“Secret Mall Apartment,” a Protest for Place

(modernagejournal.com)

Comments

Animats 19 hours ago
Done in 2003. Written up in 2018, with pictures.[1] This is PR for a movie about it.

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/

neom 18 hours ago
One of the people involved in this "project" worked for me, and then during their term of working for me, worked very hard behind my back against me. I only found out about the project after I was fired and they had taken control of my startup, and I have to say: I wasn't at all surprised.
Peritract 2 hours ago
> although they periodically hint at their left-leaning politics, admirably dedicate their time and skills to projects paying tribute to the first-responder firemen who perished on 9/11, the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and sick children in hospitals

This is an extremely strange framing; there's nothing anti-left in caring about sick children and the victims of terrorism.

toofy 17 hours ago
went to the documentary about this at a local theater a few days ago. was good, even kept my 10 yo niece’s attention.

for years i had been wondering why we didn’t have apartments/condos directly attached to malls, particularly in cold climates, so when the articles first started coming out about this it definitely scratched an itch. the movie has a ton of video footage they filmed back when they were using the space, including footage of them sneaking the couches, furniture, and 1000s of pounds of cinder blocks in. it’s pretty gripping in that “omg can they pull this off!!??” kind of way.

Stevvo 11 hours ago
Amazing this can be a story and movie in America. In Europe people squat in any building suitable and this group would be considered just another nuisance bunch of homeless people.
palmfacehn 15 hours ago
Here's another interesting story: "Man built a bunker under Hampstead Heath and lived in it for two years"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22493078

deadbabe 18 hours ago
I love secret living spaces. Has anyone here spent time inhabiting one?
gravitronic 17 hours ago
Their act was cool. Post-hoc bolting a protest social action on top seemed dishonest.

It's fine to say you did something cool because you could, in fact the coolest things are done just because. Adding commentary that it was a protest for stolen / wasted space, spare me the minutes please

sandspar 14 hours ago
Interesting how the ringleader appears to be significantly older than the other participants. This is a common pattern. As I recall, the poet Ginsberg was older than his hippy hangers-on. And I've read of that "older leader" pattern in groups as wide apart as graffiti crews or revolutionary movements. I guess that forming these kinds of small scenes relies a lot of charisma and vision, people tend to accumulate those with age, and older people tend to have a magnetic effect on younger followers.
GuinansEyebrows 19 hours ago
one of my favorite cases of contemporary-ish american squatting.