alt.hn

5/22/2025 at 10:20:00 PM

“Secret Mall Apartment,” a Protest for Place

 https://modernagejournal.com/secret-mall-apartment-a-protest-for-place/251023/

by rufus_foreman

5/22/2025 at 11:29:49 PM

Done in 2003. Written up in 2018, with pictures.[1] This is PR for a movie about it.

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-accidental-room/

by Animats

5/23/2025 at 2:30:36 AM

The Secret Mall Apartment documentary got significantly more collaboration from nearly everyone involved, including a dump of the significant digital video stash from the project. Lots of people have tried making this documentary but until this one, nobody's gotten anywhere close to this deep about it. I'm on the periphery of this particular art scene and have seen lots of the related stuff.

by DrewADesign

5/23/2025 at 12:08:22 AM

Tangentially related question: I recently got into 99PI and love it, listen to every episode that comes put now. Any other podcast recommendations?

by iaaan

5/23/2025 at 5:38:24 AM

99% Invisible, RadioLab, and This American Life were three of my favorite podcasts.

by vunderba

5/23/2025 at 1:14:38 AM

Have you listened to the entire back catalogue?

by xattt

5/23/2025 at 5:59:00 AM

Dear Hank and John

by TrueGeek

5/23/2025 at 6:50:33 AM

I love Dear Hank and John, but IMO it's nothing like 99PI.

by rv3392

5/23/2025 at 2:07:43 AM

Great show. I'm actually listening to it right now haha. Been listening for years.

by zoklet-enjoyer

5/23/2025 at 12:30:16 AM

One of the people involved in this "project" worked for me, and then during their term of working for me, worked very hard behind my back against me. I only found out about the project after I was fired and they had taken control of my startup, and I have to say: I wasn't at all surprised.

by neom

5/23/2025 at 12:44:04 AM

You should get a video crew to document you confronting them and release it as a competing film.

"Getting he ass 4: Chasing ideologues"

by Boogie_Man

5/23/2025 at 12:36:40 AM

How do you get fired from your own startup? I'm not involved in these things, but it seems like if you're the creator, you can't get fired?

by Loughla

5/23/2025 at 1:43:40 AM

it happens when you give up control to receiving funding. read your term sheets carefully and do not let those $$$ blur your vision on a bad contract. once a VC has done due diligence and you've shared all of your internal IP with them, you'd have to be one special snowflake to not be able to be replaced.

by dylan604

5/23/2025 at 12:39:34 AM

Can't lead if nobody will follow. It was also my own fault- I'm not blaming them. They were a key leader in my exec team and I found out after they: hated startup, hated capitalism, and hated me.

by neom

5/23/2025 at 1:05:41 AM

Wow, so they were a 'mole' from the beginning who only joined with the intention of destroying it?

That's sociopathic.

by BLKNSLVR

5/23/2025 at 1:16:32 AM

I don't think it was that insidious. Once venture dollars got involved and we started to hire more "business people" - the folks who liked the social aspects of our work got turned off and became emotional, leading to a lot of shadow work I was totally unaware of, ultimately resulting in my ousting. I want to be clear: I have responsibility in the situation also, I was the CEO and it was my failure. I ultimately mismanaged.

by neom

5/23/2025 at 1:38:05 AM

I'm absolutely intrigued by your story and want to hear a fuller account, if there's any chance you are willing.

by brookside

5/23/2025 at 1:45:57 AM

Oh I'm sure there will be a book, this was my lead investor (who is now dead): https://nypost.com/2021/03/05/man-who-fatally-beat-law-order...

I'm still processing the whole thing myself to be honest, it was all quite a lot, traumatic, but once day I'll write a book about it.

by neom

5/23/2025 at 10:27:51 AM

WTF….

> Dardaris had entrusted her pooches to the care of a dog-sitter, who was Tang’s then-girlfriend, in the fall of 2019 while she acted in a play in South Carolina, she previously told The Post.

