Jakarta Mall Culture

Residents of less fortunate cities make do with silly things like parks, beaches, playgrounds, outdoor promenades or even museums as places to meet and interact. Jakartans are far luckier. The have The Mall.

Malls are air-conditioned to bone-chilling extremes. Malls contain lots of bright glitzy things on display (not just teen-aged girls dressed to kill, but actual retail merchandise, too). Malls have food courts galore and awful live bands and overflowing cineplexes. Malls have pricey cafes and noisy video arcades and trendy salons and obnoxious kiddy pageants. One Jakarta mall even has an ice skating rink. Most of all, malls are the place Jakartans go to see and be seen. Typical patrons include, but are not limited to:skateboard-toting teenagers; gossip-crazed high society madams; business types on power lunches; gay men on the prowl; soap opera start on spending sprees; house maids with long grocery lists; uniformed nannies in hot pursuit of screaming brats; and tourists hunting for Batik ties and 'authentic' shadow puppets. The reason nobody visits Ragunan Zoo in South Jakarta is because the human zoo inside the city's malls is far more colorful, involves no entrance fee and offers air-conditioning and plenty of underground parking.

The new millennium has so far been a Golden Age for the Jakarta shopping universe. Plaza Senayan, once the last work in luxury shopping, has been cruelly overshadowed by a new neighbor, Senayan City, whose central atrium is so enormous that its monthly air-conditioning bill is roughly equal to the GDP or Burkina Faso. Soon after, the even larger 'Shopping Town' of Grand Indonesia and ultra-modern Pacific Place set the luxury bar higher still.

Jakarta's malls have nicknames that are useful to know when making plans via sms with Indonesian friends who have an aversion to vowels. Plaza Senayan is PS. Pondok Indah Mall is PIM; Senayan City is Senci; Plaza Indonesia is Plazindo; Cilandak Town Square is Citos; Plaza Semanggi is Plangi; Pacific Place is PP. These shortcuts are meant to save precious time, you see, so that everyone is left with more hours to shop.