Yixia Xu, Dennis Sharp, 2021

THE SEARCH FOR UNREALISED BALANCE THE CONVENIENCE STORE AND A CRITIQUE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Yixia Xu Architectural Association School of Architecture History and Theory Thesis 19 April 2021

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A sign

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Shelves of packaged items line the inside of the shop like the inside of a fur coat, cushioning the bare walls with shiny jars, packets, and tins.

The moment sits deep into the night between moonset and sunrise. A few people shuffle along the pavement, drifting between objects or thresholds in the urban landscape. Looking for something or settling for anything. At this hour, the skeletal sea of tired windows sag in the dim streetlight like a worn-out smile propped up by a fluorescent boxed beacon. A small opening where people can indulge in ordinary desires with the same anonymity of ease and ugliness of the home.

If space permits, a parade of crisps run down the main axis towards the counter where a bored teenager lightly guards a shelf of tobacco items behind a tiered monstrosity of candy bars and chewing gum.

He mans a castle of ordinary delights.

Some shopfronts are populated with colourful posters that almost cover the entire window like a collaged screen. Best doughnuts. ATM here.

Corona Extra. Neatly stacked boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables welcoming in anticipation by the entrance.

Others are defined by transparent glass and neon signage. The interior lit up like some sort of retail aquarium in the day and night, white light dancing off the linoleum floors and wall of drink coolers in the back. No retail display necessary in the shop front. What you see is what you get.

OPEN 24 HOURS FOOD AND WINE OFF-LICENSE WESTERN UNION TOBACCONIST EXPRESS LOTTERY TICKETS HERE PAYPOINT FOOD N GO BUD LIGHT 7 DAYS A WEEK TOP-UP CANDY TOYS CIGARS FRESH DELI NEWSCORNER COLD BEER AND SODAS SEE ALL YOUR EVERYDAY NEEDS!

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The convenience store is open 3 It’s a familiar scene. We have all been here for whatever reason. Never for long and nought for much, but it is an old reliable, like some wellmaintained pantry. The common image of the convenience store is dominated by the likes of retail franchises; its genericness so overwhelming it subverts into a strangely unique place in the collective imagination. Convenience stores, both the 7-Elevens and corner shops of the world, are a commonplace typology in many countries.

They are comfortably familiar with us because they run parallel to our homes. Parallel, not in the immediate sense of a warm bed or a place to raise a family, but its air of reliability. We can expect to find commonplace and often stranger items there without hesitation.

The topic of everyday life is veritably relatable regardless of geographic location. The everyday is increasingly lived more and more similarly with the enveloping effects of globalisation through growth in communication and development. To a certain extent, major metropolitan cities experience a stereotype of everyday life almost in the same way as much of what we deem as common is marketed to the public.

The outreaching hand of globalisation has helped to designate certain objects and spaces as ordinary in our daily life (and from that allows a common experience). The lived experience of everyday life resonates with us through its unspoken complexities and unrecognised certitude. Gentle gestures of everyday life conducted without forethought are often found in the daily places we pass through.

Although often overlooked, these expressions can give deeper insight into the importance of everyday life and its impact on how we want our familiar spaces to be built.

4 I used to spend a lot of time in transit. I lived on the outskirts but most of my non-domestic everyday life was situated in the city. If the ferry gate just closed, the next departure would not be for at least another half an hour. After midnight, if I was unlucky, it 8

would be up to a two hour wait. I would be faced with two options: sit on the plastic benches in the waiting room and mindlessly check my phone, or take a detour to the adjacent Circle-K that was open 24/7.

Sometimes, after a particularly long day, I would intentionally not run towards the closing gate and sidestep into the convenience store, where I could indulge in the smallest of hitches to the daily routine. Most of the time it was to pick up a small drink for the ride home. Often, I was tempted to purchase a new untried snack. On occasion, I picked up a loaf of bread that was forgotten in the weekly shop or flipped through the magazines that no one bought. Almost always I left with a familiar smile from the storekeeper who I saw on a daily basis.

At face value, the convenience store is an ordinary domain that supplement basic items at close proximity and occasionally nourishes the nocturnal. From this perspective, it offers a limited scope into the value of everyday life.

The importance of the convenience store lies in its agency to simultaneously reflect perceived banality and reveal the ‘distant’ present in the dualities of everyday life. Thus, its condition should be read as a coinciding intersection between core domesticity (the home), and the public realm (the other). More importantly, the nature of the convenience store glimpses into the paradox of the ordinary: a preservation of actuality behind the veil of actuality.

The convenience store is a constant manifestation of concentrated banality that witnesses the change of hands in everyday life. Although the concept is straightforward, the store’s compactness and ease of access to limited normal items during very ‘not normal’ hours sheds light on the contradictions of convenience. It seems economically unviable to extend store operation services to all hours with such a limited range of basic goods. Logistics and resources aside, expanding the range of items outside the ordinary would maximise profit for the diverse plethora of needs and desires. But the continued existence of the convenience store has proven that, although we may dream of faraway escapes and luxury goods, the majority of us find 9

We often regard convenience in architecture, particularly for retail, as ease of access from Point A to B with minimal effort and time. As urban living becomes increasingly entrenched in the pursuit of growth (to become BIGGER, BETTER, and FASTER), support systems at phenomenal scales aided by technological development has instilled a capitalistdefined concept of convenience as the objective feature of everyday life. In the narrative of the ideological actuality, satisfaction is the attainment of ordinary things at exceptional means.

