Smallbox

I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting in a running car while my wife and nephew shopped at Walmart this weekend. While I don't ever go on my own, all my family members do, as does a large percentage of the populace. When I mentioned to a co-worker a few weeks back that I don't have a membership to Costco, he replied, "You don't have a membership to Costco?"

"No, I don't have a Costco membership."

"Really?"

"No."

"Really?"

"No."

I honestly can't use a five gallon bucket of mayonnaise and I don't like idling in the long gas lines in the parking lot to shave six cents off a gallon of gas. But while sitting in that Walmart parking lot I thought of how I was contributing to the destruction of my local economy.

It used to be that a local retailer would likely maintain at least two buildings in town -- his own home, of course, and the retail shop itself. He had a vested interest in his shop. I remember a locally owned hardware store here in Sacramento -- Brown's Hardware on Auburn Blvd. Brown's was destroyed by a nearby Lumberjack, the first generation of big-box retailers. Lunberjack was later eaten up by the second generation -- Lowe's and Home Depot. But for every one of these Brown's, there are five hundred thousand other small, independent retailers that lost out to the economics of scale. Look around you: I guarantee there's a Joanne's Fabrics, Lowes, Office Depot, Sports Authority, Old Navy, Petco, Home Depot, Target, Fry's, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Staples, Toys R Dus (as Ryan used to call it), Borders, or Walmart. And likely two or more of these. If you don't like what they offer, tough shit; you're gonna take it, because there is no longer anyone else around to offer anything else.

And the buildings won't be cared for as local owners would have cared for them...and local owners don't exist, they are now just employees. Why the fuck would they care when they can just as easily drive down the boulevard and be employed by the next big box retailer? The buildings aren't built for more than a 20 year life service life, anyway. By then, the real economic opportunities will have migrated further out the suburban ring anyway and corporate will just relocate.

Just the few stores I listed...there is a 100% probability that in every strip mall in every city in every state in this nation, one of them has opened there. The owners are never local as they are owned by shareholders, so there is no one beholden to local issues of commerce. Real return of taxes collected on sales is reduced, spread largely based on generous national or multinational tax codes. They are always overbearing -- big lettering, unnatural colors, cartoonish exterior decorations. And there is always, always! an illuminated sea of parking between the street and the storefront, now set back several hundred feet. They are pedestrian wastelands. No one would ever consider walking to one of them...$4 dollar gas or not.

Sitting in my parked car in the Walmart parking lot, I couldn't see the storefronts of the retailers across the street (Florin Road) due to the curvature of the earth. If I had decided to journey over there to shop while my wife was in Walmart, it would have taken 15 minutes on foot just to get there, crossing a six-lane thoroughfare and dodging traffic in both parking lots.

Tell me...if the first generation of box stores destroyed small stores and the second generation destroyed those -- what's the third generation going to look like? Is this really what we want? I can understand the desire to save a few dollars on napkins and dog collars...I really do. But if the next generation of retail entails remote-lot parking and people-movers, will we be better off?

Will we?

I propose a return to small box retail. I think that as the 8,000 mile supply chain to Asia becomes increasingly more expensive (and possibly tenuous as we compete with Asia for energy), we will be forced back into localism. I hope that my nation develops a nasty case of smallbox sometime soon.