TED演讲:美国废弃的购物中心(2)
In between these low-paying retail jobs, I did what any normal teenager did in the 1990s.
在这些薪水低廉的销售工作中，我做了90年代每一个正常的青少年都会做的事。
I shoplifted. I’m just kidding. I hung out with my friends at the mall.
我偷东西了。我开玩笑的。我和我的朋友在商场里逛。
Everyone’s like, “Oh my God, what kind of talk is this?”
你们可能觉得，“我的天呐，这是什么演讲啊？”
Hanging out at the mall could be fun, but it could be really lame, too,
逛商场可能会很愉快，但是也可能很没品，
like sharing a cigarette with a 40-year-old unemployed mall rat
比如和40岁的无业游民分享一根香烟，
who has put on black lipstick for the night while you’re on your break from your crappy minimum wage job.
而他昨天晚上还涂了黑色口红，而那时候你刚从最低工资的工作中歇口气。
As I stand here today, Owings Mills has been gutted and it’s ready for the wrecking ball.
今天我站在这里的时候，奥因斯米尔斯已经被彻底清空，拆迁的大锤已经准备好了。
The last time I was there, it was in the evening, and it was about three days before they closed the mall for good.
我最后一次去那里的时候是个傍晚，大概是他们关闭商场的三天前。
And you kind of felt — they never announced the mall was closing,
你感觉好像–商场倒闭的消息从未公开，
but you had this sort of feeling, this ominous feeling, that something big was going to happen, like it was the end of the road.
但你就是有这种感觉，这种不祥的预感，有什么事要发生了，就像一条路走到了尽头。
It was a very creepy walk through the mall. Let me show you.
我在商场里走过了一段非常可怕的路。我给你们看一下。
一座商场走向毁灭后会发生什么？电影制作人丹·贝尔带我们走进被废弃的商业建筑，极其幽默而诗意地向我们描述了衰颓中的消费主义、年轻文化和给我们的启发。