Council Tree Public Library, Fort Collins, Colorado

I don't quite remember when my love of shopping malls began, but it was early, ravenous, and started petering out sometime before the end of high school, when the responsibilities of adulthood started taking shape in the distance, approaching ever faster, threatening. The act of consuming things becomes more twisted and burdensome the less you have, I've found, so while the average shopper might still have fun picking up new things, she already knows that in a matter of time those objects of desire will be old things, broken things, drab, colorless, and tacky. It gets more complicated the more we juggle, too, when there are bills, bills, bills, and barely enough income to cover them.

My earliest memory of "The Mall" was of Towne East Square, one of two sibling, indoor malls anchoring the east and west sides of Wichita. Towne East was built first (1975) and still thrives to this day (though will never see the same fervent activity as it did during the pre-internet era) and Towne West came along five years later (1980) and is, by my own eyes, flagging badly. Towne East is the bigger mall, with two stories and more stores, while Towne West is sort of an over-indulgent ranch style building with a nonsensical layout and bizarre blank spots with closed gates and a giant carousel that no one rides. Back in the heyday of Grand Mallage, both "Townes" were scenes of lively, eager consumption.

That first memory, though, was sublime. I was with my beautiful babysitter, Debbie, who I idolized almost as much as I idolized Olivia Newton John. Debbie, a tall girl with blond, feathered hair and blue eyes, Debbie whose brother had a Firebird with the actual fiery bird on the hood. Debbie who always had a boyfriend (one of whom adored her so much that he carried me 10+ blocks through the snow just for her). She was the Coolest. We were visiting her friend who worked at the weirdest place in the mall, a German-themed fast food joint whose name escapes me*. Imagine walking past all those stores, the blinding lights cast against tables of goods, the murmur of consumers shuffling through shiny, new things, the revolving smells of fresh clothing, hot pressed vinyl...all that delicious, rich merch, and then the smack in the face of brats roasting, smeared mustard, and mounds of sauerkraut. It was such an odd contrast. But that was the mall: your standard shopping offerings mixed with scented candles, crystal dragons, a random ass dentist's office, arcade, movie theater, McDonalds, and 20 different shoe shops.

My babysitter was always giving me little presents that I treasured with my whole heart (and still remember, believe it or not: a comb set in a red and yellow, plastic holder shaped like a shoe, lip gloss in a round, black container made to look like a record--I even remember the flavors--and ABBA's greatest hits, the double album...seriously, she was the best) so remembering going to the mall with her before anyone else makes sense. She understood exactly what a 7-year-old derp would love, and it was never socks. And never, ever, ever tights. It was album-shaped lip gloss that tasted like chocolate perfume.

By the time I was eleven, I could have happily lived in the mall. It was the magic place where Cricket Alley and Ziggies sold the trendiest clothes (and Henry's the priciest), Camelot and Musicland spun the hottest records and tapes, and the mysterious, forbidden, blacklit Spencer's Gifts offered up all things Edgy and Corrupt: lava lamps, band buttons, silk jackets, "massagers." OH the TONNAGE of JUNK I bought. But it was all treasure, too, even more so in memory.

So imagine my delight when I arrived at the Council Tree Public Library in Fort Collins, Colorado, and discovered that it was in a mall. Now, prime reminiscent mallage only applies to enclosed malls, the older the better. Council Tree is located in one of those newfangled outdoor malls. I worked in one of these malls back in the 90s, in the anchor Barnes & Noble, and I can tell you it is nothing like the olden, golden indoor malls. Aside from proximity and ease of access, the environment is simply not the same.

But it is in a mall nonetheless! Which is weird! And wonderful. Mostly weird, though. I was particularly jazzed because it is located directly across from Panera Bread and I was hankering for a non-PB&J food experience.

The first floor is just a lobby, but they make the most of it with a nifty, circular word salad installation. It's a wild, fun flair that sets the mood from the get go: this is a place of whimsy, come play. Once up the stairs and in the main entryway, the whimsy opens up to wonder, with huge windows displaying Colorado's surrounding beauty. The art installation over the entryway is some sort of floating bruschetta homage which I am sure is literary is some way that soars high over my head.

