The Calm Before The Storm

Date: Saturday November 21, 2015
Location: Mall - El Paso, TX
Time: 2:50 pm - 3:50 pm

It is a warm, yet at the same time cool, November day. There are a lot of cars in the mall's parking lot, so there should a lot of people to observe inside. I get to the mall late today, and my usual place of observing is taken. I go to a place that is farther away from my usual observation point, so some areas I usually observe are obscured from view. I decide to observe from the balcony.

Something I have noticed during the past weeks is that little kids love trying to climb up the glass balconies. They do not even seem to be afraid of falling through or falling over the balcony. A little boy next to me tries climbing up the balcony, but his mother yells at him to get off. The boy does and sits next to his mother.

The cinnamon roll place has a whole bunch of customers waiting in line. The pretzel place has like a couple of customers. The ice cream place gets a few customers. The cinnamon roll place has the most customers as usual.

A lot of families are sitting at the benches today. There are four families sitting at the benches in the rest area, each one with a baby stroller. Three of the families are young (young mother and father), though one young family has the grandparents there. The other family seemed to be the child and his grandparents. The grandparents are having fun pushing the child in the stroller around the area. The young families are just sitting there, adults talking to each other.

The kids play area on the lower level of the mall is filled with kids. I can see the parents/grandparents sitting on the provided chairs as chaos swirls around them. The adults are cool, calm, and collected while the kids run on, climb on, and slide down the obstacles. The kids seem to be having fun.

The ethnic groups this week are: Latinos (majority), Caucasian, black/African-American, and Asian. There is some mixing of ethnic groups this week.

A majority of the people are wearing coats or jackets. Those that aren't are wearing long-sleeved shirts of some kind. I have seen a few males wearing short-sleeved shirts, though.

The amount of people walking through the area is consistently large. There has been some clogging of the passageways between the rest area and the restaurant area. Everyone is being polite and cordial. No one is in a rush, and no one is being rude. Everyone is keeping to themselves.

Security guards roll through the area frequently on their segways. Is there trouble here today? I have not noticed anything strange or suspect, but that is perhaps because the security guards are doing their jobs. No one seems bothered by the security guards' presence.