The Fashion Island Dining Hierarchy

(Continued from “Fashion Island”)

My Literature of Inequity teacher asked the class if anyone wanted to share the short story they wrote about their observations at Fashion Island the other day. No one raised their hand. I waited, and still no hands. I decided to raise mine.

“Only rich, old, white people shop at Fashion Island,” I read. “This is something that I knew since my first visit here two years ago, and being back here today I can see that nothing’s changed. However, today I want to know what lies beneath this outdoor mall’s fancily extravagant exterior, so I travel over to the side of the mall with all the big name chain restaurant hoping to locate some dumpsters. I end up finding an open garage entrance to a service corridor facing the parking lot, guarded by nothing more than a measly sign that reads, ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ Not the most welcoming invite, but I head inside anyway.

“Nothing really interests me until I turn a corner and glance down at the hallway before me. It stretches long and narrow, and the walls are an eerie white, lit by fluorescent lights that glow an equally eerie white. The occasional ‘hazardous wastes’ or ‘no smoking sign’ hangs up on the walls. A web of pipes runs under the ceiling, and it concerns me that some are a little red with rust. An ominous elevator stands coldly at the end of the hallway, so I make my way toward it, steadily and nervously, as though I were trying to avoid trip wires lining the floor. I carefully pull out my cell phone to snap a few photos of my surroundings. Unsure about the presence of security cameras, and knowing that taking pictures inside malls is often against mall regulations, I try to make it look like I’m just using my phone to read text messages or whatever; it’s just that sometimes I like to angle my phone up toward the ceiling or to the sides when I read my text messages. Any minute I expect to be stopped by mall security and to find myself at the police station waiting on my journalism teacher to arrive and verify that I was out on an assignment. I replay in my mind an incident three years ago when cops stopped my friends (one black, one Mexican) and me on the way down to the ground floor after we spent an entire hour talking on top floor of a mall parking structure. They ran our ID’s, patted us down for weed and guns and they asked us if we were carrying any rocket launchers. None of us wore backpacks or bags; I didn’t know how we could possibly conceal rocket launchers.

“If a cop stops me now at Fashion Island, I’d be accused of being a terrorist, roaming the internal structures of the mall and taking pictures on my camera phone so I could report back to my terrorist cell and plan out where to plant bombs. Suddenly the doors of the elevator open as I’m just reaching the halfway point, and out come two fat Mexican men rolling a cart of trash. Their faces are dark and dirty, and their white baggy coveralls are blotted with patches of dirt and dust and smeared with stains of food. Caps sporting The Cheesecake Factory logo rest on their heads. I don’t think it hurts to once again mention that they are fat. I wonder if they will stop me as they roll down the hallway in my direction with their cart, but they just roll right on, muttering in Spanish. There’s nothing at the end of the hallway except for a few dumpsters, as expected, so I snap a few more photos and quickly walk out before anyone could arrest me. I decide on a cleaner, less risky change of environment and head upstairs.

“I stroll inside Cheesecake Factory very casually for some observing. When a seating host asks me if I need help, I just tell her that I’m here to look at the cheesecakes on display. She lets me know to let her know if I need any assistance and then leaves me alone. When she’s busy helping other guests, I turn around to conduct a quick survey of The Cheesecake Factory staff. I squint through the dim warm-tinted lighting to see that most of the servers, bartenders, and hosts are white women, and most are thin and in shape. And even then, the occasional slightly chubby server has the full-volume hair and the bubbly personality to make up for it. Everyone wears a button-up dress shirt and pair of dress pants that both emanate a bright white, a white that stood out brilliantly from the restaurant’s mahogany wood finishing on the cushioned booths and the sand-colored marble walls. No one here looks like they ever had to haul trash bags down Fashion Island’s shady service corridors. I also noted that, here on a Tuesday night, the clientele were white and adult-aged, with some being old enough that I could spot the shadows in their wrinkles from where I stood. White and old—the only ones who could afford to dine out at the Cheesecake Factory on a random day in the middle of the week.

“At this point, after looking at all the cheesecakes, I feel a little hungry. Having no more than five dollars to spend, I travel across Fashion Island and head down to the food court, hidden away at the bottom floor of the only indoor part of the mall. Here I find an assortment of fast food restaurants that I can actually afford. I buy myself a chili cheddar cheese dog from Fatburger and sit at a table in front of it. Notably, the workers at Fatburger, just like all the ones at the other fast food restaurants, are brown-skinned Latinos. They speak with a Spanish accent, and they wear baggy black dress shirts, black pants, black caps, and a red apron. Glancing around in the food court, I can see that it’s pretty empty. Only five other tables are occupied. Sitting a few tables away, a white family is having a family night out. Cokes and fries for everyone, cheeseburgers for mom and dad, and hot dogs for their daughter and son, who looked to be nine and four years old, respectively. They all eat in silence, and, except for the four-year-old son who constantly turns his head to every corner of the food court, everyone maintains strict eye contract with the bites they leave in their food as they hold it a few inches from their mouths. Occasionally the mom and dad will stop chewing and open their mouths to say a sentence or two to each other.

“As I reach the end of my chili cheddar cheese hot dog, I muse on the Fashion Island dining hierarchy that I observed today. In the top tier, I found beautiful, young, thin white people who work upstairs in fine-dining restaurants as servers, bartenders, hosts, basically anyone who has to interact with the customers, who were white, old, but still classy. In the bottom tier, I found Mexicans hidden away doing dirty work in the service corridors or working in fast food restaurants. Their customers: middle class parents who avoid awkward conversation with their kids by stuffing them with crispy thin-cut fries and distracting them with the sights and sounds of Fashion Island, minimally enjoyed from the bottom basement floor in the most obscure and most quiet part of the mall (a part that I didn’t even know existed until after my first few visits here). Somewhere a few thousand yards away from the food court, two business partners or a couple celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary clink their wine glasses together over a seven-dollar slice of cheesecake.”

I laid my paper on my desk and looked up at my teacher. She asked if anyone had any comments.

The first was from a white chick. “Did you actually ask the people that you thought were white if they were actually white?”

I saw where this was going. “No,” I answered.

My teacher, who was Japanese, joined in. “You can’t just assume that people who look white are white. That might raise some ethical issues in your reporting.”

Newport Beach is more than ninety percent white. I think there’s a good chance that people who look white at Fashion Island are indeed white. I didn’t think of this response until after class, unfortunately.

“Plus, I’ve seen some Asian parents with their kids shop at Fashion Island before. It’s not just only white people,” my teacher added.

“Well,” I said, “the very first sentence of my story is intentionally an overstatement.” But I knew she was kinda right. I probably should’ve qualified my “facts” more by writing, “most were white,” instead of, “all were white.”

“One more thing, Brian.”

“Yeah?”

“I sense some spite in your story’s tone. Is there a reason to that?”

I shrugged. “I guess it came out this way.” But I really did know the reason. I just didn’t know how to put it into words yet.