However, within the domestic realm, convenience takes on a different meaning because it is where the natural pace prevails. Its parameters are defined by the processes taken to facilitate balance rather than the pursuit of speed and simplicity. Maintenance, of the home and of the self, is the driving force behind the manifestation of domestic convenience. Home is where we readjust from the extremities of external forces.

Priorities tend to shift in the distinct spheres of our familiar spaces. Standing in the middle of central London or any other major city, I am reminded of the importance of proximity and dispersion of services to the overall dynamics of everyday life.

For decades, western urban planners have used convenience as a design marketing tool to promote better living in public spaces. It has become a blanket word to give the impression of greater freedoms when in fact, there is top-down control of a pre-planned lifestyle.

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Much like the humdrum rhythm of everyday life, the convenience store is taken for granted. The convenience store functions exactly as its namesake, its availability so seamless with the diverse wants of the city that it is almost invisible in the landscape until a self-induced need arises. It is so seamless that we have forgotten if the state of convenience has any limitations.

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Standards are a useful point of reference. But standards should also be revisited to evaluate its use, and even more its purpose. Do I really want my office, florist, gym, bakery, computer repair, butchers, pharmacist, all within reach from where I sleep? Would I ever leave this bubble, or would I be self-contained in an individualised neighbourhood? Would I eventually run in to the same people every day, without serendipitous moments? Would this make a life, or simply outline my itinerary into a pseudo utopian spatial arrangement?

The pedestrian shed as a measure of convenience is one that contests the philosophies of the city, and the city as constructed. To study the city is to understand that the only constant in its complex system is its ceaseless change.

It requires an understanding that the built environment is constructed through agenda, and that its condition is an ongoing process. To base a precise measurement for a framework of living on an attractive notion, with no quantitative or qualitative proof, begs for an inquiry as to why we shape our familiar spaces this way. Despite this, the pedestrian shed is still used by city councils and transportation departments to manage public service in cities. Additionally, urban strategies often justify these buffer zones as super-imposed two-dimensional circles onto city maps, thus 11

Convenience Retail Evidence Topic Paper June 2019

5 Recalibration

For example, as cities look to encourage locality, there is a return to a widely accepted urban principle known as the ‘pedestrian shed’, also known as the five-minute walk. This standard has been used as a baseline since the mid-twentieth century to determine the how easily accessible the access point locations were to public facilities and transport stops. It’s not hard to imagine why this was an attractive concept. No more sore arms from carrying heavy groceries or crowded bus rides when going about your daily routine. The pedestrian shed can be traced back to Clarence Perry’s ‘neighborhood unit’ concept from the 1920s, a community model designed to scale back the spatial arrangement of everyday spaces to the human scale since the popularised use of automobiles. 400 meters became the assumed distance people were willing to walk before opting to drive; in other words, the threshold for neighbourhood convenience.

Appendix 3 400m buffer zones from existing convenience retail stores

some form of solace in the mundane whether we realise it or not. Sometimes, even the experience of entering a space that is simultaneously familiar but different can offer moments of relief.

failing to acknowledge the surrounding buildings, roads, topography, and overall materiality of the space. Most importantly, standards should be used as a strategical starting point rather than a blanket design tool.

6 Such perceptions of convenience, in the same manner as everyday life, is simply taken as is.

It is here I would like to shift the understanding of ‘convenience’ in convenience store not only as a testament to its ease of access, but to its ability to cater and illuminate the frictions within the everyday. The preservation of truth without questioning its validity may only reorganise modes of production or yet, reinforce existing organisational structure and perpetuate the archaic notion that moving beyond the boundary drawn by our daily routines, into ‘the other’, is bad.

To inhabit the city rather than to simply study it, is to occupy a place that in the moment can contribute to the reification or disruption of the space as constructed. Yet what is built around you, paradoxically, poses a history seemingly monumental to formality but shaped by social needs and political precedence.

The failure to criticise everyday life, and by extension the primary discernments of convenience, means complying with the prolongation of current conditions and the reification of old functions in modern forms. The ordinary is a realised perception, but it is continuously lived as if it is the actual. To act on the built environment is to move beyond the self-drawn boundary that reminds ourselves that the everyday life is self-evident. This misguided realisation conceals the problem of accepted everyday life and defers us from alienating the ordinary by rendering routine as an unsolvable need.

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A projection Traveling from the public realm to the private home, domestic convenience becomes relative to the actions of self-care and maintenance. We unconsciously project the home as an extension of ourselves, and therefore its space becomes part of our central core too. When the sanctity 12

of home is interrupted by a broken system or unfamiliar presence, we become uneased by such disturbances.

It serves as a geographical and emotional point of reference where the self can enjoy a degree of authority without outside intervention. The spaces for cleaning, cooking, and resting are of design importance because it needs to accommodate the actions and objects associated with them. But the actual domestic convenience corresponds to spatial capacity and habits of self-maintenance.

What is brought into the home and how the home functions often relate to whether it diminishes the quality of space and how manageable it is.

At the domestic level, convenience evolves into a sense of security and health in contrast to the need for speed. It is perhaps our discomfort in the public realm for long durations that asks for faster modes of transport and same-day deliveries. The sooner we can return home, the better.

It is why every other day a new system is developed to bring more public functions of everyday life to our doorsteps. Yet we reach a threshold where we cannot admit all aspects of everyday life within our homes anymore because our homes are projections of ourselves.

