Dad, When Do You Think Mom Will Be Done Shopping?
I think we’ve mentioned Tsum, but have not described it in detail. There really aren’t department stores here in the American sense, I guess because no one has ever had the capital to invest in both the real estate and the inventory (and been able to deal with manufacturers and assorted middle people located all over the world). Instead they have “magazins,” a word I recognize from French and Greek street signs, but I don’t think it means the same thing. Here a magazin is a building, presumably owned by an investor in real estate, who rents it out to lots of small retailers, who take as little as 100 square feet, with 500 sf being a big operation. It’s sort of an indoor bazaar with more department store-type goods. Tsum is the oldest of the magazins in the city. Its total size is about the same as an old-fashioned American urban department store. The bottom floor is all electronics, the second clothes (mostly women’s), and the third split between housewares and local/former Soviet republic handcrafts and tchotchkes. We’ve been a few times and now head straight to the third floor.
Given a tight floor plan, we took turns sitting with Otis in the sunshine while the other one went shopping.
posted by Candace and David at 7/27/2005 08:29:00 AM
3 Comments:
Webster's says "magazine" comes from the Arabic makhazin (storehouse). Your magazin is doubtless a cognate.
You may know that magasin is the straightforward French word for "store", "department store" being a grand magasin.
Otis Charlie, you really are a cuddlesome bundle. I can't wait to hold you.Mormor
Hi Candace and David,
I remember learning somewhere, sometime that the urban mall concept that you described was the original version. Grand magasin (Fr.) is a department store, and I read somewhere recently, and quickly forgot the details, that this single store owner concept started in Paris in the 19th century, the object being enticing the buyer with the type of merchandising we know and love. They also had some connection with illicit love affairs but I don’t really remember what, except that they gave errant ladies of the house a place to meet their lovers. It seems so public, but I don’t remember the twist there was to it that made it plausible.
There’s a very grand one of the Tsum type in Cleveland that was renovated in the last few years--a beautiful glass confection from the 19th or early 20th Century. In addition to shops it is also the lobby for one of the very expensive hotels, which doesn’t take dogs so I don’t remember which.
Donna
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