> Tang snuck into his girlfriend’s apartment when she wasn’t home and viciously tortured Dardaris’s white-furred companions Oct. 24, 2019.

> After fatally beating Alex, Tang was accused of taking Frankie to the building’s rooftop and punching, throwing and kicking him.

And he served no jail time and just got a slap on the wrist. Completely insane behavior, who does that?

by joshstrange

5/23/2025 at 3:27:01 AM

That assumption certainly isn't warranted. More like, they had some skills and some opportunity to benefit from them, then realized that ideologically they were far from accepting the status quo as expressed through the innumerable decisions and actions over the course of participating in that enterprise.

by uoaei

5/23/2025 at 1:17:23 AM

Or, perhaps, the parent poster is not giving us a holistic picture of what occurred.

by vkou

5/23/2025 at 4:13:52 AM

The moment the OP said "they were anticapitalist!" like this was some sort of terrible black mark on their souls it became very clear the story being sold was one sided.

It reads very much like two parties got into one startup for different reasons. The OP wanted to make some money, others felt there were other motivations to pursue, OP stopped paying attention (or never had the trust of the other parties) and it all fell apart.

by ghushn3

5/23/2025 at 5:12:04 AM

The story is currently one sided because it makes a lot of sense.

You got someone who is known to "fight against the man" in an an anti-social way, that has self proclaimed anti-capitalist tendencies, and that joins the ultimate instance of capitalism of all, ventured backed startup

what could go wrong

by breppp

5/23/2025 at 2:33:25 AM

[flagged]

by idiotsecant

5/23/2025 at 3:28:33 AM

On a forum where ideology is most often unexamined, or waved away purely in terms of profit, this one-sided and biased account should be treated with the appropriate context in mind.

by uoaei

5/23/2025 at 2:24:36 AM

Sorry I read about this way long ago, what is meant by "worked for me" "project", "behind my back" and such. I didn't get the connotations for most of that from reading articles about this. What is the real story?

by gthompson512

5/23/2025 at 1:14:45 AM

Without knowing them, this seems exactly like the behavior of someone who thinks they can steal from others (mall owners) because those people are “in the wrong” (soulless capitalists).

And yes, unless they were running their own generator somehow, which the article doesn’t seem to imply, they were stealing

by subjectsigma

5/23/2025 at 4:24:35 AM

It's only stealing from someone if you recognize that person as being the owner of the thing. If you are someone who does not believe in private property (note, this is different from personal property), then you haven't stolen anything at all.

I'm not saying I agree with that position, I'm saying that's a position that is at least internally consistent (if at odds with our current legal framework.)

by ghushn3

5/23/2025 at 2:33:30 AM

The movie contains a lot of backstory that describes who they are, the economic forces in Providence at the time, and what lead them to do this.

You could speculate, automatically snapping to the least charitable assumptions, or you could actually watch it and find out.

(Everything in the apartment was purchased, and they anonymously gave money to the mall management every month by slipping an envelope of cash under the office door saying "thanks for the utilities.")

by DrewADesign

5/23/2025 at 3:38:05 AM

Really interested in seeing this movie, but lol at the thought that the owners of the mall ever saw a single cent from envelopes of cash stuffed under an office door.

by te

5/23/2025 at 6:21:04 AM

Ok but then who is stealing?

by ccppurcell

5/23/2025 at 3:33:16 AM

Yeah. Sure. Let me know how your wife will feel if someone was living in your crawl space as an art project, “slipping an envelope of cash” under your door every month.

by doctorpangloss

5/23/2025 at 5:23:40 AM

> Yeah. Sure. Let me know how your wife will feel if someone was living in your crawl space as an art project, “slipping an envelope of cash” under your door every month.

