The Great Water Voyage

On Tuesday, after my classes were over, I headed over to the Westfield Shopping Center to get lunch in the food court (I spent Lunch clocking an hour at the Language Lab as homework. We have to do an hour a week T_T). I always go to the same mom-and-pop Chinese Food place, and I try not to spend very much money, so I normally only get a Chicken/Vegetable/Rice bowl and nothing to drink. Usually I don't mind, but today I had about an hour to kill, so I decided to explore the mall to find cheap or free water.

My explorations started and mostly took place on the upper level of the mall - on the ground level, the walkways are cluttered with kiosks and kiosk managers trying to con you into buying something from them. It's a scary, scary place, fraught with gunfire and dying soldiers and their crying, terror-stricken families. You do not go down the the ground level of the mall unless you need to.

So, I took two laps around the upper level of the mall, searching for a public water fountain. Every twenty yards or so there are water coolers with water bottles, sodas and power drinks, but they cost $1.50, which is 50 cents more than I'm willing to pay, and I'm always afraid those vending machines will eat my money and leave me empty-handed. After one lap, I still didn't see a single public water fountain - you know, the kind that are free.

When I went around again, I was more meticulous, checking all the nooks and crannies and probably weirding some people out. Finally, in front of Sears, hidden from view off to the side by some maintenance doors, I found the elusive free public drinking water. There were two fountains, one higher than the other (as they usually come). I stress again that they're hidden from view - unless you're in Sears, looking out, or heading into the maintenance hallway, you cannot see them, but they're not marked 'employees only', so they're obviously meant to be for shoppers use.

Those were the only fountains I saw on the upper level, and begrudgingly I headed down into the battlefield. I wont expound on that terrifying experience, but I found one more set of public fountains, directly below the others up-stairs. Throughout the entire interior of the mall, there are only two public drinking fountain stations, both easily accessible but hidden from sight.

On a suggestion from my mom, I headed into JCPenny and Macy's after Thursday's classes. She had said that those stores, the two major chains and 'cap' stores (located at each end of the mall), probably had water fountains inside somewhere near the bathrooms (I didn't go into any of the stores Tuesday, because most are too small to have room for a public fountain, except for Barnes and Noble, which a few months ago replaced their drinking fountains with a pretty table).

Turns out she was right - if you know where you're looking, both JCPenny and Macy's have drinking fountain stations hidden in their bathroom alcoves, only visible to people who have to use the bathroom (or, like me, were pretending to).

Assuming there aren't another set of bathrooms/fountains in one of the chain stores, there are only four sets of free public drinking water fountains in the entire mall, all of which are hidden from view. Now, as far as I can tell, there's no law requiring public buildings to provide free and relatively clean water to people, but given that water in a basic necessity to survive, I think there should be.

Let this be a warning to everyone out there - if you have access to clean, free water, take advantage of it. Here in the desert, water out of the tap is not only naturally cleaner than most of the country, but also tastes delicious (so I've heard - I haven't actually tasted much tap water outside the Coachella Valley, but it's definitely better than that chlorinated stuff you get in pre-sealed water bottles. Blegh). If we let our schools, parks, and public buildings get rid of all our free water, we'll be paying $5 a day just to drink second-rate well water that companies pretend to scoop from 'natural springs'.