This is one of those libraries with super helpful staff members who see someone looking all around and ask if she needs anything. Whenever this happens, I choose to believe the positive, but part of me does wonder if my obvious picture taking gets me targeted for further investigation. If it does, it hardly matters, since the following conversations are always helpful and informative. The Council Tree staff member who offered her assistance showed me around, making sure to point out the lovely fireplace in one of the main seating areas. It was an odd departure from the very modern styling of the Council Tree library. I think, in Colorado, that working fireplaces are required by law in order to follow code, like properly insulated wiring and load-bearing walls.

I found a good spot near a window and wrote for hours. The kids around me (high school and college aged, as far as I could tell) were quiet and kept to themselves, but what I noticed more than anything was how they each got up at different times to go to the bathroom or grab a snack...and left all of their stuff behind without a second's pause.

I also saw a drunk driver park right outside the library's back entrance, in a crowded parking lot, half over the line into the handicapped spot. He was white haired, be-shorted, and he left his 90K Porsche Carrera open to the elements as he did his damnedest to walk a straight line. Ah, the suburbs, the cradle of safe spaces and mall culture.

* My fellow Wichitans, and contemporaries of the legendary Debbie, tell me it was called Mr. Dunderbak's, a Bavarian joint that was located in Towne East for years. Here are some snaps from the 70s and 80s (and if you look closely and the filter stays the same, you will see a postcard for Towne East when it was shiny and new).

Westlink Branch Library, Wichita, KS

[NOTE: All Wichita area library posts will be in chronological order of each initial visit, though you should assume I've visited some if not all multiple times over the course of the summer.]

While I busied myself with watching judge shows (get. a. promissory. note. people), feeding kittens, swimming my frog laps, and lazing about ever since returning home in May, it took months for me to finally walk into a Wichita branch library and score a real, live library card. In the Grand Shoveling of my former life, I probably threw out the one from my childhood, which featured the careful cursive of my fledgling signature. I definitely still had it and recall smiling down at that awkward penmanship before either chucking it in the trash or tucking it away for safekeeping. I believe I got my first card when I was 7 or 8, and I still recall the disbelief and wonderment at the fact that they were just going to let us take the books. For FREE. I've held on to some mementos here and there, but things I never thought I'd let go (yearbooks, knick knacks, personal letters, so many things) are in a landfill on the east coast somewhere, moldering away along with millions of people's trash and treasures alike. It's likely that old library card is there, too.

Choosing the Westlink Branch to reacquaint myself with the local library scene felt spur of the moment but we all know other forces are at work when we make decisions on the fly. There are a million little microfactors filing through our brainworks, and I am fully aware of my preconceptions of Wichita's neighborhoods, even though I've been more of a stranger to my hometown for quite sometime. My perceptions are frozen somewhere in the 90s, before I moved to NYC but when I visited from the KC area less and less. So this is My Wichita, all other opinions subject to scrutiny and debunking, but mine counts here because it is my blog so nyeh.

My family unit (my mother and me) lived all over the city: south side, north side, north central, east. We stayed around the Riverside (central. north central) area as much as we were able, but as jobs and fortunes changed, so did our address. The Wichita in my memory was divided neatly into the following subsections:

• East and West - Rich and Nouveau Rich (country clubs, big houses, etc.)
• North, mid, and South - mostly middle class with enclaves of rich and poor-to-extremely-poor (eg the area surrounding WSU, which is located in the NE part of the city, is primarily low-income neighborhoods, which are then immediately bordered by the toney College Hill neighborhood to the south. South Wichita features neighborhoods of old, WWII-era temporary homes that are still being used to this day. Imagine Hurricane Katrina disaster survivors living in their FEMA trailers in 2070 and you get the point.)

Downtown and Riverside are very near dead center, and are the most familiar and loved parts of the city to me. West and east fill my heart with green-eyed coveting and set that old monster's heart to beating as though I never got past ravenous greed for Things (maybe, like alcoholism, there is no cure).

Westlink is located on the west, "newer" rich side--though truth be told there are low-income neighborhoods all over the city, even in the east and west. I use the quote marks because Wichita grows in both directions to this day (south and southwest not so much due to the weird layout of the city, where the intersecting highways 400 and 235 leave a lot of that part of the city to small industry). But in the 70s and 80s? The west side was growing and full of all kinds of suburban splendor.

