Having been raised to shop in the suburbs of cities like Pittsburgh, the strip mall and shopping plaza were common place. In the shadows of the great steel industry, many of these shopping centers seemed past their prime, especially by the late 80's when I really started noticing how much I did not like them. Malls were totally the way to go.

Now that I live in Florida, it is painfully clear that the plaza and strip mall never went out of style here. The malls are all owned by some greater corporation [apparently centered in Australia?] and are fairly generic. Even the super malls appear the same with respect to one another. So what's so special about the plazas?

Hardly a month goes by where I don't notice some new shopping center being built. Some new plywood sign, "FUTURE LOCATION OF blank." A few weeks later I see the name. This part always gets me; if the new paved lego-look-alike plaza is standing where a bunch of trees used to be, the name involves trees somehow. Northwood. Evergreen. Palms. Rarely do I see any of the original trees still standing, but smaller, younger trees are tossed in between parking spots so developers can meet the quota for greenspace on the lot. Why bother, if the trees ever get big enough to be worth much, their roots will disrupt the pavement and probably get cut up to keep things even in the lot. But this wasn't even my point.

Back to the naming of these havens for commerce... Many of them are new, or left over from the 70's [where I come from]. And all of them I have seen have been in the States. Does it bother anyone else to see these places called "shoppes" or "centres?" Does the term "shoppes" make people think it is downtown in a burgeoning city with brick streets and storefronts that run right into the next one because there is no more space left between the buildings? Does "centre" make people think it is British or somehow more sophisticated? Are these names fooling anyone?

Who's up for a trip to the Brentwood Centre Shoppes? I need something from the Chinese take-out, the cellular phone store, and Target has a sale.