Okay, this is my new favorite documentary:
https://www.impawards.com/2025/secret_mall_apartment.html
Trailer here: LINK
Available on Netflix
"In 2003, eight Rhode Islanders created a secret apartment inside a busy mall and lived there for four years, filming everything along the way. Far more than a prank, the secret apartment became a deeply meaningful place for all involved."
Ahem. They were eight Rhode Island artists, led by Mike Townsend, who had been living and working in cheap slum housing (haven't we all...) all of which was knocked down and replaced by the Providence Place Mall and Marketplace. To quote Townsend,
"the only mantra they [the developers] have is if you see a space that’s underdeveloped, you have a God-given responsibility to develop it. And it was basically like having a complete stranger be like, “We’ve been thinking about it, and we think we want to knock your house down and make it a parking lot, if it’s cool with you.”"...
"Oh, our actual home? Oh, yeah, they [BLEEP] leveled that. They came in with bulldozers and cranes and knocked that sucker flat... I’m like, “Oh… Really? Game on.”"
Back when the Mall etc. was being built, Townsend had noticed "an accidental room–a remainder left over by the long division of the mall’s architecture" in the guts of the mall, only accessible by crawling up inside the walls of the mall.
So... while their homes and studios were gone forever, this room, this underdeveloped space, was there, and no one knew about it but them. After all, they had a God-given responsibility to develop it, and they did. (Wait until you see how they moved the furniture in.)
*****
| Squatting is artful expression? Sounds like a bunch of homeless trespassers |
- Comment on a website about SMA.
I disagree.
For one thing, Townsend's a hell of a good artist: starting at 23:08 on the video are the sculptures he built in the tunnel under the railroad tracks (another hidden space) that are... haunting, to put it mildly.
Secondly, while we live in a country that remembers with pride homesteaders and explorers, mountain men and hunters... there's no free space left to do any of that in. Every scrap of land in this country is owned and controlled by somebody: private citizens, city/county/state/federal governments, Native American tribes, corporations.
BTW, most farms in America are "family farms" - but as you can see, the top 4%(which earn $1 million+ and are structured like corporations) account for most of the production.
And if you're homeless - OMG. There's no place for the homeless to go, which gets hugely ironic when a city/corporate deal knocks down 32 acres of urban shops and housing to build a mall, without making any arrangements for relocating the people who used to live there. Oops! You're out! Good luck finding a new place to live! And how dare you hang around here and muck up our new upscale image?
Similar stuff's happening here, too. The Sioux Falls City Council decided to build a Convention Center downtown, and in order to do that demolished the Sioux Falls Department of Social Services (DSS) building, moving it to a new, consolidated "One Stop" building way out on the perimeter, hard to get to for people who don't own a car and/or are disabled.
Now the idea was that a Convention Center will bring in lots of revenue, decrease crime, and get rid of the pesky homeless who live on the river in the summer. I find this hilarious, because conventions generally come with an increase of crime, especially prostitution, theft, assaults, DUIs, etc. After all, one of the major reasons people go to conventions is to get away from their home territory and let their hair down, not to mention their pants. Why do you think Grindr breaks down every time a convention hits a town? Look it up.
And the idea that you can go out into the wilderness and live off the land - a favorite fantasy, BTW, of inmates and I don't blame them a bit – Well, you can't. What wilderness? You can't even pull over to the side of the road in your car and crash out anymore, which is what my parents did when we used to travel cross country in the 1960s. Some law enforcement personnel is going to stop and ask you what you're doing and how intoxicated you are. There is no more homesteading. And even in the Alaskan wilderness, if you go out and build a cabin miles from anyone anywhere... well, if the government finds it, they'll take it down.
Now let's talk rent: A 2 bedroom apartment in Providence, Rhode Island ran around $570+ in 1994, but then again, minimum wage was $4.25/hr = $170 a week = $680 a month. That leaves $110 for food, clothing, utilities, etc. Not much to actually live on, was it?
Same when I was sharing a 4 bedroom house (old, with cockroaches, in what was basically a slum) with a bunch of artists in Atlanta back in 1973 - rent ran around $400 a month, while minimum wage was $1.60/hr = $64 a week = $256 a month. You damn well better share to split the rent.
BTW, we turned the place into a 6 bedroom simply by making every room except the bathroom, kitchen, and living room a bedroom. Mine was the back porch, which had wrap-around windows and a gas space heater I lit with a match. I loved it - my sanctuary, where I wrote like a maniac, read like an opium addict, dreamed... oh, how I dreamed... And with six of us (not to mention sleepovers), there was always someone available for talking, dreaming, drinking, laughing...
So I'm all in favor of survival. No one was using that room that was so well hidden that the mall administration and security guards themselves didn't know it was there. No harm, no foul in my book. Because if you're not born rich, you've got to be creative to stay alive in this world.
Especially if you're becoming an artist. It takes a lot of work, obsession, talking, arguing, partying, debating, cooperating, and more work to get from the dream to the reality. Every city has had and still has its neighborhood. Some are more famous than others: Left Bank! Montmartre! Greenwich Village! Chelsea! Florence! Soho! Tribeca! Little Five Points! And so many more.