I loved movies like ET and Poltergeist not just because Steven Spielberg is a genius, but because they depicted a world I so desperately wanted to be a part of: suburbia. Those samey-same 2 story abodes with double garages and miniblinds? GIMME. An island in the kitchen and bar stools to climb up on to eat my cereal and watch TV on the counter? MINE. Everything smelling like new wood and fresh carpets? The paint only just dry? UGGHHHHH. Central Fucking Air? DELIVER ME, JESUS. But alas, He never did. (And, yes, I was deeply, profoundly jealous of Carol Ann and her damn demon possessed suburban home. Like, so what if a steak boogies across the kitchen counter on its own and starts spitting up gizzards for no reason? Every house has issues, like deal with it?)

If the neighborhoods along Ridge Road, Tyler, and Maize were new or newer in the 70s and 80s, you can imagine them now. These are still nice neighborhoods, but the trees are all big and the whole area has become quite lived in, with movie theaters come and gone, minimalls changing their facades to match the decades as they passed, each iteration another unimaginative, watered down attempt at something that might be permanently cool, but always failing miserably. The old Cinemas West is gone, but the former Hottest of Hot Spots, Towne West Square, soldiers on, though is perhaps mortally wounded as any other old school, indoor mall, with many shopfronts blank, gates closed, and merch gone along with the desire for jelly shoes and Ocean Pacific neon pullovers.

I'm sure if I ever visited the Westlink branch in my youth, it was only once or twice along with my friends' families, since that was the only connection I had to the west side at the time. It looks exactly like you'd expect a library born in 1981 to look--a sci-fi, spaceship/bunker made of concrete, metal, and glass. Sort of a "Borg Meets Original Cylons Style." The interior is as bright as they can manage, what with the low ceilings and fluorescent light, though there is a very 70s skylight over the main circulation desk. There weren't many places for me to set up (most space in any library these days is taken up by stacks, the children and teens sections, and the computer bays) but that was not my purpose for being there on that day. I had wandered in to finally secure a library card, and it turned out to be easier than expected. Just like my initial shock at the ease of library patronage when I was a tyke, my adult, world weary perceptions somehow expected it to be harder, more hoops to jump through maybe. The librarian tried looking me up in the system, but the records don't go back that far (wah wah waaahhhh) so we just started anew. Thanks to my brand new Kansas driver's licence, I had a new library card in my hand when I walked out the door about 10 minutes later. For FREE. (In fact, the only money I've spent so far is to reserve Arrival and that added up to exactly 25 whole cents.)

I've been back a couple of times, but make it a point to visit the other branches, as well, since each has turned out to be weird and wonderful in its own way. I love that they tell you how much you've saved using the library and how you can return materials to any branch. Every time I've asked for help, the library staff has been exemplary: very professional and incredibly nice. I've managed to catch up on all my Stephen King reading (now almost to 100%) and I've checked out a ton of DVDs. Not one has been unplayable or glitchy--NOT ONE--which compared to the DVD.com service I had for years (via Netflix, originally) is downright unbelievable. Of course I am jinxing myself my writing it aloud, but so far the experience with the Wichita library system has been phenomenal.

As for Westlink, I hope they leave it alone. Wichita is a city obsessed with refurbishment--out with the old and in with the new (no matter how misguided or short sighted)--but I think the millions they're sinking into the new main branch should keep the littler branches safe for a while. Let me tell you a thing--it's stupid and specific and completely About Me--but I'm not the only one who thinks this way, and it bears some thought, especially from those who run the wrecking ball. If you head downtown on Main, there used to be a bank on the SE corner just before reaching the main part of downtown. It was either where the Commerce Branch or the WABA now stand. This little building was a bank branch, too, though for which bank I could not begin to recall. What matters is that it is gone now, and despite many searches, I still have not been able to find a picture of it anywhere online (and the central branch of the library was far less than helpful).

What made this building so special? It looked like a concrete and tinted glass Mecha Spider and it was 1000% Magic. I know commercial zoning is commercial and residential zoning is residential and attempts at rezoning will forever mire those that dare it in Hell and Death and whatever, but I would have LOVED to live in that thing--it would have been a perfect lair and I would have cried tears of unabashed joy just to wrap myself in such a sick ass structure until, I don't know, death do us part? But it's gone, razed and buried.

Westlink is weird and wonderful, too, and if it cannot exist as a library going forward (onward march of technology and all that) I do hope they repurpose it rather than destroy it. Too bad there's not much reason to have faith.