Last Friday was the opening of SM Marikina. Traffic was so heavy along Marcos Avenue and you could see a lot of people within the vicinity of SM Marikina. Usually between 4:30pm to 5:00pm traffic is not heavy from Katipunan to Sta. Lucia but because of the opening we got caught in traffic. Weeks before the opening all of us riding in the service were kidding around that we’d all troop to SM City Marikina during the opening. Good thing we did not do so because just from the highway you can already see how crowded the mall was. Even the overpass to SM was very crowded and it spilled on to the streets. I have never been to an opening of a mall or department store so I did not know that it could get like that. My office mates told me that there are a lot of freebies and discounts during openings hence the presence of the multitude of people.
During our conversations about mall openings, particularly SM malls, I realized that there are people who make a habit of going to mall openings. I was playing around with the idea that there might be a group of die hard SM malls fans who always get together and attend SM mall openings. Maybe they have an organization and and a blog forum where they schedule their EBs and get togethers to coincide with a mall opening or something. Hehe.
Talking about mall openings, I remember that I read an article that when IKEA, the big Scandinavian store, opens a branch there are long lines of people waiting outside. Some even wait in line as early as three days before the store opening. Talk about excited.
