’s not a whole lot to worry about…
Originally published Friday 13 February 2015.
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artificial intelligence, legacy, technology, trends
Give up and ghost the host, leave a party without saying bye
10 July 2013
When it comes time to leave a social gathering, sometimes people simply drift out the door without saying a word. It’s bad form for sure, but dispensing with what feels like contrived pre-departure small talk, might make for a more graceful exit. It turns out though the practice is quite widespread. So much so, it has been given a name, and has become known as “ghosting”:
Goodbyes are, by their very nature, at least a mild bummer. They represent the waning of an evening or event. By the time we get to them, we’re often tired, drunk or both. The short-timer just wants to go home to bed, while the night owl would prefer not to acknowledge the growing lateness of the hour. These sorts of goodbyes inevitably devolve into awkward small talk that lasts too long and then peters out. We vow vaguely to meet again, then linger for a moment, thinking of something else we might say before the whole exchange fizzles and we shuffle apart. Repeat this several times, at a social outing delightfully filled with your acquaintances, and it starts to sap a not inconsiderable portion of that delight.
Context is everything of course. We’re talking large events here, not small, intimate, dinner parties. That said, how many people here have first hand experience of this? Of ghosting? Yep, as suspected… I see more than a few of you nodding your heads.
Originally published Wednesday 10 July 2013.
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Sugar and soy ruins perfectly good coffee say Sydney baristas
25 May 2011
Sydney baristas are increasingly calling the shots when it comes to brewing what they consider to be ideal coffee, by refusing to accommodate requests to add sugar, use skim (low fat) or soy milks, and decaffeinated coffee, or make brews “extra hot”, a dictate some customers describe as excessive:
Bar Italia in Leichardt is famous for its “No soy, no skim” stand. Customers have been known to storm out of Barefoot Coffee Traders in Manly which won’t do decaf or large cups. Kafenio Cafe in Cronulla declares: “No skim or babycinos … Don’t even ask!” “The guy behind the coffee machine … reminded me of the Soup Nazi off Seinfeld, but it wasn’t funny … get over the delicate genius syndrome,” said one Kafenio customer on online restaurant guide Eatability. Said another: “The barista refused three separate times to make the coffee that was ordered. If this was a hard order I would have understood but nowhere else [finds] a double shot 3/4 latte hard.”
Maybe the majority of coffee shop customers want full cream milk and caffeine brews, but the stance sounds harsh to me. What of the people with lactose intolerance? As for refusing to serve babycinos, that doesn’t seem too family-friendly to me.
Originally published Wednesday 25 May 2011.
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