While there's been a lot of talk about the loss of America's industrial base and factories closing, not nearly enough is discussed about the slow death of retail bricks and mortar stores:
usatoday.com/story/money/2017/03/17/jcpenney-store-closure-list-j-c-penney/99298728/businessinsider.com/store-closures-wreak-havoc-on-shopping-malls-2017-1
J.C. Penney's stock hasn't been this low since 1980. Although I'm not big on conspicuous consumption and materialism, there is something more than a little sad about the death of America's malls. Nor can the 5,000 jobs lost in these JC store closings be blamed on globalization, foreigners, illegal immigrants, China, etc. This is something we are doing to ourselves by shopping online. I have more than a few fond or at least funny memories of hanging out at the mall as a teenager with my friends, going to the movies, getting into mischief and flirting with girls. Now I suppose all of that "human interaction" is done via Instagram and Facebook. Ah well.
Comments
Regards,
Ted
http://www.clark.com/major-retailers-closing-2017
What happened to stores like Emporium, Wieboldt's, Bambergers? Does Macy's tell Gimbels? Not then, and it can't now.
Unfortunately, JCP is just another in a long line of such stores.
The Department Store Museum: http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/
http://www.retaildive.com/news/why-target-sold-out-to-cvs/413432/
JCP is a different story.
I'll stick with the first two choices.
Derf
I might consider paying for a $200 jacket made in the USA today because I could afford it (well as soon as my elder decides which college she is attending I can confirm). I would do that because I know what the cost of living is in different parts of our country, and even after accounting for exhorbitant executive salaries, I could justify it. I couldn't do that on that fateful day which was at least 20 years back.
Don't want to sound overly dramatic, but that day really shaped my thinking. I started putting limits on how much I would pay for everything, from my underwear to my house. And it has translated to not paying $4.50 for bubble tea today (which I think is absolute crap and I don't really know what monsanto cooked up liquid those bubbles are made off).
The problem is not the mall. The problem is JC Penny. The irony is in the name. Penny. Hah!
OK, a logical argument about the jacket, but the bubbles in bubble tea are made of tapioca, and Asian/Chinese people and tea shops have served them for many years. I love bubble tea!
Tapioca is used for one of the best types of flour without gluten. Horn and Hardart used to make a great tapioca pudding.
Remember Horn and Hardart from a different era of shops and closures?
https://nyti.ms/2mOQ63C
We shop at Aldi, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Kroger, Meijer, Dollar Tree, and TJX stores regularly and could not do without them. Sears, Penney, Macy's, and their ilk hold no attraction; the only reason I have to go to a mall is the Apple Store, but that's rare. All the rest of our business goes to Amazon and online merchants.
The whole milk with the cream on top that the local dairy delivered to my parents' house is not just an anachronism whose passing some regret. Today we don't touch dairy products because science has shown the harm they surely cause. Mr. Friedman's haberdashery of my childhood is gone, but I don't regret the corduroys and jeans that required several washings before they stopped chapping my legs.