The perception of convenience in the public realm comes into conflict with domestic convenience as we start taking in all the aspects of everyday life that we were originally escaping from. Over time, the home becomes overbearing and we look for relief outside. In most spaces, the merging of everyday dualities becomes a constant contradicting loop, but the unusual cross-over nature of the convenience store will always grant us undeniably reliable comfort whether we go there to escape from the anxieties of home or to provide supplies for it.

In a way, the corner has become the everyday home.

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The convenience store is where we top-up our Oysters (and snacks, and cigarettes, and happiness…)

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I never really warmed up to the word balance. It’s not a very exciting word and overused to describe an idealised state.

It might be because when I visualise balance, I’m inflicted by the image of a children’s see-saw with the words ‘Work’ on one side and ‘Life’ on the other.

An image engrained in the back of the brain by countless media, marketing campaigns, and health experts determined to show you that wellbeing is achieved by giving equal amount of time to each sector of your life as if they were passive weights.

The empty scale, redundant in its use to measure sugar or butchered meat at the market, has become synonymous with an impossi ble goal.

This accepted term of balance is often portrayed as a static middle line but in reality, it is a constantly shifting state. We often find ourselves in everyday life mediating between various dualities such as public and private, work and leisure, want and need. Over time, balance is also realigned with the unavoidable changes in priorities. Regardless, balance is something we cannot help but return to in our everyday life.

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Nothing lasts forever Considering the convenience store as an opening into the exploration of domesticity helps shed light on a revised understanding of balance. Unlike supermarket and grocery stores, the convenience store is not the core supplier of the home even though it may stock the majority of basic items needed.

The beauty of the convenience store lies in its occupation of ordinariness but realisation in its unexpectedness. We seek the convenience store as the solution to small interruptions; our pursuance of provisional accessibility to non-committal items indicates a need to constantly adjust impulse, maintenance, and deterioration within the shifts of our normal routine.

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This idea of balance is not a means to stabilise two opposing forces. It is the need to constantly return to a stabilised state, or in other words, to ‘top-up’. Beyond the literal consumption of items, this definition accounts for the diminishing levels of satisfaction, needs, relationships, and health in our daily routine.

Older people supplement their bodies with vitamins and minerals to stay within limits of prescribed optimum health.

Long-term couples often revisit intimacy in their relationship by partaking on weekly or monthly date nights.

Individuals with busy social or family environments may take the time once in a while to seclude in order to focus on themselves.

Although the term ‘top-up’ wasn’t coined until the invention of phone pay plan, the practice of topping-up to retain a sense of balance has long been evident in the social and managerial aspects of the domestic realm. Topping can be as practical as the purchasing of domestic goods and services but it also includes the daily upkeeps that help us feel satisfied. For example, getting a monthly haircut or meeting up with friends and acquaintances. In the long run, small acts of maintenance perpetuate our state of satisfactory balance and reduces the likelihood of requiring future unexpected arbitration.

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We interrupt the regularly scheduled

program to bring you this important message If the everyday is a stream continuously diminished and supplemented, it acts on a downward plane because of the natural deterioration of health.

All relations require some form of attention and all material objects will eventually decay.

The act of topping up in the pursuit of balance serves to upkeep the everyday stream and resolve interruptions to the normal routine. Our unconscious gravitation towards needing to be in balance makes topping up one of the most frequent actions in in our daily lives.

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The notion of balance, however, is not exclusive to routine. If the home anchors the core, the routine is bound by repetition of activities and places, then the ‘other’ exists outside this perimeter. Without this unknown territory, the everyday life cannot exist.

Even when we travel from home to work, elements of the ‘other’ exist at various degrees. We are foreign to the strangers around us as much as they are foreign to us. Each person experience things differently and occupies a unique time and space.

We will never know the experience of someone else even if we share the same space and are passing through the same movements of our routines.

The additional importance of the ‘other’ in everyday life is to prevent the gradual stagnation of routine.

Our interest in unfamiliar people and places come from the need for the ‘other’ to counter the repetitive nature of routine. Constant repetition can be repressive because it subdues the passing of time, suffocates anticipation, and diminishes exposure to different stimuli.

Repetition can help enforce stability, but without the presence of the ‘other’ we find everyday life to be stale. Although stability and stagnation are both fixed states, the difference is a stable routine sees the room for future growth whereas stagnation lacks opportunity for development. Crossing the threshold into the ‘other’ can broaden the sense of self and open up the potential for an alternative future.

Back and forth engagement with routine and the ‘other’ tops up the overall concept of balance in the everyday life.

Without such top-ups, the everyday life spirals towards stagnant decline.

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The convenience store is an extension of the home

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Oh thank heaven!

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What we consider the modern convenience store today started from simpler means that offered different means of extension at an incremental stage. The first notable one of its kind opened in Dallas 1927 by the Southland Ice Company.

It provided foot-long freezing blocks of ice for people to take home and refrigerate food (Anzilotti). Since ice melts, particularly in the warm climates of Texas, the store was successful in supplying a demand for easier access to an essential domestic product. Eventually, the store also sold other basic goods such as milk, egg, and bread. This accessibility was made possible through the extension of time, and as a result the extended lifespan of provisions at home.

A young storekeeper who works at the Londis down the street from my house told me that corner shops used to only be open in the morning and in the evenings, exactly when people would be on their way to work and on their way back home. They were the transitional spaces between the home and the public life.

