I’m taking bets on when the movie comes out.
Ya know, an enterprising mall owner could see this and start thinking about building condos literally into their mall. High-priced housing for those addicted to shopping. Kind of like box seats at stadiums. Of course, this is exactly the kind of thinking opposite to the ‘concept’ the ‘artists’ were going for.
On another note, I think any time I get caught for doing something wrong (not that I ever do anything wrong, of course) I’m going to claim it was performance art. Art is free speech protected, right?
Eight artists snuck into the depths of Providence Place mall and built a secret studio apartment in which they stayed, on and off, for nearly four years until mall security finally caught their leader last week.
The story of their audacious stunt — they call it performance art — spilled out in District Court, after the leader, Michael J. Townsend, 36, of Providence, was arrested. He pleaded no contest to a criminal charge of trespassing.
[…]
The casually furnished, unheated apartment was in a 750-square-foot loft beneath an I-beam and above an unused dusty storage room in the mall parking garage that was accessed through a door in a stairwell, according to Townsend, his fellow artists and the police.The collective labored mightily to haul in more than two tons of construction materials and furnishings to build out and equip the space, which already had a concrete floor. Some of the material was brought in through an 11-inch-wide aperture on the west side of the mall that allowed access to the garage interior. Larger items were brought into the garage by car and carried up fire exit stairwells, the artists said.
The apartment, which was relatively soundproof, contained a sectional sofa, a love seat, a coffee table, a breakfast table with four chairs, lamps, a throw rug, a hutch and paintings on the walls. Although the group had bold improvement plans, the apartment lacked running water, a refrigerator and a toilet.
Townsend acknowledged that the lack of certain creature comforts, after a while, tended to sap the thrill of being there and to curtail each stint inside.
This sort of puts the opposite spin on the premise of the movie “Blast from the Past”. Where a bomb shelter was built in secret, beneath a home that was then leveled. And a shopping district was built over it, while the people were still down in the shelter. This came to mind because it was just shown on the CW network last weekend. Coincidence? The owner of the above ground property turned the shelter into a nightclub attraction. Maybe the Mall owner should think about possible exhibition ideas.
I’ve been saying that they should make housing in the malls for years. It would be reminiscent of something like old market towns.
They already made that movie, it had zombies in it.
Not much different than today.
http://tinyurl.com/25jn2e
Westin Hotel in the Dallas Galleria
Ya know what would be nice for a mall, customized Dvorak ring tones pop ads.
Back in the day, I had some friends who dug a cave beneath an Interstate Highway interchange. They lived there for months before they were caught.
I don’t see the big deal about the toilet and running water…. a bucket and some sawdust make a good enough toilet, and jerry’s cans will do for water… people living on the road do it all the time.
coolest prank ever!
Didn’t Bart and Milhouse do this years ago?
I think they should have put a sign on the door saying “High Voltage” or something to keep out the nosy security guards.
Maybe “Utility Room, authorized service personnel only” would have done the trick.
Not too different from a department store with apartments or condos in the floors above, just the variety of merchandise on the merchants’ level and where the entrances are.
I suspect that the main hold ups relate to fire codes, flood damage from the living areas, and vandalism.
Some guys built a condo in the enormous air conditioning ducts of the university I worked in, a few years ago. We discovered them when they smoked pot, and the entire building was high.
The new mall, Natick Collection, in Natick MA has 215 high end condos, close to stores like Gucci. Why anyone would want to is a good question.
There is a mall in San Jose that built condo’s above and around a central shopping area, grocery, and all the other goodies. Since I feel malls are the work of the devil, I could care less where the permanently shopping obsessed live.
“Ya know, an enterprising mall owner could see this and start thinking about building condos literally into their mall.”
Already done. The newest mall in southwest Fl. has condos on top. In fact I recently joked that I wanted the condo above the apple store.