The Gateway Individual Post; Group #2

The Gateway is an amazing place to go for fun and possibly do some shopping. The signs and buildings are inviting and the sidewalks are cobble-stoned and quaint looking. I felt like I was walking through a village in a different world from the city surrounding it. The whole area is clean and well-maintained. And although it may seem like a public place, the Gateway is patrolled with its own special cops who keep the peace and keep people from doing things like begging, protesting, and skateboarding. Unlike in the area surrounding it, the Gateway gives a pleasant and welcome feel to Salt Lake City where nothing really annoying is going on that would drive anyone from the place. After all, one of the main purposes of Gateway is to keep people around long enough to buy something. The Gateway’s limits can be seen by the change from pretty, stone sidewalks to normal concrete sidewalks, from fine, tan stone buildings to normal, cheaper buildings, from light streets to darker asphalt streets. Moreover, on the corners of the Gateway district, I saw homeless people begging for money. I felt as soon as I left the Gateway that I had left some dream created so I would enjoy myself and spend some money on different things. In this respect the Gateway is a district because it serves as a shopping district. In the Gateway, the main purpose of the majority of the buildings is to sell things. Moreover, its architecture sets it apart from the rest of the city in its sameness and uniqueness. For example, its style lets me go all over the Gateway on the second level.
As I mentioned before, the only homeless people I saw were on the edges of Gateway, inside Gateway I mainly saw those of the middle and upper classes. On the Monday afternoon that we were there, I met mostly older couples who were on vacation, and the Gateway was their first stop in Salt Lake City. I talked to one couple from Australia who was taking a tour down the Rocky Mountains in a RV from Canada. They had been in Salt Lake City for less than two hours. The first thing they bought was food from Starbucks, which was where I met and talked with them. I met another man who had barely gotten off the plane that day, and he was from Norway. I didn’t learn that much else from him because he couldn’t speak English very well. I also met a couple from Canada who had barely arrived in Salt Lake City as well. Based on these interviews and a couple others, I learned that the Gateway is like an entrance into Salt Lake City. The first place all these tourists had come was the Gateway. Here they were having some downtime from traveling. Indeed, the Gateway is named the Gateway for a reason. The Gateway in this respect serves as a node as well as a district. The Gateway is like these people’s introductions into Salt Lake City, and I think it was a good one. Because of the controlled environment, the Gateway is a comfortable place and enjoyable place to be.
Not only is the Gateway a gateway to Salt Lake City, but it is also an attraction for the residents of Salt Lake as well. Other than the people who worked at the Gateway, I met some others from Provo and Salt Lake who had come to the Gateway to spend some time. Whether they were waiting for a plane to arrive or hanging out, the Gateway was a place where they could enjoy themselves. The environment at the Gateway encourages these kinds of activities because of all the quality shops, places to eat, and places like the Clarke Planetarium. Advertisements sparkle in the windows and smells waft from shops. The smells coming from Starbucks particularly attracted me and my taste buds. The employees were being paid to be friendly and sell things. However, I noticed that if they weren’t being paid to do something, they didn’t do it. They only talked to customers if customers were interested. The lovely music playing in the background warmed my heart and created a mood. I barely even noticed it, except when I was bored. The Gateway is definitely a good place to go to enjoy a lovely and friendly environment. In fact, most of the people I saw were doing just that, enjoying the environment.
However, I found that while the Gateway is a friendly and interactive atmosphere, the tourists responded to it and were approachable and friendly. They seemed to fit in more with what I saw as the atmosphere of Gateway than those who were from Salt Lake City. The people I met from Salt Lake City were rather cold and not talkative. I found this interesting because the magic of Gateway with its welcoming atmosphere seemed to work more for the tourists who wanted to enjoy their experience than for those who came to the Gateway frequently and were enjoying their time in other ways than through the atmosphere. To them the atmosphere was normal, and they had come to Gateway to hang out or shop, not to tour and go sight-seeing.
On this trip to Gateway, I noticed much more about the architecture and the people there. I noticed the atmosphere and appreciated it more. I also realized how amazing it was that I didn’t have to go up and down stairs all the time; I could run around on the second story. I discovered that the reasons why people went to Gateway explain a lot about Gateway itself. If one was a tourist, than Gateway was a good place to enjoy Salt Lake City, but if one wanted to shop, than the Gateway was a mall. This double purpose of Gateway, a friendly, welcoming atmosphere and a shopping district are amazing to me, and I understood this more when I realized that the Gateway could be a node and a district.