I haven't been there in years, but when my Providence friend Marie was still alive, we'd sometimes head over to the Providence Place Mall, poke around, and have lunch. The in-mall restaurant was pretty good, and there was a pretty good Nordstrom's there as well. When we were there, Marie and I would usually pop into the Nordstrom shoe department because they carried Munros in our hard-to-find size, which was 10.5 - 11 Narrow or Slim.
(Funny about foot size. Marie, who was tall and willowy, came by her long narrow foot naturally. Me, not so much. I once said that if the rest of my body matched my foot, I'd be 6 feet tall and weigh 120 pounds. Neither, I promise you, is the case.)
Anyway, Marie's been gone now for over a decade, and I'm rarely in Providence, so knew nothing about the fortunes of the Providence Place Mall.
When it was first opened in 1999, it was heralded as yet another sign of Providence's transition from down-at-the-heels New England city - albeit one with "good bones:" it's the state capital, and home to two renowned schools (Brown University and RISD) both located near the downtown area - to a destination, full of destination-y things like cool shops and foodie restaurants. But Providence Place Mall has fallen on hard times and last fall went into receivership. It's still limping along, and that Nordstrom's is long gone.
But come to find out, during some of those years when I was visiting the Mall with Marie, an artist named Michael Townsend and some friends were squatting in a secret apartment they'd created for themselves in some tucked away free space there that they'd stumbled upon.
Those years of living behind the Providence Place scenes were 2003-2007, but the story's coming out again now because of the release of “Secret Mall Apartment," a documentary by filmmaker Jeremy Workman.
When the mall was being built, Townsend noticed what he called a “nowhere space,” an “anomaly in the architecture” that served no purpose. So when Townsend and his friends decided to camp out at the mall after seeing an ad teasing that the place was so well stocked that it had everything a person needed to live, he sought out that corner as a place to sleep. How did Townsend clock it in the first place? He credited that to a fixation with the notion of space that arose as the mall was going up, part of the gentrification of his Providence, R.I., neighborhood that also resulted in the artists’ space where he lived being demolished.
“It’s not just losing the home, it’s also losing historical vertebrae of the neighborhood,” Townsend said. As for the mall, “You couldn’t help but internalize that there was a lot of dead space in that structure,” he said. And thus, the notion of an apartment was born. (Source: NY Times)
The apartment was anchored by a couch where the denizens - who popped in an out and didn't live there full time - could hang out, play video games, watch TV, talk about art projects, and get some shut eye. Townsend sometimes lived there for a few weeks at at time. “'If you can pick one thing you’re going to move into a space, I’d pick a couch over a mattress, any day,' Michael Townsend said."
I'll keep that in mind, come the day when I'm moving into an alt space.
The space was not perfect, and Townsend and his buds needed to build a door. Which required their building a wall to locate the door in. Which required them lugging two-tons worth of cinder blocks. They used a back stairway and were able to get away with all that cinder-block lugging unobserved. The crew also had to schlepp in cement.
The residents slipped in and out through an outside extrance and through emergency exits. They also used a tunnel "hidden above a toilet" to get to their home. Their "apartment" didn't have facilities of their own, so they used public restrooms.
For food, they had the cooking essentials: waffle iron and hot plate. They also "shopped" in the food court. And there was always movie theater popcorn.
The artists also did plenty of videoing of their exploits, and those films (grainy and low quality as they are) form the basis of the documentary.
For a few years, the eight artist pals were able to hang in their mall refuge on the QT. But all good things...
Mall cops figured out something was up, and the secret apartment was shut down. The place in the Place was raided, Townsend was slapped in cuffs, the the apartment was dismantled. Townsend was placed on probation, but received a lifetime ban (LOL) from Providence Place Mall.
The ban has now been lifted, but Michael Townsend doesn't sound like a mall-rat kind of guy. He's an artist (MFA from RISD) who's too busy making art, specializing in tape art, a technique he initiated. Here's from his website, Tape Art.
WE MAKE MURALS.
ON WALLS.
WITH TAPE.
We are the original tape artists. Since the late 80s we have been traveling around the world drawing on all the walls, from graffiti-filled alleyways to prestigious museums.
Over 500 BIG murals.
Thousands of smaller tape drawings.
Still loving tape.
And still loving collaborative art projects. Like the Providence Place Mall apartment.
Sure wish Marie were still around to watch the film with...
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