{"id":514,"date":"2007-12-24T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-24T07:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omeoflittlefaith\/2007\/12\/living-in-the-mall.html"},"modified":"2007-12-24T07:12:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-24T07:12:00","slug":"living-in-the-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omeoflittlefaith\/2007\/12\/living-in-the-mall.html","title":{"rendered":"Living in the Mall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just in time for Christmas Eve…I’m a few weeks late to the story, but it seems a 37-year-old artist and his friends practiced some civil disobedience by moving into a mall in Providence, Rhode Island<\/a>, and actually living there for several weeks at a time. They started the experiment in 2004, finding an empty 750 square-foot storage space — which, weirdly, no one used or ever noticed — and filling it with normal apartment-y stuff, including Crate & Barrel furnishings and a couch. They ate after-hours at the Food Court. They were getting ready to install hard-wood floors when mall security came across an online video of the apartment.<\/p>\n

In punishment, the artist, named Michael Townsend, has been banned from the mall. So don’t get him any Cinnabon gift cards<\/a> this Christmas.<\/p>\n

You can see photos and video of the experiment at Townsend’s website<\/a>. Read more about it at The Providence Journal<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The good news for people like me is that there’s a great metaphor here about shopping and consumerism and how people live. Yep, this will find its way into a book or talk at some point. Of that you can be certain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just in time for Christmas Eve…I’m a few weeks late to the story, but it seems a 37-year-old artist and his friends practiced some civil disobedience by moving into a mall in Providence, Rhode Island, and actually living there for several weeks at a time. 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