Today it is common to see convenience stores neon cladded with signages on the shopfront boasting ‘24/7’, ‘Always Open’, or ‘Open till Late’. Its perpetually unlocked doors and constant availability defy the very existence of time. One of its greatest assets is its ability to extend.

I shuffled across the counter to let the man behind me purchase his ninth can of beer for the night.

A megasound party speaker was parked by the doorway underneath the display of gummie candies blasting some top billboard pop song.

“But you get all sorts of people in here you know.

Mostly normal. At the end of the day, I guess people are always looking for something”, he adds.

With each customer purchase, I look up to see a different person behind the counter: a bartender, a souvenir seller, a non-prescription pharmacist. Since when did everyday needs include a snow globe?

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The Southland Ice Company saw potential in this business model and merged operations to increase opening hours from 7am to 11pm. Based on this, the company eventually renamed itself to 7-Eleven. The 24-hour model would come later from an unexpected demand from college sports fans grabbing drinks food at the convenience store after a game. 1 Eventually the first never-closing outpost would open in casino studded Las Vegas, its cousin to the resistance against temporal normalcy.

Following the mid twentieth century, technological advancements and media presence in the household changed the dynamics between the public and private sphere. Everyday life became more individualistic and inward looking than community-base. 2 As public and private life became further separated, the supermarket became the ideal place to stock the home with an abundance of provisions in order to minimize interaction with the public realm. The invention of the supermarket in the 1920s allowed families to purchase large quantities of groceries and essentials at less frequent intervals. Additionally, price per serving is generally cheaper when buying wholesale. Although bulk-buying from supermarkets became the most practical behaviour, the convenience store was able to adapt to changes in routine patterns as well as the economic climate. The extent of what was considered common household items expanded 1. Anzilotti, Eillie. “A Brief History of the 24-Hour Convenience Store.” Bloomberg City Lab, Bloomberg, 1 Feb. 2016 2. Ucoluk, Ece. “A Critique of Everyday Life through Chungking Express and A Case Study in Istanbul.”

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as a result of mechanisation in food production and extensive commercialisation of domestic products.

In doing so, the range of basic items offered by convenience stores had to reflect this shift, and included additional services such as posting mail and paying bills.

This narrative, however, exists only in certain cultures and above given socioeconomic brackets. Ideas of domestic balance differs in every household. While the bulk buying method is popularised in the United States and even exaggerated with the likes of warehouse clubs such as Costco and Walmart, in some other countries purchasing micro-scale items on a frequent basis is economically more viable and preferable.

3 Since the entry of the supermarket, the convenience store has had to provide comparative advantages to compete. Its continued success through the extension of time and persevering relevancy to the scope of common goods returns to our need for balance. If we were able to plan everyday life as expected, down to our cravings and inconsistencies, the convenience store would be impertinent.

Fortunately, this is not the case, as everyday life is inundated with unexpected moments.

The ‘tingi system’ in the Philippines is a by the piece mode of commerce: it breaks down bulk merchandise into smaller micro-units. 4 Basic items such as shampoo and laundry detergents are sold in one-use sachets while eggs and garlic cloves can be bought individually. This system is synonymous with the local Filipino convenience stores known as sari-sari stores. They are considered the food pantries of neighbourhoods since the shops are practically open at all times.

The ‘tingi system’ offers households a convenient way to buy what is needed or what can be afforded in the moment since buying large quantities of essential items at home is beyond the means of most ordinary Filipinos.4 Hence, the system of maintaining balance works at smaller but more frequent intervals of topping up.

Whether such ordinary interruptions are a matter of indulgence or desperation, the convenience store will provide for our everyday life in ways we do not expect but rely on.

One of the major influences on how we shop for everyday items is defined by the home’s capacity.

Many basic items we buy for our everyday life require means of preservation because they are perishable. Some traditional methods of preserving foods include salting, drying, and canning. However, one of the most common and efficient ways now is to use cold storage systems.

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A living room in the landscape

Before the invention of the household electrical refrigerator, non-mechanical cold closets were used at home to keep foods without altering its taste (Grahm). Iceboxes, as the name implies, held a large block of ice in the top compartment and cold air would circulate to lower sections.

Constant replenishment of ice blocks meant that ice had to be frequently obtained from the shops.

The convenience of electrical refrigerators at home meant that food could be easily stored for longer periods of time. 3 Bulk-buying at the supermarket would not have been possible without this invention, and it has since become the preferred method because it also reduces interaction with the public sphere.

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Local convenience stores such as the sari-sari often also act as the neighbourhood’s living room. It is a place where people gather, eat meals, and socialise together. Many countries have a unique variation of the convenience store that stems from a strong sense of locality and serves as a cornerstone to surrounding residents.

Although all convenience stores are considered reliable, one of the unique characteristics’ local convenience stores over franchised ones is the assured trust between storekeeper and customer.

Local convenience stores are generally familyowned, and informal relationships are born out of the daily exchange of news from everyday life.

Credit systems for familiar faces are often used in local convenience stores if there is an issue with immediate payment, from bodegas in New York City, to cornershops in the United Kingdom, to pulperias in Costa Rica.

3. Emma Grahn, April 29. “Keeping Your (Food) Cool: From Ice Harvesting to Electric Refrigeration.”

4. Matejowsky, Ty. “Convenience Store Pinoy: Sari-Sari, 7-Eleven, and Retail Localization in the Contemporary Philippines.”

