One mall to rule them all, one mall to find them, one mall to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them; in the Meridian where the shadows lie. This is the fifth and final instalment in our Malls of New Zealand ranking series. In order to answer the question: which Dunedin mall is the best mall, you must first answer the question: how many malls does Dunedin have? This question is not as simple as you might think. Joseph Harper, in his magnificent ranking of Christchurch malls , set the criteria.
A mall must have toilets. A mall must have a car park. This decimated my list of potential candidates leaving me with a scant three eligible malls in Dunedin. Three is almost cosmopolitan. Hamilton only has 4. But behind the three candidates lies a taxonomic problem. What happens if your three best malls are actually just one mall in a trenchcoat?
Or if you prefer a more prestigious analogy, the father, the son and the holy spirit. They each have their own webpages. They are presumably owned by different private investment companies. As soon as you enter the behemoth that is The Dunedin Mall s? But there was nothing but the cold, roving eye of the surveillance cameras overhead.
This situation presented a problem. There was some discussion about whether or not a mall ranking was even appropriate for Dunedin. If all the malls are basically the same mall, what is there to rank? But this seems unfair. After all, conjoined twins that share a heart carpark are still considered to have individual legal personhood. I decided to rank each mall on its individual merits. The name Harvest Court Mall conjures up a Gilmore Girls-esque miasma of pumpkin-flavoured beverages and charming rural giftware.
But there were no visible toilets and no car park. Ah Centre City, with its four great intersecting rings, like that of a minor Olympics. When you hear Wall Street, you think luxury. You think men yelling numbers. Country Road. Mahers Shoes, which boasted some of the most decadently hideous footwear I have ever seen. Marbecks Cafe, packed with lone elderly women, gnawing on muffin rinds and having obnoxiously loud phone conversations.