No. That's apples and oranges, especially when you're talking about feelings. "Your crawl space" is part of a very intimate and personal space: your home. This space (a void of the type where construction workers don't clean up their trash) was part of a impersonal and pseudo-public space: a shopping mall. Your analogy doesn't hold up.

by palmotea

5/23/2025 at 2:11:35 PM

Okay... let's imagine someone is living in your driveway, a "psuedo-public space", or perhaps your townhome's parking lot, a "psuedo-public space," or maybe in the parking lot of the daycare you take your kids to, a "psuedo-public space," or...

by doctorpangloss

5/23/2025 at 2:19:47 PM

Sorry dude, you can't save it. Also a home's driveway is not a "psuedo-public space, so I don't think you get the concept.

by palmotea

5/23/2025 at 7:13:23 PM

I'm supportive of visual artists being obnoxious as part of their artwork. It isn't material to me if they did or didn't pay whatever, it's part of their joke that they know what they are doing is unauthorized but marginally (or not at all) harmful. It's cute, for sure, and you know, I didn't watch the documentary, so what do I really know?

It's a very interesting piece. Here we are talking about it, it's kind of interesting to figure out, what does "palmotea" define as "pseudo-public space"?. In my experience in art practice, it is hard to participate in a conversation with people who define things by what they are NOT.

That said, to me, a great strength of a lot of performance art is its ability to attract high drama personalities. But it is tautological to say that drawing the participation of high drama personalities occurs because the art trades on obnoxiousness?

by doctorpangloss

5/23/2025 at 7:20:43 PM

> what does "palmotea" define as "pseudo-public space"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_owned_public_space

> ...the phrase in its broadest sense can refer to places, like shopping malls and hotel lobbies, that are privately owned and open to the public, even if they are not legally required to be open to the public.

Otherwise, you're kinda going off the rails. My one and only point is there are important differences between a home's crawl space and a weird unused space in a shopping mall that make your specific appeal to "how your wife will feel" invalid.

This secret mall apartment is more akin to a homeless guy having a hidden camp in a verge near a highway than anything to do with anyone's home. If you're going to appeal to how someone would feel, you've got to get the emotion right.

by palmotea

5/23/2025 at 2:03:14 PM

Yeah, I totally believe that. I imagine they showed it on video once and definitely did it every month for four years without anyone at the mall management asking questions, or ever once being seen.

Either way it doesn’t matter. Even if they did everything completely by the book within their moral framework, they are still taking something and keeping it for themselves.

Imagine if they had bought out an old strip mall, church, etc. and converted it into a makerspace, an art studio, a shelter, a daycare, etc., and ran it off donations. Think about how much more powerful of a message that would be. Yes, we can defeat capitalism, by reclaiming space and giving it back to a community which is self-supporting. Go forth and build things for others instead of yourself.

Nope, was much edger to sit around in a concrete room and play video games, though. Needed the rush of pretending to be a movie star and going where you’re not supposed to. If you want something, just take it.

by subjectsigma

5/23/2025 at 2:40:38 PM

This has to be a litmus test for one's upbringing, or something - it's wild how upset this is making you.

If you think there is a better community to be made, make it. If yours would be the better movie, then shoot it. If your moral framework is superior, then live with it. When you bitch about the morality of something you can't control, you are contributing less to society than wastoids playing Crash Bandicoot in an abandoned Five Below.

by bigyabai

5/23/2025 at 1:49:10 AM

It sounds like they succeeded. If they can exploit a company's resources to their express advantage while not being a large enough problem to deal with, then capitalism is at a net loss. Getting the system to work against these types means investing in after-hours mall security, or getting investors to care about your hostile takeover situation. If the responsible individuals can't be assed to find a solution, then yeah, tough luck. The mall is theirs, the company is theirs too.

