shopping

There's a fb page called Forgotten Chicago  where people post old photos of Chicago,and one day I went there, and there was a photo from the fifties of the brand spanking new High Low (High quality, low prices).  Progress had come to 57th and Kedzie!  Used to be there were these little stores where Mom would send you to get a loaf of bread or a quart of milk, there was one on 55th and Homan, and another on 57th by Christiana, and I was going to say that they were both gone justlikethat, but now I recall that the one on 57th lingered into the 70s, but that doesn't serve to prove my point, so I'll just take a little stroll down memory lane.

I knew that supermarkets (which that little High Low was considered in that day) were a big deal.  I know that because Mad Magazine ran a feature called Sooper Dooper store about it.  It certainly had a big effect on me, I had never seen doors with electric eyes before (I  don't think they call them electric eyes anymore, I don't think they call them anything anymore they are just everywhere and you don't notice, until they are not there.  How often have you been in a public bathroom and held your hands under the faucet or the towel dispenser and been surprised to realize that nothing happened and you were going to have to actually turn the faucet or pull down a towel, like it was the stone age or something.).  And back then all cereal boxes contained some kind of toy so going to the cereal aisle was like going to a toy store, and the aisle seemed to stretch for miles.


There are no box boxes in Chicago, well maybe on the outskirts.  I guess probably property values  are too high and there is competition from smaller discount places all over.  There was a big battle over Walmarts coming to town. The unions and good liberals such as myself hate them.  Well there is the fact that they don't pay a living wage.  What would happen if Walmart raised their prices say five percent, in order to keep their employees off welfare?  Would people say I don't mind paying that extra nickel on the dollar knowing that all those employees, many of them my friends and neighbors can now put good shoes on their kids' feet, and send them to a four year college.  Well we remember those Buy American campaigns, in fact I believe that was one of Walmart's boast back when they were just a discount store, and we all know where that went.

That part about sucking the life out of small towns, doesn't seem to have happened in Cheboygan, but I hear reports about other towns where it has.  Particularly towns where the Walmart drove local retailers out of business and then closed down that store and now they have nothing.  Well that is anecdotal too, I don't have any statistics for that, and I don't know what form those statistics would take, but just thinking it through logically it seems like when the Walmart comes to town the local stores die out,

And then there is just the power of Walmart because they are so big, and of course one of their goals is to stamp out competitors,  Didn't we used to be against monopolies?  Didn't we break up the phone companies?  But I don't recall how that came out, not so well I think.

When I first moved to Marina City in 1992 I had to walk about a mile to get to the Jewel, but it was nicer when they put one in a few blocks south on State Street, even easier when they put in a Target a few blocks north on State Street where Carsons used to be.