Yesterday, we decided to do a walk around the City Stars mall. I took notes on the route, Amal took pictures, and we both wrote down various notes. The idea is for Amal to write it up, and for me to add some comments of my own.
So, here’s the route. Taxi drops us at Entrance 7. We take the escalator up to level 1, and see there is a Nokia booth in the middle. Walking past that to the first intersection, we see Boulevard 7 off to the right. We are struck by the absence of overhead screens. On the corner is the Shorouk English-language and Arabic-language bookshop. We stay on Level 1 and walk down Boulevard 7 to Area B. There we turn left. In the Triumph lingerie store to the right, we spot a flat screen, but it is turned off. We walk past 7 ATMs, each with its own screen, to the left. The Envision DVD stall has a screen in it. This takes along to the Food Court (cheaper stores, a mix of local and McDonalds, etc). As we are about to walk from that into the next section, we notice just past the Papa Johns a block of 9 screens, all playing a single image together – but only 5 of them are working. Next we find ourselves at Boulevard 4, still on Level 1. Now there are overhead screens (Samsung brand) playing the mall’s video loop. The Coffee Shop Company has its own screen, playing Arabia’s MTV-style program. Fuddruckers in the Atrium lobby, which appears to be the main centre of the mall, also has its own screen. Starbucks and Second Cup do not. We find ourselves at a foul-smelling entrance to Spinney’s hypermarket. (This the name that Tesco’s goes by in the Middle East.) There is a Persil Gel booth with a turned off/dead flat screen on its side. We walk along the side of the entrance to Spinney’s, along Boulevard 2. Some shops have their own screens, although they are not always on.
Next, we took the escalators up to levels 2, 3, then 4. These were the escalators near the corresponding entrance. (By this time we were on the verge of mall confusion.) Level 4 was mostly food court. Up to Level 5, where the cinema is. We are in area A still, where we can look over the main atrium and the glass lifts going up and down. We take the escalator up another level to Level 6. Here there are lots of shots that are not open yet. We notice the slogan “City Stars – Cairo’s Capital” on the hoardings covering the unopened shops.
Time for a lunch break from 1.30 to 2.30
Back on Level 5, we go to the Stars Cinema, overlooking the atrium in Area A. The following movies are advertised (although some may be coming attractions – it’s not clear): TRIANGLE; ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS; LIGHTNING THIEF; VALENTINE’S DAY; MY NAME IS KHAN; HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAY; THE BOOK OF ELI; DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS?; WELAD EL’AAM; OLD DOGS; THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG; STAG NIGHT; AVATAR; and FROM PARIS WITH LOVE.
Next, we find our way into the mall’s Khan El-Khalili (screen-free except where the escalators come up, and with its own “Arabic” music). We find ourselves on Level 4, back at the area where we came in (near where entrances 6 and 7 are below). The shops are posh, but there are no screens. Is this because this is Phase 1, and they didn’t put them in until they built phase 2? We more or less end the walk here at about 3.30, and go downstairs to Level 1, near the Atrium, to the Venezia Ice Saloon, from where we can observe the mall’s own screens. Venezia itself has a BENQ flat screen playing Arabia M’s music videos (without the music turned on). Above us is the slogan “Double your pleasure at Phase II with over 250 more stores to serve you” in English. The servers also speak English.
**
After a gruelling mall experience that included Chicken Crispers in Chili, a seamless work-live experience in which Amal picked up a few items in the Zara sale, and a gelato and coffee while we observed the screens, we met up with Amal’s friend again. He was on his way home to New Cairo, where the rich have fled to from Cairo itself. This is out in the desert beyond the Ring Road. How could we turn down this sociological/anthropological adventure? Since City Stars had already given us an insight into a whole other Cairo that is invisible from Downtown, the Cairo that Amal’s friend, who lives in it, says is “not the real Egypt.” We drove out further along the same straight road that took us from downtown to the mall, the road that eventually leads to Suez. Mostly, there seem to be huge walled army compounds along the way, or just plain desert. Eventually we got past the ring road and to the new town of Rehab (pronounced slightly differently from the Amy Winehouse version).
Rehab is Orange County, Cairo, plus mosques, basically. It is gated. When fully developed, it will accommodate 100,000 of the rich and almost rich, according to Mo. So, it’s more of a gated city. There are hundreds of 3-4 story apartment buildings and some small villa houses. There are 2 Rehab malls, 2 medical centres, a restaurant row (with Papa Johns, Los Gauchos Argentinian Steakhouse, etc etc), a drive-through souk area, various foreign-language schools, and a mosque or two. You need never leave – except perhaps to hang out at City Stars. The air is cleaner than in Cairo. Amal’s friend says his mother, who runs a school out there, feels that although she loves the old Cairo, she doesn’t know if she could move back down there, because she feels like she needs grass outside her house now. No matter how much I respond to this place with a sort of Stepford Wives horror, I can also see why all the people exhausted by the dust and stress of old Cairo would aspire to move up here. Furthermore, as we were told, it’s not even in the Cairo jurisdiction, but under Helwan. I think this must contribute to that psychological sense of making a break from old Cairo. And maybe the taxes are lower, too? The rich are always alert to that.