I applaud this kind of creative individualism. It should scare the people who think they're entitled to private property even when someone smarter comes along to whistle their same tune.

by bigyabai

5/23/2025 at 4:07:38 PM

Agreed. One of the claimed selling points of capitalism is that it leads to the efficient allocation of resources; this demonstrates a failure of that.

by Peritract

5/23/2025 at 1:50:59 PM

[flagged]

by subjectsigma

5/23/2025 at 2:22:37 PM

You just quoted an article you can't link, casually citing conclusions you cannot prove. And I'm the socially dysfunctional one for not observing the unwritten rules of strip mall etiquette.

If the little rat fools the big rat into losing, they still lost. In business, in resource competition and in legal proceedings too.

by bigyabai

5/23/2025 at 4:00:14 PM

> although they periodically hint at their left-leaning politics, admirably dedicate their time and skills to projects paying tribute to the first-responder firemen who perished on 9/11, the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and sick children in hospitals

This is an extremely strange framing; there's nothing anti-left in caring about sick children and the victims of terrorism.

by Peritract

5/23/2025 at 1:15:13 AM

went to the documentary about this at a local theater a few days ago. was good, even kept my 10 yo niece’s attention.

for years i had been wondering why we didn’t have apartments/condos directly attached to malls, particularly in cold climates, so when the articles first started coming out about this it definitely scratched an itch. the movie has a ton of video footage they filmed back when they were using the space, including footage of them sneaking the couches, furniture, and 1000s of pounds of cinder blocks in. it’s pretty gripping in that “omg can they pull this off!!??” kind of way.

by toofy

5/23/2025 at 2:27:11 AM

There's some in the US, but they're often considered "luxury" and significantly more expensive than comparable housing because of their "convenience" factor.

Having never seen the movie myself, I can sympathize to the take in the linked article. Once I finally spent time in a major city as someone who grew up in more rural suburbia, I could see how entire buildings and districts "switched off" for certain parts of the day or week, disused, underutilized, and segmenting society off into neat little pockets of specific activities - just like suburbia does. It's cold and lifeless, compared to the "lived-in" feelings of more international metros (NYC springs to mind as the only American equivalent, and even that's disappearing one building at a time), and I could totally see why a rebellious artist (or several) might protest a building designed to operate for a third of the week just to remain lifeless the other two-thirds.

by stego-tech

5/23/2025 at 2:02:37 AM

In Japan (Tokyo, at least), they have buildings with apartments, and hotels, directly attached to shopping centers.

I have heard that Manhattan has buildings like that, as well.

by ChrisMarshallNY

5/23/2025 at 12:09:48 PM

They have a few of them in very cold climates as well, schools, shops, medical clinics and housing all in one building.

For the simple practical reason of going outside is somewhere between deeply unpleasant and actually dangerous.

Whittier, Alaska is a good example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naPguX84Amg

by noir_lord

5/23/2025 at 2:19:00 AM

Not just Tokyo or Japan. It is the same in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, big cities in China and more.

by skwashd

5/23/2025 at 6:15:45 AM

We even have this in the UK. I lived in one. It was funny to me to live in the shopping centre.

by globular-toast

5/23/2025 at 2:35:28 AM

In Silicon Valley, Santana Row has been highly successful as an outdoor mall with apartments on the upper levels.

https://santanarow.com/

by nradov

5/23/2025 at 2:19:20 AM

That's what I was wondering, do I get the whole story from the movie review, or should I actually watch the documentary?

by rufus_foreman

5/23/2025 at 7:37:18 AM

Amazing this can be a story and movie in America. In Europe people squat in any building suitable and this group would be considered just another nuisance bunch of homeless people.

by Stevvo

5/23/2025 at 12:27:50 AM

I love secret living spaces. Has anyone here spent time inhabiting one?

by deadbabe

5/23/2025 at 2:20:54 AM

Some friends of mine drilled some plywood into the trunks of a set of overgrown trees by the side of the road when I was a kid, to use as an airsoft arena. We didn't live there or anything, but it was cool to have a secret space that was relatively spacious and secluded from view by all the leaves and branches. Some nosy neighbors eventually dismantled it because they thought a homeless person was living there or something.