There's a reason Murger's Scènes de la vie de bohème of starving artists and their muses has been translated into dozens of languages, made into movies, operas, musicals, etc. Because right now, there are a group of artists in your city that are living in a run-down section of town, working crap jobs and staying up all night to do the work to become their dream... Whether in a slum or a house or a Secret Mall Apartment.
I hope you enjoy it. I sure did. Both the documentary, and in real life.
I will check it out, Eve! We'll see if it's on Canadian Netflix (we don't get everything you do, which believe me we think is a rip-off.) Yes, even in Canada, the way to live in wilderness is to buy it. We have plenty, if you don't mind snow 6 months of the year, and bugs for the rest.
ReplyDeleteI know. You can also march out into the backcountry of Alaska, and it's the same way, 6 months of snow, 6 months of bugs.
DeleteThe husband & I watched "Secret Mall Apartment" about a week ago & loved it! I'm not sure some of the people were actually homeless, it seemed as though some of them only came around the apt. now & then to make art & see their friends because they had an actual home elsewhere. The secret apt. was there for a few years though, & people's circumstances change.
ReplyDeleteIn New York, the run-down artist neighborhoods have always ended up being gentrified till the artists can't afford them: Greenwich Village, SoHo, the East Village, Williamsburg (Brooklyn)... Not to mention the Black community being gentrified out of Harlem and the homeless drunk community being gentrified out of the Bowery. Is nothing sacred?
ReplyDeleteThe artists move into a run-down neighborhood, take it over. Life becomes vibrant and interesting, and next thing you know the gentrifiers move in, little by little or in one big gush... And then the artists have to move on to the next one. That's the way it's always been done. The last time I was down in Atlanta, we went to Little Five Points which had been the artist neighborhood of my day... Gentrified to the max. Sigh...
DeleteI know that housing takes up a much bigger chunk of a salary than it did back in the day - as a renter, I'm well aware! Still, it irks me to read Gen Z posting about how Boomers gobbled up houses on a month's salary back in the eighties, etc. Hardly! In 1982 I moved to San Francisco and shared a two-bedroom apartment in a decent, not great, neighborhood with two other girls. None of us had a car, and our only furniture was our beds and one wicker chair. We were all college grads employed full-time. That was normal - not unusual in any way. Another fact that sticks with me is that in 1989 plenty of people were paying an annual rate of 19% on their credit cards. Unfathomable. The good old days weren't really that great, Gen Z.
ReplyDeleteI remember. 13.74% mortgage interest rates in 1980, and 16% the next year... By that time I was married, and buying a house was out of the question for us for quite a while.
DeleteI recall reading about the secret apartment!
ReplyDeleteA wooded Orlando area off John Young Parkway north of Colonial Drive was a long established homeless camp not unlike the one in the series Justified. A few years ago, it was raided by the nearby Sheriff's department.
I understand a landowner's concern about liability and adverse possession, but what bothered me most was the absolute destruction of the destitute's chattel, their few remaining goods– clothes, backpacks, tents, perhaps a cooking pot or two. Is there any other 'crime' that permits authorities to destroy the belongings of the accused? If we remember the story of the Widow's Mite, those few possessions might be worth a few dollars, but represent 100% of everything they owned.
Despite charitable organizations, Orlando is not a partularly friendly place for the poor. For example, the city made it illegal to feed the homeless in public parks. Charity here can be a criminal act.
But there are good souls. I knew an inventor/professor in Winter Park who owned a nice chuck of property with several buildings and a print shop. He allowed artists to use a strip of buildings without charge. The man suffered considerably in his private life, but he offered kindness to others.
Well, in 1932, a group of WW1 veterans marched on Washington, D.C., because they'd been rewarded for the service with "bonus" checks that they couldn't cash until 1945 - but they were all starving then, thanks to the Great Depression. They were peaceful, they set up camp, marched around the White House, etc. The AG William Mitchell ordered the Capitol police to clear them out, and they did (2 veterans were shot dead); and then President Hoover ordered General Douglas Macarthur in to clean out the camp. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned. They lost everything. Sigh...
DeleteA number of years a go, in a nearby town where I used to live, a young man squatted in the rafters of a large chain grocery store for weeks -- perhaps months -- before he was discovered. It was the perfect solution to his personal housing crisis. He would come down during the night when the store was closed. There was food available, and a rest room. I imagine the sleeping arrangements were not the most comfortable, but you can't have everything. I have often wondered if this was a one-off, or if this was happening in other stores all over the country,
ReplyDeleteI KNOW there's more squatting going on than anyone realizes. Often in places that no one think of looking. But then, who'd expect a bear to set up camp for months in a crawl space? Needs must, when the devil drives...
DeleteThis probably sounds weird, but this was the most delightful and encouraging film I've heard about in a long time. Thank you so much for bringing it to our attention. I will definitely add it to our list. -- Joe
ReplyDeleteJoe, that's the way I felt. It was like, oh wonderful! There are still weird artists out there, doing their own thing! Huzzah!
ReplyDelete