We were dropped off at Rehab 2. We called a cab, and were told we would have to wait half an hour. Our next destination was Zamalek, where we had an appointment with someone who lives out at October 6 City, another satellite development, as far out West as Rehab is out East. Zamalek is the island in the middle of Nile, and it is best approached from West, rather than trying to drive through old Cairo and Downtown to get there.
We wandered around the mall while waiting. It was a mini-mall of the sort you can find in any suburban American development, in many ways. But there was a large coffee shop in the middle with an impressive array of screens, of course. But there were almost no customers when we were there and they were not turned on.
When the cab finally turned up after almost an hour, we commenced an unbelievable journey that took at least an hour and a half and cost 200 pounds. In a city where a long cab ride is 20 pounds, this tells you a lot. Basically, he bombed along the ring road forever, before turning off and getting caught in the most unbelievable traffic jam into Zamalek. This gave us a very concrete and physical sense of the sheer immensity of Cairo – and also made us glad we weren’t trying to do this in July! Once we finally got to Zamalek we had dinner on a boat overlooking the Nile.
City Stars Walk
1 March 2010
According to the City Stars website there are 643 stores, 2 indoor theme parks and a 21 state-of-the-art screen cinema complex. It is part of a bigger complex made up of 2 hotels (Intercontinental and Holiday Inn), 2 residential complexes with full amenities and office tower blocks. Due to the surveillance at the mall, I was unable to take that many photographs
We walk down to a small atrium area and find ourselves surrounded by garden furniture arranged on the floor, (a type of showroom/shop?). Here on the corner there is a lingerie store selling international brands with a flatscreen near the shop window. It is turned off.
Turning onto ‘boulevard’ 5, although there are none of the overhead paired-screens set up, we see screens on advertising booths that are set up alongside each other, one for Nokia, another for LG. Each of these kiosks were sleek and in addition to large LCD TVs in each kiosk advertising the brand, the men running the kiosks had their own laptops.
We walk past some ATMs belonging to several banks, they seem to be the portable bank machines you get in corner stores with the standard small ATM screens, I saw clusters of these at several places in the mall last time. Next to these is another kiosk selling DVDs. Here too is a screen, this one playing one the movies the vendor is selling.
Then we enter Pyramids food court. It seems like this is the cheap, take-away, fast food section of the mall with food vendors around a big area with plastic tables and seating. There is a KFC, Hardees, Burger King as well as regional fast-food chains like Mo’men and Jebal Lebnan. On one wall of the food court, leading to the main atrium, is a large screen displaying City Stars ‘in house TV’, it is like Arkadia’s large multi-screen screen but this one is made up of nine screens (three by three). Unlike the overhead paired-screens we had seen previously in the mall that play the same video repeated on both screens, this one has one output. However, like Arkadia’s broken screen aesthetic, this screen had four malfunctioning interior screens, so we can see only a partial view of the image. We stay a few minutes to watch any changes but nothing flickers back to life.
When we pass through the food court, we enter a much shinier version of the mall. Boulevard 4 that leads on to the main atrium if populated by overhead paired-screens placed at regular intervals. These are Samsung flatscreens, placed back to back and in pairs side-byside. Like the large multi-screen in the food court, these are all playing the ‘in house TV’ a video loop without audio, all the overhead screens in the area seem to be playing simultaneously.
We walk through to the main atrium which has quite a few cafes and restaurants along the sides of the fountain in the middle of the atrium with international brand names like Starbucks, The Coffee Shop Company and Fuddruckers as well as some others I don’t recognise. Both Fuddruckers and the Coffee Shop Company have screens playing Melody TV, an Arabic language music television station that seem to have a monopoly on most cafes in Cairo. I wonder about franchise coffee shops and whether there are house-design rules and when the negotiation takes place for a screen and what is played on it.
Through the atrium towards the next boulevard we arrive at the open entrance to Spinneys, a hypermarket. Like many malls in Gulf I have been to, I realise we may have been walking through the more casual, no frills part of the mall, the floor with the huge supermarket on that often smells like food and has lots of room for shopping trolleys. This coincides with the casual fast food section leading up to it and the large numbers of service kiosks/stores on the boulevard closest Spinneys.
Although there are overhead screens in this area, there are not that many other screens in stores. Along boulevard 2 there are several kiosks for household goods, here we spot a large but dead screen in a Persil kiosk, there was no attendant so it could have just been closed. We decide not to enter Spinneys, although I am sure we would find a few screens in there.
