…formerly the Rhodes of Seattle department store, began to come down during the same week that M. Lamont Bean, who closed Rhodes and turned its suburban branches into the Lamonts apparel chain, passed away.
Bean’s story was one of your classic rise-and-fall (or should I say rise n’ fall?) tales. He started as a protege to his dad Monte Bean, who’d bought the Tradewell grocery chain and opened the first Pay n’ Save pharmacy at Fourth and Pike. Bean fils built Pay n’ Save into 300 stores in 10 states. He further built his “Family of Stores” empire by buying Ernst Hardware, Malmo Nurseries, Rhodes (which begat Lamonts), and Seattle Sporting Goods (which begat SportsWest). By the ’70s, it seemed like every other strip mall in Washington was anchored either by Pay n’ Save/Ernst or Pay n’ Save/Tradewell.
But a takeover bid for Schuck’s Auto Supply left him in debt and vulnerable to a 1984 takeover by New York financiers Julius and Eddie Trump (no relation to Donald). They sold off the Bean chains, piece by piece.
Pay n’ Save, including the Fourth and Pike flagship, is now absorbed into Rite Aid. What’s left of Lamonts is now part of Gottschalk’s. Ernst and SportsWest have disappeared altogether. Only Schuck’s, the buy that broke Bean, remains under its original name (though now merged with two other regional chains under parent company CSK Auto).
BRAVE SIGN INSTALLERS at the Kenneth Cole store (where Lamont Bean’s Ernst used to have its flagship outlet) unwittingly turn themselves into image props for giant-woman fetishists everywhere.
TELL ME AGAIN why I’m supposed to want to live someplace else?