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Ropolis at Rotown is Canada's second-biggest enclosed shopping mall. (That sounds impressive, I guess, but it's about 48% as large as the first-largest.) Built in 1986, it acts as the city center of Rotown. Ropolis's 450 shops, and a nearby Skytrain station, make Rotown an appealing place to live, apparently, because highrise condos continue to pile up here like termitariums.
If you hate shopping as much as I do, you may be as delighted as I was to discover the mall's many service corridors, stairwells, freight elevators, and backrooms.
Aside from being tantalizingly off-limits (some, but by no means all of the doors leading to the corridors say "On-Duty Employees Only), these narrow, battered, high-ceilinged corridors are also almost always completely empty. They therefore offer a refreshing reprieve from the noise and crowds of the public areas. Whenever possible, I use them as "short"cuts to wherever I'm going.
The corridors do not connect all together, but there are a lot of them, they mostly look alike, and with their strange twists and turns, it is quite possible to get lost in them. That's fun; but it's also fun to try to see everything, and to do that you need to know where you are.
There are maps in most of the service corridors to help you get around. Here's one, which I started, but did not finish, annotating:
This is the least blurry of about three snaps I took one night with my cell phone, while eating a sundae outside a loading dock after mall hours. While patiently framing, stabilizing, and taking the third shot, someone came out of a door and stared at me. When I was done, I turned to see a security guard. He asked if he could help me. I said no, I was just trying to, you know, get to know the building. He asked if I was an employee. I said I was not. He was puzzled by this, and became suspicious and unfriendly. I suddenly found it very hard to explain what exactly I was doing. I said that I lived in the neighborhood and shopped there occasionally; finally I admitted that I was interested in figuring out shortcuts to get around. "All right," he said, "but you realize that it looks a little suspicious?" He took down my driver's license, I apologized for the trouble, then I beat a retreat.
All you really need to know is that MOST of the doors that say "Alarm will sound" are not hooked up to an alarm. If you know (e.g., from the map) that a door leads to a service corridor, it definitely is not alarmed. Employees go in and out of there all the time, obviously.
When you get tired of wandering the service corridors, and you've tried the doors to all the electrical rooms, and ridden all the freight elevators, you may want to explore the storage rooms and back areas of the bigger, "anchor" stores. These areas are also usually pretty empty, and full of picturesque clutter, stock shelves, janitorial equipment, and other intriguing nooks and crannies -- and lots more doors leading who knows where.
The stock room at Toys R Us is larger than the front public area.
The mannequin room in the basement of Sears is kind of sexy.
This tiny backroom desk at The Bay reminds me a little of a shrine.
All this is great fun, but for me, the real attraction at Ropolis is the roof.
I should say the west roof. The east roof, around the foodcourt, is still unknown to me. I haven't figured out how to get onto it.
The vast west roof is covered in gravel, dotted with noisy ventilation outlets and HVAC units, and divided by footpaths one concrete slab wide. It is a strange and beautiful landscape, rather like a giant zen garden. It is a lovely place to go to be alone and thoughtfully drink a beer or smoke a cigarette.
It is probably best enjoyed at night, when the overlooking office towers are not so full of people, and you are less visible.
At night, too, the massive skylights are lit up from within like glowing sculpture.
Peer down into strange backrooms, staff rooms, and intersticial spaces, and try to figure out how to get there.
Spoiler alert. Do not read the next paragraph if you want to figure out how to get on the roof by yourself.
Actually, I'm not going to reveal much. There are three stairwells that will take you onto the (higher part of) the west roof. One is locked, one is usually locked, and one is a fire exit, which emits the feeblest alarm when the door is open. You can seek these out, or you can just walk boldly out the fire exit doors of Silvercity, before or after you've enjoyed a movie, because these doors which claim to be alarmed are in fact not.
Okay, that's it. Go have a good time, and save your money.
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Oh yeah: Don't forget the parking levels!
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I grew up just south of that mall and hated having to go there but this changes things quite a bit.
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cool set
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In the old days, by now you'd have your own website (or zine) and regulars eagerly awaiting your updates.
That room of mannequins begs for some pics of creative posing.
reduxzero - DrainsofmyCity | |
Great work. Love the mannequin room, corridors, map and all.
My sister is Charlotte Light and Dark. Who am I?
Farewell and thank you... "I was doing something that I thought could have some impact someday. In many ways, it's really these photographs that kept me going creatively." Dennis Hopper | |
Posted by reduxzero
In the old days, by now you'd have your own website (or zine)
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Why the old days? I know some folks who still publish websites and zines!
Me, I'm a little bit too lazy.
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Great post, I agree with you redux the mannequin room has some fun potential, brings to mind you and Nancy wandering around with "the legs".
god created the au/mc to test the faithful.
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Very Ninjaesque. Reminds me of the old Infiltration zines.
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