Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Three days in the West Edmonton Mall. Go figure

When it comes to magazine assignments, they don't come much weirder than the one that has writer Omar Mouallem live for three days in the West Edmonton Mall. Sleeping in a Ford truck bed. In the Fantasyland Hotel. From November 26 to 29. Three Days in the Mall is being done for Avenue magazine. The assignment memo says, in part
“You’ll live in West Edmonton Mall for three days and document the experience of going about your daily business within the confines of the mall.

“You can meet people there, you can do everything you’d normally do, but the only stipulation is that you can’t leave."
Mouallem is a writer and rapper, and the former associate editor of Avenue. Readers can follow his excellent adventure on Twitter @omar_aok.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hasn't the whole "live in the West Edmonton Mall" thing been done by other media outlets before?

10:03 pm  
Blogger D. B. Scott said...

If it has, your comment would have benefitted from some specifics.

1:03 am  
Anonymous Tom Gierasimczuk said...

Chris Turner (as in the first Green to be elected in Calgary... fingers crossed) wrote a story for up! magazine (published by the same company as Avenue) that was nominated for an NMA in 2007. Great read. But it's not online, though. Omar's a great writer who will do a well-worn spin justice, though.

8:34 am  
Anonymous Patrick Walsh said...

Paul Tough's Saturday Night had a feature by American writer Jack Hitt about living for seven days and seven nights in the mall.

9:11 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The West Ed. Mall story was in a little magazine called Saturday Night:
www.canadiancontent.ca/issues/0399satnight.html

10:15 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

are you actually bickering about whether the story is a fresh idea or not? Have you heard of this things called the internet? Just try it... google an idea... see if it's yours' alone. ugh,

2:30 pm  
Blogger D. B. Scott said...

Not bickering at all. Just wanted to let readers know where and when... as others have done.

4:52 pm  
Blogger The Side Street Project said...

There's also a great, smart film, 'Waydowntown', that covers similar ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6VfUV5J7g0

1:03 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fair enough D.B.

4:39 pm  

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