Benjamin needs to be broken out of his "high theory" prison and brought back to earth. He belongs in Oakland, or Oakland belongs with Benjamin, a spokesman of another ghetto, far away geographically but very close in terms of a common sentiment. He made his name during the absolute void that was post-Weimar Germany as a radical Jew, and eventually died in a situation so abysmal that nobody is sure if it was suicide or murder. The suicide-murder death is a trademark of a brutal war such as the one Benjamin was in when he was cornered at the border of Spain and France, the Spanish Republic in shambles and Franco rearing his nasty monarchic head.
So it is ironic that his idea of the flaneur, the city stroller, is seen as an uninvolved, impartial observer: the flaneurs, although they look at the city rather than run its maze, are very much a part of it. The non-flaneurs are almost everybody in a time like this or Benjamin's, a time of staggering economic horror and collapse. But these berserk racing people, always distracted by reminders of their various and desperate purposes, are in a way less part of the city than the flaneur, because they always have an excuse for being somewhere. The flaneur, without meaning to, bears witness all the time. There is nothing else to do.
The Metreon is a great place for flaneurs-- it is the postmodern equivalent of Benjamin's beloved Arcades-- in fact, it is rife with arcades, except these kind have flashing lights and metal claw machines. All of the hope and glory of the new economy has left the Metreon, which surrendered its once-proud Discovery Channel Store, selling a wide variety of overpriced guilty garbage, to a "farmer's market" which is a kind of affordable food court. An IMAX movie costs $17, so it's really no wonder nobody goes there. But it takes up just as much space as it did in 1999 when people were lined up to get in.
The situation is different in Oakland. Broadway is still the Auto Row, but in the interstices everything seems to be breaking down. People are everywhere, but none of them are involved in the commerce of this ostensibly commercial district. All the people I saw on Broadway today, walking from 19th St. to W MacArthur, were flaneurs of a sort...definitely not the petit bourgeois people you see a mile north on Piedmont Avenue. There were a decent number of people who were well dressed and carried themselves well, but they weren't shopping. The street has been thoroughly infected by "For Lease" signs, and 19th St. and Broadway is like a tragic hood Manhattan, which is what is left when wealthy flamboyant moguls decide, all of a sudden, to pack up.
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