TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#80 – Invasion

#80 - Invasion

With a front page article, the Birdcage Liner announced the arrival of the brand-spanking-new Wal-Mart to the greater Fremont area. Nicole brought it up during our usual lunchtime chat. She, being excited about the opening, wanted to see it.

I did not.

She didn’t understand why.

I explained.

She didn’t feel that my explanation warranted us skipping a visit there.

I counter-offered to visit after the crowds died down.

She replied that the crowds weren’t going to die down for a while.

You aren’t selling me on going to see this thing, says me.

I want to go to people-watch, says she. To see the rednecks and the mullet-wearers come out of the woodwork.

That was a good-enough reason for me. It’s not that we’re going to Wal-Mart because it’s a Wal-Mart in our town. We’re going because it’s an anthropological expedition. I think she’s kind of snowing me on this but what the hey, it helps me justify even bothering to set foot in The Evil Empire. I’ve never had a good experience going to Wal-Mart; Even if it’s a Super Wal-Mart or a Sam’s Club. It’s always been the same experience:

You walk into this cavernous entrance that may not be (but usually is) littered with ratty store circulars and linoleum that’s so streaked from thousands of sneakers that you can barely discern its original color. From there, you’re assaulted with a level of sound that rivals a casino on the Vegas strip. A line of cashiers the length of a football field are processing shoppers past you, and still there are long lines. The customers in those lines are usually tired moms and overweight white guys. They’re buying cartloads of items and they’re never smiling. To your left is usually a McDonalds or a Little Caesars that’s filled with kids, parents and God-knows-who-else. The place looks so unsanitary that it’s a miracle they sell a single meal. Moving quickly, you find yourself in a wasteland of housewares, then it’s on to the clothing sections full of cheap jeans and t-shirts silkscreened with whatever TV/Movie/pop star is famous that minute. Seriously, do you think you’ll catch yourself dead wearing a t-shirt that says “Git-R-Done” in two years?

In an overstimulated daze, you wander from section to section to section. Everywhere that little yellow smiling face is telling you about all the money you’ll save by shopping here. The personal electronics section blares out layered noise as one idiot after another performs a “sound test” of the merchandise by finding a hip-hop station and blasting it. The closest you come is the little cardboard kiosk of DVD’s outside. Do you need a copy of “License to Drive” featuring the two Coreys looking so worldly-wise as they dip their Wayfarers to give you that teen-god look that sold so many copies of Bop in their day?

You want to go home, every cell in your body is begging you to leave this place…only you can’t. You came here to buy, mister. By golly, get cracking and be the consumer that you were raised to be! Look at these displays and think to yourself of what you would do if you owned a put-it-together-yourself screened enclosure for your backyard. Look at all the savings…you’d be a fool to turn it all down! The exhaustion closes in on you and after a while you have to leave this noisy, oppressive place. Go outside and hike the quarter-mile of Icee-and-Coke-stained asphalt. Get in your car and negotiate the maze of madcap people trying to get in and out of this capitalist monstrosity.

Every time I go into one of those Wal-Marts, I come out with this feeling of agoraphobia that I never get even going to Great America or Disneyland. I get freaked out by the crowds, I get freaked out being bombarded with things to buy and a lifestyle to emulate. After a while, I need to leave and get my bearings again. What little I know about nuclear reactors I learned from “The Hunt For Red October”, “The China Syndrome” and “The Omega Man”. If you’re in a contaminated area, you can only absorb so much radiation before you get sick and die, or turn into a mutant. Now, I’m not saying that Wal-Mart is contaminated with nuclear material but I think the same adage applies. You can (or should) only be in that place so long otherwise you run the risk of becoming like the other mutants that inhabit it.

Fremont, the lowly farm town of the 1950’s, has become a breeding ground for yuppie scum and the nasty franchise stores that support it. It started in the mid-90’s with the introduction of the Barnes & Noble on Fremont and Mowry. At the time, we were happy – finally, the strip mall was going to get some fresh blood. For about ten years previous, it was home to the Thriftys (and their hideous demon-spawn square ice cream scoops) and Fat Fanny’s (Oh gee, why didn’t we ever go there?). Anything that opened up at that location closed within about a year, it seemed like a doomed location. Flash-forward to B&N and almost simultaneously, Starbucks. How awesome! Fremont is finally getting some trendy places, we all thought. Go and sit in the big chairs at Barnes and Noble and read books and you don’t get hassled! Drink a $4 cup of coffee that has Italian coffee syrup in it…fabulous!

Within a year, the little shoebox-sized building that appeared on the corner housed a Jamba Juice and a Boston Market. Noah’s Bagels moved in, so did Kinkos A few years later, the entire section of commercial buildings housed a thriving number of businesses where previously it languished in strip mall hell. What are you complaining about, Tim? It sounds like a happy ending to a business story.

For some people, the change has been a good one. For others, like me, I started to note the inevitable slide toward mediocrity that such changes often bring. The trendiness pattern started in that location and slowly spread out as other new franchises established toeholds and grew like the mold on my shower curtain. You start to see the families with higher disposable incomes move in bringing all the cultural changes endemic to their lifestyle(s). I can stand seeing every other car on the road being some massive SUV with blingin’ rims. Driving home on Mowry two days ago, I saw this massive Yukon with a license plate that read: XL4RKIDS. As I pulled up, I saw a thickly-built white lady talking on her cell phone and several small heads discernible through the tinted rear windows. She should have gotten the vanity plate that read: STREOTYP. Yes, I know CA vanity plates don’t exceed 7 characters. Shut up.

I hope, sincerely, that I’m not the only one seeing from afar the impending doom to our fair ‘burg. Like other chains before them, Wal-Mart has the ability, nay the destiny to eventually oversaturate the market and dip into a deep hole of obscurity featuring old ads that end up on TV Land. Like the Clorets mints ads of yester-decade. It’s bound to happen because Wal-Marts business model is all about short-term strategy. I don’t to get too deep into it, I’ll just point to the gaping maws of the old K-Mart center on Thornton and Cedar. Or Circuit City on Mowry next to the Swiss Park. Hellooo! Big box stores don’t last long in this town!!!! Look at the old locations of Costco and Home Depot over there off of Albrae. Is anyone, anyone going to find a business to open up over there? We are just setting ourselves up for yet another location where winos and kids fling MD 20/20 bottles against the concrete of an abandoned tilt-up warehouse.

You’ll all be glad to know that the year-long standoff I had with the Birdcage Liner has come to an end. I haven’t renewed my subscription and am enjoying the peace that only comes from not opening the newspaper to another “Some Kid Enjoys Local Event Crap” picture on the front page while all the news fit to print is housed on 8 wonderful pages that vie for space with ads from all the hardware and sporting good stores in town. The peace is going to be short-lived, the battle is over but the war rages on…

- Tim Woolery, 8/29/2005