STORE #1: I love lists, so I love how the silly Random House/ Modern Library “Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century” list has inspired so many folks to attempt better (more ambitious, more diverse, funnier) lit-guides. One such effort’s being compiled at the Twice Sold Tales used-book chain. Get your recommendations (up to 20) to Twice Sold’s Broadway & John store by Sunday. They’ve gotta be originally written in English and originally published since 1900; any list including Richard Bach or Bridges of Madison County will be thrown out.
STORE #2: The huge new Safeway at 15th & John opened a week before the region’s long-dominant food chain (begun by Boise’s prominent Skaggs family; now owned by leveraged-buyout kings Kohlberg Kravis Roberts; but never owned (despite the rumors) by the Mormon Church), lost its spot as America’s #1 food vendor to the merged Albertson’s and American Stores (both with Skaggs family members in their origins). The new Safeway outlet easily matches the new Broadway QFC (now owned by Fred Meyer, which was formerly owned by KKR) in size, opulence, and ready-to-eat goodies.
Why has supermarket square footage on the hill more than doubled in the past ten years (including Central Co-op’s big new branch soon coming to 16th & Madison), when its population’s increased by much less? There’s relatively fewer kids in the area, for one thing (big folks eat more; big folks without dependents can often spend more). Big stores bring more customers past the lucrative side departments (pharmacy, video, photo, floral). And, as we mentioned when the new QFC opened, supermarkets are trying to take back business from restaurants with delis, salad bars, and convenience foods.
There’s also a semi-intentional side effect: Monstrous stores, with wide aisles and gargantuan shopping carts, bring back some of the wonder that grocery-shopping trips meant when you were a kid, mesmerized by the bounty of goodies and the old Safeway yin/yang-esque logo. Just don’t do wheelies with the carts, OK?
STORE #3, OR JUST WHAT’S A BRASS PLUM, ANYWAY?: To me, the new Nordstrom store’s opening will be the final true end of Frederick & Nelson; I’ve been able to half-pretend the grande dame of Seattle retailing was still around, I just hadn’t shopped in it for six years. It’s also (as of yesterday) the end for the old downtown Nordstrom. I’ll miss that awkward amalgam of three buildings, with the front-and-back-doored elevators, the unpretentiously-pretentious all-lower-case signage, the cramped awkward floor spaces (which suited Nordy’s then-novel “collection of boutiques” concept better than any open-plan mall space could)–a place where, no matter what year’s fashions were on the hangers, the style year was always 1974.
The Stranger’s previously criticized Nordy’s sweetheart deals with the city over the new store, its parking garage, and its reopening of Pine. But let’s remember what else this company’s wrought, for good and/or ill. The downtown Nordy’s as we’ve known it opened when lots of downtown office towers were going up. Instead of the affluent-yet-careerless women F&N targeted, Nordy’s targeted office people (particularly women) who’d begun seeing themselves not as sedate corporate drones but energetic corporate warriors. (Not exactly a feminist ideologue’s vision of empowerment, but still a change.) It told the country our far corner indeed had a fashion sense (an early Forbes article mockingly called the store “Bloomie’s in the Boonies”)–and an entrepreneurial sense. Nordy’s helped perfect the workforce-as-cult model of employee relations now associated with the likes of Microsoft. Like its dressing-for-success clientele, its staffers were encouraged (or hounded or pressured) to give their all to the company and then some.
Even as its catalogs and its out-of-state stores spread an image of the Northwest as a land of carefree outdoor leisure, its practices instilled a vigorous (or obsessive or oppressive) work ethic now common at “growth oriented companies” here and elsewhere.
A piece on Microsoft’s Slate last year suggested companies like MS and Starbucks had to have copied N.Y. or L.A. styles of institutional aggression; such drive couldn’t possibly be indigenous to our countrified region. Nordy’s proved it could be and is.