Heading back to the main Atrium area with its grand fountain and posh astroturf, we take the escalators to higher floors. At the top of each set of escalators going up, are hanging overhead paired-screens that you have to look at as you ascend. We first go up one level to the atrium section of the second floor. Here are mostly clothes and shoe stores, I spot Zara and Guess, here we can look down onto the atrium and the overhead screens are all playing the City Stars channel simultaneously. We go up to the third level with similar types of shops and the overhead screens are set up the same, there are also more and more warning CCTV signs everywhere. I am quite wary of photographing, and am much tamer with the camera than in the other sitesOn the fourth floor is the Zodiac food court, with its themed aesthetic and higher end food outlets. There are lots of kids running around and I spot ‘Magic Galaxy’ which is a kids theme park on the same floor, there must be lots of vide games in there but we don’t dare enter as the screaming children factor is already high in the food court.
Up another level the food theme continues, with more restaurants rather than a food court. Here is a Rainforest Cafe, Costa Coffee and Chillis, Sbarro and Ruby Tuesdays, there is also the cinema here and ‘E-zone’ another theme park/arcade. There are screens in the both Costa and Chillis, the Rainforest Cafe seems closed and the other restaurants don’t have visible screens.
On level 6 are several boarded up shop fronts, with only two open, Lina’s Cafe and Abou El-Sid an upscale Egyptian Restaurant chain with a branch in Zamallek I used to go to when I was in Cairo a few years ago. It was strange seeing Abou El Sid in a mall, its faux traditional Egyptian coffee house aesthetic seems almost as tacky as the magic galaxy theme park downstairs. Lina’s cafe, a lebanese contemporary deli, has a screen in it playing surprise, surprise Melody TV.
After some indecision we decide to go Chilis, a US casual dining franchise that reminds me of skipping school with friends for lunch breaks at the mall in Bahrain. Junk food! At Chilis, there are two screens. Both are playing an NBA Basketball game. I try and remember if Chilis in Bahrain have screens. Either way, as always in this mall, I could be anywhere.
Going down a level past the Zodiac Food Court we enter another themed area of the mall, the Khan El-Khalili replica souk, offering the same jewellery and handicrafts that are sold n the old popular market. But like many of the mall ‘souqs’ I have been to, here we have about 50 units of air-conditioned, stores selling Khan products with hefty price tags and even piped oriental music in the background. The Khan comes with its own version of little alleys, street signs and Khan ‘qahwas’. Going with the theme there are no screens here except for next to the elevators.
After a little shopping in Zara (much to Chris’ amusement) we take a break at Venezia ice cream, a posh cafe near the Atrium on the first floor. The seats are leather, the ice cream yummy and Melody Arabia is playing on a flat screen next to the fountain we are sitting next to.
As we sit in the mall eating ice-cream and window shopper – watching, I take a look at the mall generated content of one of the pair of screens in the boulevard. These paired screens are all synced together and there is no audio, as we have been walking around we have been seeing glimpses of what is playing on them.
The loop lasts around 20 minutes and here is what was being screened on the day we did our walk:
-An ad for Resala Charity Association (Jam3iyah Resala)and depicts young group of Egyptians helping a group of disabled children to read. The ad is completely in Arabic and has high production values.
-’City Stars’, a developers stye ad for the Stars complex. A blond woman has a massage, a family by the pool etc etc.
-A powerpoint type slide for an Indian Restaurant in the mall, the name and location of the restaurant in the mall.
-A powerpoint type slide for a company called Next Generation Services
-Another ad for Resala Charity Association, this one is similar to the one earlier but depicts under privileged children being taught to read.
-The City Stars ’5 Golden Years’ Festival Sequence: a powerpoint presentation for the ‘City Stars Festival’ it shows images of festivities in the mall, including an image of a live music performance, the ‘Tall Man Parade’ (showing an image of a clown on stilts), then advertises a raffle draw – the draw dates are in December 2009, January 2010. This sequence is clearly out of date and I wonder how often the management of City Stars actually produce content for the screens in the mall, who manages them?
-A powerpoint type slide for another restaurant in the mall called ‘Windows’.
-Another ad for Resala Charity Association, this one is similar to the series of ads so far, very hi-spec etc this ad features charity workers helping the elderly.
-Powerpoint type slide for Next Generation Services again
-Another Resala ad, this one is for a repeat of the disabled children learning to read.
-Another Resala ad, this one depicts an adult literacy programme.
-Flu sequence: This ad is a power point presentation with 10 slides. It is a public service announcement of sorts by an organisation promoting children’s health with step by step instructions on hygiene in public places to stop the spread of flu. The slides are white with text only in English with instructions like: wash your hands, throw away tissues, cover your mouth when you cough, etc
-City Stars Cinema Ads, trailers for the following films are advertised: 1) 2012 2)Twilight 3)A Christmas Carol 4)Avatar. Two of the films were still being screened at the cinemas the other two were old ads, which means that like the City Stars festival sequence this part of the Screens Loop is another clue that the loop is not updated regularly.
-The City Stars ’5 Golden Years’ Festival Sequence
-’City Stars’, a developers stye ad for the Stars complex.
Loop goes back to the first Resala ad….
After several hours in the mall, we decide to leave and head to Rehab.
Amal Khalaf