by dgunay

5/23/2025 at 4:57:23 AM

if ya love learning about secret spaces, there is documentary named Dark Days about the hundreds of people who lived in the Freedom Tunnels beneath Manhattan in the 90s. incredible incredible movie.

the Freedom Tunnels where the crew did their filming are miles and miles of unused tunnels under Manhattan, formerly used for trains. once the trains stopped using them people built entire shanty towns, the director of Dark Days got thousands of hours of footage of the people inside one of these shanty towns. it’s amazing what the crew got footage of. people building entire little shanty houses and little villages. wild stuff.

i mean, i wouldn’t have lived there, but id be lying if i didnt admit a part of me finds it amazing what they threw together. for years, entire secret shanty villages right under the city with small village sized populations.

by toofy

5/23/2025 at 2:10:53 PM

Reminds me of old tunnels beneath other cities. Paris' catacombs spring to mind - where similar things have happened.

by IAmBroom

5/23/2025 at 12:35:42 AM

No, but if anyone is interested: last time I visited the Ala Moana Center (an open-air mall) in Honolulu, I thought that would be a great place to do so: good temperatures, easy access to low-use back hallways, empty storage rooms off said hallways.

There might be other places in Honolulu. Because space has such a premium there, there are a lot of odd/conforming layouts in many different buildings, that it could be very easy to construct something in a corner or dead-end.

There are many walkable parts to the city and bus transportation, many people get by without cars there.

Just don't add to the homeless population there please. It's sad to see families with children in diapers, living in tents at a park :-/ It is not a place to "re-invent" or "discover" yourself, or "start-over".

by RandomBacon

5/23/2025 at 4:46:01 AM

Interesting how the ringleader appears to be significantly older than the other participants. This is a common pattern. As I recall, the poet Ginsberg was older than his hippy hangers-on. And I've read of that "older leader" pattern in groups as wide apart as graffiti crews or revolutionary movements. I guess that forming these kinds of small scenes relies a lot of charisma and vision, people tend to accumulate those with age, and older people tend to have a magnetic effect on younger followers.

by sandspar

5/23/2025 at 6:24:54 AM

Another explanation is that only a small fraction of the counter culture at any given time are in it for the long haul. It's tiring and expensive and complicated and more or less incompatible with having children. So the ones who stick it out inevitably have to collaborate with younger people.

by ccppurcell

5/23/2025 at 6:47:52 AM

This, plus the part where the person who's been doing something the longest and has the most experience is likely to become the de facto leader.

by dmurray

5/23/2025 at 1:31:15 AM

Their act was cool. Post-hoc bolting a protest social action on top seemed dishonest.

It's fine to say you did something cool because you could, in fact the coolest things are done just because. Adding commentary that it was a protest for stolen / wasted space, spare me the minutes please

by gravitronic

5/23/2025 at 4:21:55 AM

You should hang more in anarchist circles. Squatting as a protest and as an art piece has been alive and well for far, far longer than I've been alive. (40-50 years)

Go read about the Paris Commune, Villa Road, Pieds Plats, Frances Street, or that group who squatted in NYC until the city capitulated and turned the buildings into low income housing.

What evidence do you have that they aren't genuine about their reasons, given it's not at all uncommon for squats to exist as a form of protest?

by ghushn3

5/23/2025 at 5:12:21 AM

Well, I watched it. The archival footage makes it pretty clear they did it for the lulz and only in the present day interviews do they bolt a social action to it. I prefer if they kept it purely for the lulz because then it was art.

by gravitronic

5/23/2025 at 6:25:42 AM

All actions have social consequences.

by ccppurcell

5/22/2025 at 11:53:20 PM

one of my favorite cases of contemporary-ish american squatting.

by GuinansEyebrows

5/23/2025 at 1:04:22 AM

[dead]

by aaron695