I was amused to see a notice taped to the rail of the down ramp saying "moving stairs [escalator] out of service". I guess I'm not the only one who's unsure what to call these things! Of course, that confusion isn't limited to Eataly, or even to the inclined type of moving walkway -- the safety audio announcements on the Concourse A moving walkways at Seatac (the ones that were the first in the Seattle region) refer to them as "escalators", as did a few of the ones at the Istanbul Airport that were apparently programmed with the wrong audio file (the vast majority refer to them as "travelators", the British term; there are so many of them that "caution, you are approaching the end of the travelator" is basically the soundtrack of that airport).
Travelators? I can't go with that, lol. I just call them moving sidewalks, but then I don't know what to call an inclined one like this.
ReplyDeleteIn the late 1990s or early 2000s, I was a witness to someone having a nervous breakdown riding an escalator at the Willowbrook Mall Sears here in Houston. It was quite the ordeal, they had to call the fire department, an ambulance, and all of that. There was a lot of screaming and such. It certainly wasn't fun witnessing that!
Oh, on the subject of the Upland, CA Albertsons decor that you mentioned, someone brought that up in the Houston retail community this morning and we are as bamboozled about it as I guess you are. There are aspects of it which are pretty neat, like the colorful and localized aisle markers, but there are a lot of parts which look like Walmart Airport decor and then there are those fake bricks! I don't know, it might look better at a different store that looks less industrial, but I think the universal reception among the Houston retail fans is that Albertsons shouldn't be confused for a Walmart so I think the perception is that it is a design fail.
DeleteBritish people come up with all sorts of weird words! 😉
DeleteYikes, that's bad. I quite like escalators (as I've mentioned all too many times), just not broken ones!
Interesting -- everyone else I've shown it to seems to like it so far, myself included! I did think the Walmart Blue color they decided to use was a bit odd, but other than that, it seems like an evolution of Ultra-Premium with some Heritage inspiration, and those are two decor packages I quite like! I see some traces of those mystery local decor packages in its design too, and I wonder if it will end up being a similar rare oddity to those.