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Likewise, local residents would treat storekeepers with a strong sense of conviction and even closeness, as portrayed in the BBC Television series ‘Open All Hours’ or the suspenseful scene in ‘Shaun of the Dead’ where Simon Pegg’s character leaves his payment at the counter despite the shopkeeper’s absence. As social and oftentimes economical anchors of residential neighbourhoods, local convenience stores often provide implicit services that aren’t typical for retail but valued amongst the community. The shopfront of Xiaomaidian’s in Beijing’s traditional alleyways typically open into the storekeeper’s living quarters, delineated only by a simple display of basic items. Storekeepers often keep an eye on children after school as most parents could not return home from work until the evening.

5 Some pulperias and sari-sari stores serve a small selection of hot food and drinks in the evening, transforming the informal assemblage of outside seating into a shared dining room.

No franchised convenience store has been able to evolve into that level of domestic dependency except in Japan. International franchised convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven, often adapt to better fit in their newfound context through a change in product availability. Japanese convenience stores however, known as ‘konbinis’, found such significant relevancy to everyday life that it is categorised as one of the country’s social infrastructure (Whitelaw). At least one 7-Eleven, Lawson, or Family Mart exists on every street corner in major cities. They are regarded with such value to the efficiencies of everyday life that “their density and access are statistically more important in street life settlement patterns than proximity to welfare offices or even public hospitals”. 6 Its elevated role from extension of the home to fundamental institution reflects both the behavioural changes in average Japanese households in addition to the effects of comprehensive and intensive management. Konbinis have adapted to become useful beyond the provision of basic items despite its characteristically compact floor space. They offer an extensive range of hot food for meals and even supply disposable clothing for times of unexpected emergencies. Konbinis also serve as public service windows, information centres, and entertainment ticketing counters. In Japan’s particular urban context, konbinis are one of the rare incidents where public rubbish and recycling bins can be found.

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Most importantly, the konbini has unfolded into a uniquely public space with hyper domestic functions. Through sensitive management, it is designed to maximize accessibility to all types of people with different basic requirements. Young working adults can access a fax machine or photocopier while the elderly population are cared for by home delivery and dine-in seating. Softer foods are even arranged to be located on lower shelves for easier access.

Sayaka Murata’s novel ‘Convenience Store Woman’ illustrates the level of detail convenience store workers undertake to supply the expected needs of people by studying changes in the surrounding neighbourhood and even shifts in weather: “The weather forecast is a vital source of information for a convenience store… On hot days sandwiches sell briskly, whereas on cold days rice balls, meat dumplings, and buns are more popular.

The sale of food from the counter cabinets also varies according to the temperature. In our branch, croquettes sell well on cold days” page 23.

With an increasing number of unmarried young people in Japan and notoriously long working hours, konbinis have taken on the role of the nurturing family. This almost ‘hyper’ conveniencestore is not only an extension of the home, but spatially absorbed into the domestic condition.

The dangers of such intensive provision to the public is the health of the convenience stores itself, resulting in overworked storekeepers pressed to be productive by staying open 365 days a week, 24 hours a day.

5 Despite the konbinis exceptional adaptability, the stereotypical convenience stores we are familiar today do offer more than the ultimate essentials of bread, milk, and eggs. Most of what lines the shelves and refrigerators are long-lasting foods such as crisps, sodas, candy, tinned foods, and cereals. Many also sell tobacco, newspapers, and liquors.

From selling a few basic perishable items late at night to providing a variety of long-lasting goods 5. W, Jeffrey. “A Brief History of Convenience Stores in China.”

6. Whitelaw, Gavin H. “Konbini-Nation: The Rise of the Convenience Store in Post-Industrial Japan.”

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at all hours, the modern convenience store has become an expanded subversion of itself. They carry an extreme density in the urban fabric that seemingly stretches across time and space. As everyday life progressively globalises and diversifies, the convenience store also expands internally to accommodate the growing definition of ‘basic goods’ in the confines of its spatial constraints.

To what extent then can the limits of the average convenience stores be pushed before it exerts beyond its parameters?

As much as the convenience store ministers to the functions of the domestic realm, it does not replace the actual home. It functions as an extension of the home because of its everyday provisions, but it transcends into the ‘other’ from its position on the perimeter of the private sphere.

If everyday life is characterised by the repetitive rhythm of routine, the convenience store sits at the elusively interruptive fluctuations of unexpected conditions. Its intersectionality between the dualities of everyday life makes it a curious place even if its parameters are constrained by ordinariness.

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The convenience store is the twilight zone between the mystic and the banal 1 The sequence of home and work are intermediate moments to pass time between our main routine spaces. We constantly engage in modes of productivity, whether it be the actual work or the breaks needed to recharge in order to continue work. Times that feel like leisure often come from a place of needing to recuperate in order to prevent overstretching the individual capacity. This is applicable to both animate and inanimate things. In the public context, maintenance is often overlooked as a form of productivity because work is the activity done to achieve economic output. Work allows us to sustain ourselves but other modes of production, such as socialising and enjoyment, drive the values of everyday life forward.

It is momentary, it is lingering, and it only exists in ourselves but it is more real than some of the active elements of the routines we partake in.

Such moments lift the veil of actuality before dissolving again in the preservation of self in the everyday life.

