vaughan mills visit

Well I finally made it out to the Vaughan Mills mall, with its flagship store Bass Pro whatever it's called.
That mall was an assault on my visual senses.
The food court was painted a pukey hospital green, and there were some "food" mural illustrations near the ceiling at either end: the colours were pretty saturated, and they and didn't add anything apart from kind of being a focal point in a large space. There were some ceiling panel type things high above the fast-food counters, in a dizzying array of designs. It seemed no two were the same, which kind of made the whole room a hodgepodge of patterns and colours and I couldn't see any unifying anything about the area. I know some things that might look good on paper (or a computer monitor) might not translate into what looks good in the form of actual steel girders and corrugated steel ceilings.
There was one throughway that had a narrow purple ceiling with all these plexiglas curved panels reaching up high. That was the only thing I liked.
Some areas had carpet that was wrinkling up. My dad would have commented that the carpet needed to be walked upon and stretched a bit, before it was to be permanently glued to the floor, but in a mall, you don't have that luxury to let people walk on it to break it in, the way you do in a house. I'm guessing that it was the wrong carpet for the job.
I'm normally spending time in Sherway Gardens or Square One, which I realize are established malls and have had some renovation since they were built. Note to Vaughan Mills planners & builders: you can't go wrong with a beige or black marble floor in a mall. It will last forever, and you can dress it up or down, depending on what you do to the walls.
There is some "canadiana" in the food court, which is a kind of a nice touch. We sat at a table that had a map of where I grew up, embedded in the tabletop. But it gave the place an American feel somehow. (One thing was from Windsor, never been there; something with an old-school picture of Kleinburg's downtown would have been more appropriate.) Especially the Canadian flags in the Bass Pro store... wow that place is waiting to be spoofed in a movie, with its dioramas with stuffed raccoons and bears atop the change rooms. I kid you not! Also it makes extensive use of murals. I'm not sure what the planners were trying to say, by having all that type of decoration, strikes me as going for the most obvious, and lowest common denominator as well. I can shop for GPSs and tents with a bit more dignity, thanks, in MEC or Canadian Tire. The aquarium was a nice touch though, with people showing their kids the fish, right beside a rack of kids' toy guns. I was a bit moved, by someone's young Asian dad being riveted by the fish, he reminded me of the racially-motivated harassment that Asian fishermen were experiencing in local lakes and rivers lately. :(