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
