As some of you may remember, Animated Meat first came to life in 2008 as a way to document some sights that managed to slip through the cracks of most popular travel websites. You may also remember that the original website was built on Apple's now defunct iWeb. From there, it migrated over to WordPress where it met an untimely demise at the hands of Russian hackers. Many of those old, pre-2012 entries have found a new home here in the Before the Now section. I would consider these posts as my starting place as a writer, probably comparable to a musician's first demo tapes. They are very rough, but I took them all seriously and wrote each one with passion. While I would like to believe that I have matured in my abilities as a writer, it is my hope that I carry this same blind passion into all of my new efforts.

City Center - Originally Published 2010

September 22, 2018

The City Center can be accused of showing up a little late to the party. By the time the last bolt is turned, it’s supposed to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 billion to construct. Yes. That’s billion. With a ‘b’.

Whoever lined up the dollars for it was not a populist. This is a facility that’s built for two kinds of folks. Those that are rich, and those that want folks to think they’re rich. Crystals, the retail heart of the city center is filled with couture stores. What does that mean? It means they have a restaurant shaped like a phallus, but don’t look for an Orange Julius.

While it is off to a somewhat shaky start with the state of the economy, if it can hang in there it should be primed to be the place to be once everything stabilizes and folks start spending money again.