I Got Abandoned in a Parisian Shopping Mall and This is What I Learned

I went to a mall today and was immediately abandoned in the men's department of the H&M. It was terrifying and I got left to make my own really great fashion decisions.

They call me the whiter Ryan Gosling.

Anyway, there's also some really cool stuff to learn from the Forum Les Halles, one of Paris's several partially submerged shopping centers. Here's a couple things I picked up:

1.Anything can be a Social Space if you Try Hard Enough:

 The Forum is super neat because it actively does a lot to try and make both a commercial space and an environment where people can sorta just hang out. There's a lot of indoor and outdoor seating various spaces throughout the mall, so it can be enjoyed in pretty much any weather.

The thing is, though, that seating eventually runs out if you're underground and it's a thousand degrees outside. I saw a lot of people sitting in spaces not meant for sitting just because it was cool and comfy and better than living on the surface where the Sun is your enemy. People have a way of finding places to hang, even when they shouldn't, and the Forum's design both intentionally and unintentionally facilitates that.
I saw a lot of people sitting on ledges under escalators, on the ground, and all over the damn place. A lot of them were busy looking at phones or reading or making calls, but they were doing it en masse in a public space, not just while on the train or in a waiting room. Plenty more were interacting with each other directly, or were working in the library that's also housed in the forum. Even the obnoxious skater kids were out in force, though I didn't get to witness their inevitable clash with mall security.
This also relates to the second lesson I learned, which is:

2.The Sun is the Enemy and the Earth is Your Air Conditioning:

 There is no air conditioning in Paris. The museums are lying and there's one cold air vent in the Louvre total and that's probably some kind of elaborate trick so they can sell tickets. 

Anyway, the Forum is built underground and has plenty of air circulation and natural light due to it being built around a giant glass hole in the ground, but the fact that most of the complex is completely submerged is a godsend in the heat. There's enough air moving in and out to make things bearable, and I never felt as horrid as I did outside or on the Metro. The surface is an awful wasteland, but I can see the promise of a future race of Parisian molemen living underground in abandoned malls.

Also, I had to bum half a Euro off a friend to use the bathroom. What's up with that?