Opera and Walmart
Posted on | September 18, 2009 |
Yup, you read that right. This week’s been one of cultural extremes. On Tuesday I went to the opening night of Puccini’s “Il Trittico” at the magnificent War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, sat at the very top and very back, and enjoyed every second of the three part opera, with its soaring arias sung by the highly accomplished soprano Patricia Racette. The music was wonderful and the performers were as much actors as they were singers - a combination that can be rare in opera. And the staging was spectacular, as you can see from this picture of the last operetta, Gianni Schicci:
This is culture at its best, I thought as I looked out from the opera house balcony during one of the intermissions, gazing on the beautifully lit City Hall (anyone who’s seen the movie “Milk” will know that view).
But just as the highest forms of culture can be found here, so can the lowest. For a rather different experience, the following night I joined my friends Sydney and Tico for a Walmart Expedition. They had decided that my American cultural training could be nowhere near complete unless I experienced a huuuuuuuge and lifeless Walmart in the middle of the night. So off we went at 9pm and emerged a couple of hours later, dazed and loaded with a whole lot of things we didn’t really need. The Chinese economy did well out of our expenditure that night. The sunglasses aisle alone occupied us for quite a while, as you can see:
And we admired the height of technological advancement in superstores - the shopping cart escalator:
Sydney and Tico were disappointed that this Walmart was a comparatively small one (I quote, “I can’t believe you can actually see the far wall here”), as they’d hoped to impress me with the sheer scale of the place. They needn’t have worried: I’m not sure I was impressed, but I was certainly overwhelmed by the scope of Walmart! And they were somewhat placated upon realizing that there was a second floor…. Everything you could possibly want was under the same, luridly lit roof, from peanut butter to lightbulbs to $5 pillows to hunting gear to desk chairs to baby clothes. The only things we couldn’t find were fresh fruit and vegetables - surprise, surprise…. Certainly it’s a very useful place to go when you need to buy a lot of stuff all at once, but it’s also a soul-destroying one which can make you forget about all the interesting, characterful things that the human race has produced.
I don’t know about you, but I think that in one short week my training in US culture has come along pretty far!
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2 Responses to “Opera and Walmart”
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Date: 17/11/08
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Birthday Picnic!
Date: 01/11/09
September 19th, 2009 @ 10:21 am
I recognize Target rather than Walmart - that’s why you could see the far end of the store! True Walmarts are much larger - and tackier!
September 21st, 2009 @ 9:00 am
the walmart near my house, a big one, and the nicest one i’ve been to, has fruits and vegetable. a whole super-market inside. i guess that’s what you get in the suburbs!