We can all resonate with feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction even if the details of our routine differ from one another. Without incremental encounters with the other from our routine, everyday life is a stagnating drawl. From time to time, small excerpts of unfamiliarity can temporarily subdue feelings of frustration with the ordinary. However, if such feelings are particularly strong, dramatic shifts such as a geographic relocation or career change is used to realign a sense of balance. At this scale, the other is no longer an interruption but an intervention to the everyday life. If balance in the everyday is compared to physical well-being, topping up is the use of prescription pills to sustain satisfactory health while an intervention is undergoing surgery to help resolve a malfunctioning condition.

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A can of expiring pineapples

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We often find that the most of ordinary of places can offer a reality so ingrained in our periphery that an entire lifetime can pass by without so much of an impression. Our expectations of convenience stores, both in reality and in fiction, are of such little significance that it allows a reimagination of it value in unexpected ways.

The ‘other’ looks to step out of the routine but it does not necessarily mean a search for something new. At one end of the spectrum, the ‘other’ acts as an escape for discovery. Some look to explore new hobbies or travel to the countryside to escape the overwhelming stimuli of the city.

On the other end, the other is an escape for normalcy. Many people struggle to find stability in the chaotic forces of everyday life and need to find a semblance of anchorage. Each return to a 28

familiar destination enables a new recognition even if the outward appears of the individual and the place have barely changed. The passing of time is an everyday force we all experience and cannot control. It will inevitably alter the façade decorations, the new inhabitation of a previous home, or ultimately change you as an individual.

No matter what we look for, however banal or strange, the search is for an unrealised balance to mediate the dissatisfactions felt in the everyday life.

Is it possible to find fiction in the convenience store? To daydream? To achieve an alternative narrative to our daily routine?

I find myself catching glances of a mirrored reflection at every turn of the aisle. A large makeshift sheet propped up on a shelf corner, warping the image of the store into a delirious state. By the counter, a massive tv screen strung from the ceiling displays nine grainy windows of every possible square inch of the store. Shelves and shelves of general products becoming part of an extensively raw footage of everyday life.

Looking up at the distorted image, a different perspective is given to the store. Shuffling through the narrow aisles allows a singular journey to unfold, but through the lens we are able to see the shop in its entirety, a narrative where the 29

everyday life itself becomes the subject matter.

Such scenes, though usually momentary, allow us to extract unnoticed operations otherwise missed and portray the global situations of everyday life in its management of space and objects.

His projection of his relationship onto the canned pineapples is a false preservation of an invisible actuality. To remain stable requires a frequent amount of effort than allowing change to happen.

In the process of healing, the convenience store is a liminal space that suspends time (the reality of the break-up), until he finally reaches his expiration date. It converges the actuality of discontent with the desire for serendipitous interference in the everyday life through the reimagination of the ordinary.

In the beginning of the movie ‘Chung King Express’, director Wong Kar Wai illustrates the perception of everyday life as a harrowing progression of public spaces using motion blur technique. The film briefly follows the woman in the blonde wig on a section of her ‘everyday’ route as the rest of the city’s movements become muddled in the background.

The technique emphasises the representation of everyday city life as a hectic passage forcibly moved through without hesitation. It is similarly used again in the second half of the film to reveal a moment of interruption in Cop 633’s usual routine.

The portrayal of urban life as unforgiving and fastpaced is a globalised theme reproduced in other cities. When we go about our usual routine, ordinary places are passed through like a backdrop. However, it is the moments where the characters interact with their environment does the locality of everyday life present itself. Ordinary places are reimagined to suit the desires of our daily frustrations.

4 Our desires are unexpectedly fulfilled at the convenience store because it rarely incites any form of emotion. The convenience store is rarely a destination in itself nor is visiting it a celebrated event. Even returning to our home, the core of domesticity, offers a sense of relief upon returning. The neutrality of such a public space designed for the domestic sphere dissipates the fear of judgement usually found in the public realm.

We find customers at their most vulnerable because they are usually alone looking for only a few items for the self, either immediate necessities or objects of muffled indulgence. Being able to observe certain products carried in hand offers a glimpse into another person’s private life and prompts us to speculate what the person requires that object for. The private nature of the convenience store though is far from deceptive, because customers subconsciously forego such inhibitions when deciding to enter in the first place.

“I finally found my 30th can in a convenience store”, says Cop 223 as he begins his therapeutic consumption of tinned pineapples. He references his earlier venture into a Circle-K where he fumbles through a shelf looking for tinned pineapples that expire on May 1st, only to find that they are no longer on sale. To Cop 223, the convenience store becomes a designated spot to help his desire for emotional reconciliation after an abruptly ended relationship. His frustration at the convenience store’s characteristically reliable nature to provide for his illogical desires leads to an affront with the store clerk, where eventually he is given an entire box of expired goods to sift through.

As Cop 223 sits on the front steps, he is confronted with the reality that “somehow everything comes with an expiry date”, that things in our everyday life do eventually diminish. Even though we perceive everyday life as consistent, the same way the convenience store reliably provides him canned pineapples for a whole month, in reality the spheres of everyday life are ever-changing.

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In addition to its private nature, the convenience store creates a spatial condition that is publicly intimate through its compact nature and low density of people. In the latter half of ‘Chung King Express’, Cop 633 reaches for a cold drink in a convenience store when he bumps into his exgirlfriend. The accidental encounter in the narrow corridor establishes an unreserved moment. A sense of familiarity is felt between the characters but they are interrupted by a sound outside from the public sphere (the street), where her current acquaintance is waiting, and the existing reality sets back in. After their brief interaction, 31

he seemingly reflects on this brief interruption to his new routine, an interruption who was once an intimate part of his everyday life.

