text: If you’ve been to our city’s premiere shopping strip lately you’ll know what I’m talking about. Crushing crowds, expensive parking and annoying buskers playing Christmas songs no one enjoys too loudly.
  Thankfully the angry Clive Palmer lookalikes, blue balls and green muppet arms that pretended to be decorations in previous years have been replaced with pretty pine trees and festive bunting, so at least the place looks good this year. But it’s still basically a bloody battlefield of retail pain.
  It’s not just the Mall, it’s the same at Marion, Burnside, West Lakes. And to be fair, it’s not their fault. The crippling Christmas crush happens everywhere. You just feel it more keenly in Adelaide because we are totally rubbish at operating in a crowd.
  It comes of being a small city; as soon as there are more than a few thousand people in an area, we just don’t know what to do.