Flip 8--Clackamas Town Center

7/15/2007 9:26 AM Sunday

Location: Clackamas Town Center and Clackamas Promenade

The map says there is a stream--Phillips Creek--running along the western flank of this enormous shopping complex spanning SE Sunnyside Road.

I go to find the creek first, and do, at the bottom of a small ravine. I don't actually see the water, but I can see evidence of it, for along this strip snaking through endless pavement is a bit of lush greenery, and trees that are old enough to look like real trees, not the impotent saplings one sees dotting shopping mall parking lots.

I'm frustrated as I write this, sitting in my car after having been booted off the parking lot of the mall across the street. First the manager of the Target store came out to ask me if I worked for the mall or if I was taking pictures for a class, and when I told him that I was just a private citizen, he asked me not to take any pictures of the Target store. "No problem," I said, because I had just finished my roll of film anyway. The manager was a diminutive man, not mean-looking or threatening, with a rumpled red shirt and a name tag. He went back inside the Target, and I sat down on a bench in front of the entrance and began to write.

A woman in a red Target polo shirt walked out of a service door and in front of me, making no eye contact, but I could see she was wearing a two-way communication device. She walked past me and into the store's main entrance. I sat and observed store-goers for a while. An elderly woman's small dog jumped out of her car and ran up to her as she returned from the store. A mother harangued her young son about his untied shoe.

A security guard--this one from the mall--came up to me next. Like the Target manager, he wore a rumpled shirt, a white one. He was a teenager and looked uncomfortable. "Are you the guy who's been taking pictures?" he asked. When I replied that I was, he informed me that the mall had an anti-photography policy and, as I was in violation of it, he would have to ask me to leave.

He was polite about it, and a little embarrassed, just as the Target manager had been. He even apologized for the inconvenience. I got up and walked off the parking lot, a criminal in the eyes of the mall.