Public Space

One of my favorite writing assignments through out my writing career occurred during my first semester of English composition at Texas Christian University.  It was one of the last papers we wrote.  I cannot quite remember the exact assignment, but we had to write a research paper based on our cultural background.  I wrote a paper on the cultural integration of Canadian-French immigrants into Louisiana.  My father grew up in Louisiana and then in southern Texas.  I interviewed fellow Louisianans and incorporated childhood stories from my grandma.  I liked this paper the most because it had a personal touch, which made it more enjoyable for me to write.  It had significance to me and it was really interesting to learn facts about my culture that I did not know before hand.  I also enjoyed the paper because it allowed the students to have more of a say in the format of the paper.

 

The space that I have chosen to write about is Grand Cru Wine and Gifts.  This space is appealing because it has a specific target audience.  The target audience is older financially stable adults with an interest in wine.  I also chose this area because I work there, which will allow me to not only view the space as a customer but view the space as an employee.  This will allow me to see the store in several different ways and to see the things the customers do not see.  I will visit the store on an off day as well as when I am working.  I believe that these will be two very different experiences and I will notice very different things.

 

The things I expect to find upon observation are that the space has a target audience like I said before and that there is a certain stereotype to a wine store.  I believe that the stereotype will be that the majority of the customers that visit our store will be upper middle class sophisticated individuals.  It will be interesting to see who fits that stereotype and what customers do not.  It will also be interesting to observe my place of work as a customer and see exactly how I could be perceived as a worker there.  Also I think it will be interesting to see the type of environment that the owners have developed for their customers.  I also have my first experiences in the store to rely on because I obviously had a first impression at one time.  The pre-conceived ideas that might influence are the fact that it is my place of work.  This is not a place that I am newly observing.  This could have benefits and difficulties.  It might be more difficult than I think to remove myself as an employee, but by visiting multiple times without working there I think I will be able to get into the mode of customer versus employee.  Attending the wine store at different hours of the day and observing and interacting with the owners, as a customer will give me a better since of the store.  Also it will allow me to notice things that I might not have noticed as an employee of the store.