Garden Square mall

From Candypedia
Garden Square mall
First appearanceFlirting with Disaster, page 4
November 3, 2006
Related charactersMike, Lucy, Paulo, Sandy, James, Felix, Lucas, Finn, Emma, Aaron

Garden Square mall is the Roseville area’s indoor shopping mall, a long terracotta building with its own tower, parking lot, and arcade. It is the cast’s default spot for gift runs and hangouts, and Mike grew up playing in its arcade.[1] Sandy gives the mall its one on-panel naming when she asks to go there during her stay in Model Girlfriend. Every other visit just calls it “the mall.”[2]

Description

Garden Square mall’s terracotta façade rises against the winter sky, its little pyramid-topped tower dusted with snow.[3]

From outside, the mall is a long reddish-terracotta building with an arched parapet running along the roofline and a square tower capped with a little pyramid. Visitors take a crosswalk over to the glass front doors, which are set into tan brick.[4] The mall has its own parking lot, and crossing it brings you to a Fiesta Pizza restaurant, where Emma waits tables.[5][6]

A mall corridor with cushioned bench seating and potted red-flowered planters lining the tiled walkway.[7]

Inside are long corridors of storefronts with big square floor tiles, mannequin window displays, and pretty relentless shopper crowds.[8] An open plaza holds a round upholstered bench built around a planter of red flowers, plus a small fountain, right across from the arcade’s marquee.[9] Matching red-flower planters and bench seating also line the corridor at the arcade’s entrance.[1]

The tenants seen on panel include clothing stores with fitting rooms and sale racks, a toy aisle, a video-game section with a demo kiosk, and a bookstore with a manga section.[10][11]

Arcade

Mike cashes in at the arcade’s token machine, with the dotted carpet underfoot.[12]

The arcade’s marquee reads “QUARTER ARCADE”.[9] The inside is dark and lit mostly by screen glow, with a dark-blue dotted carpet and a red token machine labelled “DUMP YER CASH MONIES HERE”.[13] The games include twin sit-down racing cabinets, a six-seat formula-one racer, a dance game that draws its own crowd of onlookers, and the two-player light-gun game Maggot Mania, along with basketball, Skee-Ball, air hockey, and claw machines.[14][15]

History

The mall’s earliest appearance is a flashback in Flirting with Disaster. As a shy sixth-grader, Paulo watched a high schooler named Aaron stroll through with a girlfriend on each arm, worked up the nerve to try his very first pickup line, and found to his amazement that it worked. He has been flirting ever since.[16]

Mike and Sandy go to the mall for the one real date of her visit in Model Girlfriend. Mike hauls an ever-growing pile of shopping bags between outfit try-ons, then lights up at the sight of the arcade, though he trails off while explaining its appeal. “I used to come here all the time with.. With friends!”[1] Sandy, for her part, doesn’t take to the place at all. Mike deliberately crashes their race so she can win,[17] and after Maggot Mania leaves her fuming, he wins her a plush rabbit as a consolation prize.[18] The day ends with Mike emptying his savings on clothes before her chauffeur collects them out front at sunset.[19]

In Link Play, James invites Mike and a few of the track guys out for some last-minute Christmas shopping,[20] and everything is open late in the snowy days before the holiday.[4] At the arcade, Mike keeps finding Lucy already stationed at every game he loves.[21] She refuses to budge for him. “I have the right to be here. And I’m not gonna let you scare me away.”[22] James, having no idea who she is, waves her into the empty seat of their six-player race, where she rams Mike off the track and walks out.

Mike chases her into the corridor and offers his first apology since the December phone call: “I’m sorry for being such a terrible friend. I’m.. I’m sorry about Sandy.”[23] Lucy points out that he told Augustus he would never talk to her again.[24] Even so, she answers him with a quiet thanks before disappearing into the crowd.[25] The group finishes the night with dinner at Fiesta Pizza.[6]

Trivia

  • During Model Girlfriend, readers widely predicted Mike would run into Lucy at the arcade. The authors say the Link Play encounter wasn’t written to match those predictions — “Mike and Lucy are just so similar that surely she’d be enjoying herself at the arcade.”[21]
  • More than six years pass in-story between the arcade’s two big visits. Mike’s surprised “It’s still here?!” in Model Girlfriend implies he hadn’t been back since middle school.[1]
  • Veronica greeted Link Play’s opening page with dread over drawing mall backgrounds: “the boys are going to the MALLLLLLLLLLLLL :) why do i do this to myself.”[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 18
  2. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 12
  3. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 1
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 1
  5. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 26
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 27
  7. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 18
  8. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 17
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 8
  10. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 3
  11. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 26
  12. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 19
  13. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 19
  14. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 23
  15. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 17
  16. ↑ Chapter 27: Flirting with Disaster, page 4
  17. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 20
  18. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 25
  19. ↑ Chapter 94: Model Girlfriend, page 27
  20. ↑ Chapter 115: Track Meet, page 21
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Chapter 116: Link Play, page 10
  22. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 19
  23. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 23
  24. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 24
  25. ↑ Chapter 116: Link Play, page 25
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