Perhaps it's fitting that Vancouver's funniest Twitter account right now was created out of "boredom and a hangover" over a bowl of pho.
@KingsgateMall both satirizes and honours Kingsgate Mall, a faded complex of 30 or so stores that has seen better days.
As The Globe and Mail noted:
Kingsgate is the mall that time forgot. Although it is central and surrounded by $1-million homes, its tired, rust-coloured décor is classic 1970s. However, the mall does have its charms precisely because it is so out of touch, such as the shop with the shoes that only a drag queen could love.
Friends Michelle Hanley and Asha Wozny, both 20, were eating at a Vietnamese restaurant across the street from the mall, and wondered if Kingsgate had any social media presence.
"We realized that they had none and brought it upon ourselves to create the Twitter that this mall deserves. We both live in the neighbourhood and have spent a lot of time in the mall growing up, so it was pretty easy to make it authentic and genuine," she told The Huffington Post B.C. in an email.
Hanley has watched the mall change over the years and thinks fondly of the closed down library and Scalie Shoes where she got her first pair of Converse sneakers (and where drag queens could pick up six-inch glitter heels).
"In this increasingly gentrified neighbourhood it's been left behind. It's got shops with club gear, where you can get velour track suits for cheap. A weird dollar store. A photo studio to get glamour shots. Custom T-shirts. Furniture rentals. Tupac Shakur bed sheets. And of course, a liquor store for good measure."
Hanley is not affiliated with the mall at all but wouldn't mind some coupons or extra Shoppers Optimum points. "A friend of mine's mother works at a shop there and apparently some of the lovely folks who play Keno at the mall have been gossiping about the Twitter," she wrote.
Beedie Development Group, the mall leaseholders, is aware of the account and thinks it's funny, reported CBC News.
@KingsgateMall's hilarious tweets have attracted more than 2,000 followers in two weeks, including Canadian rocker twins Tegan and Sara. In comparison, the much busier and contemporary Pacific Centre in downtown Vancouver has half that number on its Twitter account.
The attention may work out well for Hanley and Wozny: "We are both students, and we work together at a fancy grocery store. Bagging groceries for moderate local celebrities and the like. Just living the dream, is all. Though I have been considering getting into social media for quite some time as a career, so perhaps this is a good start for me."
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