5 But sometimes, the dream unexpectedly transforms into a nightmare.

The vulnerability of the convenience store has a very real and tangible dark side. The public setting of the store allows for people to exploit its solitary nature and consistency. Convenience stores are susceptible to crime because they are small, unpopulated, manned by a single person, and carry cash on site.

American movies frequently use the convenience stores, in both rural and urban areas, as the site of robbery scenes. In this sense, its reliability becomes its downfall when misused. In ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’, the robber finds out about the secret safe behind the doughnuts because he’s “been watchin’ this place. I know what I’m doin’”.

Not only is the store reliable in its provision of basic goods, but its management and security measures are also predictable, making the store pregnable to anti-social behaviour. It almost comes to no surprise to anyone involved during such scenes when shelves of packaged food seamlessly transform into defence structures during a robbery.

After the robber gets show in ‘Taxi Driver’ by the main character Travis, the store keeper reassures him that he will take care of the incident, emphasising the robber is “the fifth motherfucker this year” to assault his store. Common acts of violence not only reflect the lack of security and underlying socioeconomic conditions of convenience stores, it also demonstrates how much we take them for granted. It lives in the shadow of our everyday life satisfying the gaps in our domestic needs despite the fact that it’s rarely valued as place of importance by the public.

communication. The invisible public vulnerability and unusual intersectional of the convenience store discloses the tangible constructed reality of everyday life.

We don’t arrive with expectations when we enter the convenience store. We go in with an intention and often leave with an added extra.

6 Underscoring the modes of vulnerability of the convenience store in ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Chung King Express’ demonstrate that everyday life is not an isolated experience. The shared experience of everyday life is manifested through its marketed globalisation, but we are also connected through the presence of foreign realities in the same shared space.

Even when we are surrounded by bread, milk, and eggs, our own everyday life can present surprising situations through the simple act of passing by of someone else’s spatial territory. While some actions are active such as an intrusion into personal space, most of the time they are passive.

The presence of the other makes the actuality of our own lives evident. On some level, we share an unspoken understanding that we are all strangers grappling with the small joys and frustrations of daily life.

But we are also not living everyday life in isolation within a shared space. Without realising it, our presence and actions in the public space can indirectly affect another. Thus, everyday life is not only a shared experience, but a dialogical engagement between strangers across space.

Choosing to overlook the convenience store gives permission for it to be continuously exploited, and by extension allows the everyday life to be shaped without regard by external powers. Although everyday life is by all means ordinary, understanding its significance allows us to critique the way we organise our daily experience, cognition, and 32

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7

A trip Your feet lead you toward the end of the street around the corner. There’s no need to check your phone for its location, besides, it’s the only shop with lights on. As you arrive, a few sparkling people stumble out of the door clutching a pack of beer and a bottle of wine, looking to continue the night elsewhere. The door starts to shuts behind them, but you manage to quickly weave through and are welcomed immediately by a counter enveloped by a candy bar fortress.

The shelves are packed so high that the plastic wrappers glisten like a shiny wall as you squeeze through the aisles to grab what you came to get.

Your eyes wander for a bit longer, and on the way to the counter, you take a few energy drinks from the ice cooler because you know the project isn’t going to finish itself, and why not? You’re already here.

As the items are placed on the high counter and you fumble for your wallet, you ask for a pack of cigarettes. The store keeper looks up briefly from his phone to take a carton down from the shelf behind him.

“Long night?” He asks, reaching for your change.

“Yeah”, you answer, before glancing at his phone and seeing he’s been racing through the candy crush levels since you came in last week.

“Good luck” he says, his fingers already swiping across the screen.

“Thanks” It isn’t until you reach the front door of the house you realise why your legs are itching from the cold.

You’ve still got your pyjama bottoms on and he didn’t even say a thing.

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The convenience store dissolves our idealisation of domesticity

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The idea of home has embodied the conceptualisation of intimacy, privacy, and comfort, while what lied beyond that was the space of work, leisure, and social life. The institution of home epitomises the domestic realm in which the everyday life orbits around, generating a series of secondary spaces in the landscape treated as externals to the self.

Such spaces are given designated realms in the everyday life: the office is associated with work, the gym is connected to exercise, and the train is a way to travel. The spaces in between are corridors or stops, spaces that fill the in between. Spaces of transit.

We spend majority of our time in the everyday.

Waiting. Eating. Loitiering.

Aching.

We look to the home for comfort. We condemn it for holding us back. We draw a boundary with our own footsteps and ask why is it so?

The convenience store will never substitute the home, but through times of crisis or longing we have always found comfort in it.

It forgives us when we are forgetful and doesn’t scorn us on our cheat days. It nourishes us when our schedules do not allow us to feed ourselves and its lights are on when the rest of the city has turned dark. It has consistently provided us with imperative oridnariness in extraordinary ways.

In its harsh lighting and no-nonsense policies, it exposes the actuality of everyday life in all its gloriously disheveled state. A human condition shaped by the city but innate in our mindset. A need to act in mediation for all matters that make the ordinary a little more alive.

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The continued viability of the convenience store in times of crises has underlined the dissolution of actuality in the domestic realm. What we envisage as everyday life, separate domains sitting on either side of a duality, is a manufactured semblance.

The façade is most visible during times of difficulty, from economic depressions to the current collapse of our living and working conditions, when what we perceive as stable is not.

