Pet peeve #12: Food courts

| by Bel | 9.19am NZ time |

You guys, how gross are food courts? Ugggh! So gross!

The main thing that gives me the heebiejeebies about food courts is that there is never any natural light.

It is always super harsh overhead fluro and you get the feeling that quite possibly it never changes, like those casinos where they want to deceive you against the passing of time.

I did a Google Image search for "food court" and look at the horror that hit mine eyes:

Ugggggh!

There is a generic aesthetic to food courts which makes them both abhorrent and comforting. You can rest assured that the formica table will be a little sticky, that the spindly aluminum legs of the chairs will scrape ear-piercingly across the tiled floor, that there will be confusion over where you should stack your tray and dump cutlery.

There used to be one great food court in Wellington. (Sorry, BNZ Food Court, your weird combination of cavernous and rabbit warreny, and the fact that you are underground and therefore INCAPABLE of natural light, means you will never be great at anything other than helping me get to Lambton Quay in the rain.)

It was next to the Rialto, when there was a Rialto cinema, down one street back from the waterfront. It had big double doors on either side which were always open and funny murals painted up high on the walls. There was very little use of neon signage. Of course it has now been lost to the perpetual reconstruction of our central city.