During such moments, the convenience store has been a consistently reliable infrastructure when our own homes become unmanageable. Fringing on the threshold of dualities, the convenience store exists in our periphery as the paradox of everyday life. It is the spatial manifestation of how absurd the ordinary is and how much we gravitate towards regaining a sense of control through balance.

The home today is no longer a private sanctuary; the blurring of everyday boundaries means that our colleagues are invited to meetings in our kitchens and our gym classes take place in the living rooms.

This misplacement of space (in addition the stretching, condensing, and blending) is disconcerting to the routine, but it may be because our idealisation of domesticity as a definitive basis has limited our own control over the manifestation of everyday life.

Rather than ritualise the ititerative duties of normalcy from within, our projections of home could be carefully expanded outwards to help rethink a modern domesticity that engages with our surroundings as a progressional system prone to unavoidable deteriorations and ordinary frustrations. The convenience store reveals an extended dimension hidden behind the invisible curtain of the ordinary, quietly providing us the significance of maintenance in balance and the merits of small interruptions to the routine.

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Reference

Journals

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Jones, Peter. “The Geographical Development of Convenience Stores in Britain.”

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Kountur, Ronny, and Tran Vo Chi Hieu. “Contributing Factors of Interest in Buying at Convenience Store.” International Journal Of Business, Management & Research, vol.

3, no. 5, Dec. 2013, pp. 31–36.

Emma Grahn, April 29. “Keeping Your (Food) Cool: From Ice Harvesting to Electric Refrigeration.” National Museum of American History, 17 Nov. 2015, americanhistory. si.edu/blog/ice-harvesting-electric-refrigeration.

Sakashita, Noboru. “An Economic Analysis of Convenience-Store Location.” Urban Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2000, pp. 471–479., doi:10.1080/0042098002069.

Haider, Arwa. “A Cultural History of the Beloved Corner Shop.” BBC Culture, BBC, www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200325-a-cultural-history-of-the-beloved-cornershop.

Tu, Chung Cheung, et al. 16AD, pp. 1–18, From Convenience Store to Community Service Centre: the Transformation of Taiwan 7-Eleven.

Wakenshaw, Gareth, and Nick Bunn. PTRC Transport Practiction, 2015, pp. 1–22, How Far Do People Walk?

Whitelaw, Gavin H. “Konbini-Nation: The Rise of the Convenience Store in PostIndustrial Japan.” Consuming Life in Post-Bubble Japan, 2018, pp. 69–88., doi:10.1515/9789048530021-007.

Ucoluk, Ece. “A Critique of Everyday Life through Chungking Express and A Case Study in Istanbul.” Istanbul Bilgi University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Film and TV, 0AD, pp. 1–58.

United Kingdom, London, City of Westminster. Convenience Retail Evidence Topic Paper , City of Westminster , June 2019 pp. 1–16.

Filmography

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Davison, Ethan. “The Future of the Bodega Is Clear.” Curbed NY, Curbed NY, 23 Oct. 2019, ny.curbed.com/2019/10/23/20925428/nyc-bodega-corner-store-design.

Matejowsky, Ty. “Convenience Store Pinoy: Sari-Sari, 7-Eleven, and Retail Localization in the Contemporary Philippines.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, vol. 35, no. 4, Dec. 2007, pp. 247–277.

Terasaka, Akinobu. “Development of New Store Types: the Role of Convenience Stores in Japan.” Geojournal , vol. 45, no. 4, 1998, pp. 317–325. Methods in Retail Geography .

“Where Is Everyday Life?” Lectured by Mark Cousins, Youtube, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 22 Mar. 2018, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Z6XYX-DywMg&list=UUfE4Y-61_QO-JYg0WnT0n6Q&index=48.

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Studarus, Laura. “Travel - The Unique Culture of Japanese Convenience Stores.”

BBC, BBC, 11 June 2019, www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190610-the-unique-cultureof-japanese-convenience-stores.

W, Jeffrey. “A Brief History of Convenience Stores in China.” Panda!Yoo, 25 Oct. 2020, pandayoo.com/2020/07/20/a-brief-history-of-convenience-stores-in-china/.

Ueno, Hisako, and Ben Dooley. “It Took a Pandemic, but 7-Eleven in Japan Is Letting Stores Take a Break.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 May 2020, www. nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/coronavirus-7-eleven.html.

“The 5-Minute Walk.” MORPHOCODE, 6 Dec. 2019, morphocode.com/the-5minute-walk/.

Murata, Sayaka. Convenience Store Woman. Granta, 2019.

Image A. 400 meter buffer zones form existing convenience retail stores (United Kingdom, London, City of Westminster. Convenience Retail Evidence Topic Paper , City of Westminster , June 2019 pp. 1–16. )

Fiction Book

Image Reference

Image B. Supermarket Scene (Stepford Wives 1975)

“Home” Lectured by Mark Cousins, Youtube, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 30 Apr. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AKUfs4uNCs.

Image C. Typical Sari Sari Store in Bantayan (John Martin Perry)

Lotterby, Sydney, director. Open All Hours. BBC , 1973.

Meadows, Shane, director. Shaun of the Dead. Studio Canal, 2004.

Scoresese, Martin, director. Taxi Driver. Columbia Pictures, 1976.

Wong, Kar Wai, director. Chungking Express. Artificial Eye, 1994.

Image D. Cop 223 looks for the final tin of pineapples in a convenience store (Chungking Express, 1994) Others: Photographed by Author

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