Wally n' Me

Have you ever shopped for shoes at a feed store? Bought your groceries from a tiny, dusty mom and pop market with extremely limited selection and flystrips dangling in the corner above the meat case? Ordered your clothes from a circa 1975 Sears and Roebuck catalog? Shopped in the surly, dingy dismalness of any Kmart anywhere? If you have, you'd understand why Middle America's rural and suburban folks have rushed to embrace Wal-Mart. And why, liberal that I am, I can't work up any hatred of it.

In fact, I dream of a day that that Wal-Mart comes to New York City. There's a nice big space down at St. Mark's Place in Manhattan, currently occupied by a dismally dingy Kmart, a perfect place for Wal-Mart to revolutionize New York shopping.

But New York is already the shopping capital, isn't it? you ask. A mecca for buyers of everything you could possibly want? Well, yeah, if you're in the SUV-and-pearls tax bracket, sure. FAO Schwartz, Macy's, and Dean & DeLuca are waiting for you to grace them with your platinum Amex card. You go on ahead, there. But if you're more of the take-the-subway-and-buy-your-watch-on-the-street crowd, well, it's a little tougher.

Sure, there are bargains out there, but they are widely scattered. You can get your designer knockoffs on the sidewalk in Chinatown and hope they don't come with anything that gives you a rash. There's a rather pathetic Ross's, the aforementioned Kmart, and a Target waaaaaay out in Queens. The incredibly overrated Filene's Basement (eh, I say). The very occasional and usually -not -that -great-Macy's sale. And plenty of dirty, disorganized dollar-stores with selections that looks suspiciously like the kind you get off the back of a truck.

In other words, New York's average shoppers have no idea what they're missing. It's like time stopped for them, retail-wise, in 1978. No one who's from here knows that it's possible, indeed, to have a clean, well-stocked store open at convenient hours selling things you need for a decent price. In more than one location. In other words, a Wal-Mart.

As I said, I'm a liberal, but I'm a liberal from Texas, which is not at all the same animal as a liberal from New York. Certain parts of my upbringing cling to me stubbornly, like a cowpie on a boot. And one of them is the feeling that, no matter where you live, it oughtn't to be too hard to get a bottle of cough syrup at 6pm on a Sunday for under 5 bucks. But if you live in the wrong part of Brooklyn, you better think again. You're stranded in a retail desert where the one pharmacy within walking distance keeps such eccentric hours you're not sure they ever do open. Where the one grocery store, of the mom-and-pop type so beloved by many anti-chain store sentimentalists, sells one brand of cough syrup at eight bucks a bottle (they keep it locked up in a glass case, too, so that you have to ask a clerk to get it out for you.) Only after consulting the phone book did I know enough to take the train 20 blocks up to where a Duane Reade--that evil chain store!---was, in fact, open and carried what I needed. For less than half the price.

Writing about my appreciation of Wal-Mart and chain stores in general is dangerous, because it opens up a Pandora's box of issues. Wages. Consumption. Community values. Labor rights. Unions. Sweatshops. How can I be a good liberal and support companies that exploit workers, run out local businesses, and do, uh, other really evil things? Maybe because Wal-Mart, like all other retail operations in the U.S., large or small, is subject to the law. If, as it's been accused, they have unfairly treated their employees, then they deserve all the bad press and the attacks by hordes of lawyers. But those problems don't come from them being a chain, and I'm tired of people confusing the issue.

Being a large chain retailer is not a crime. There is no evidence that they do more harm than good to the general population. As you can tell, I think just the opposite. I think they improve competition and quality of service, and generally make things better for the average shopper. Again, I have to look at it from my own history. Where I lived in Texas, Wal-Mart didn't come in and close down a lot of dear little shops. They filled a void where there was little selection and too much cost, and certainly no good service.

I'm just old enough to remember shopping for school clothes before Wal-Mart and Target. I remember the tiny Kenney's Shoes where we bought my school footwear, which always seemed to cost too much and be ugly to boot. I remember ordering clothes out of the Sears catalog and being disappointed when they didn't have their nicest clothes in my size, or else only in an unflattering shade of puce. I remember the grimy Kmart's with nothing put away properly, dim lighting, and missing price tags whenever you did find something. I remember being dazzled by the first Targets and Wal-Marts that I went to. So bright! So big! So much to choose from that we could afford! It was a revelation.

And now, here in the cultural capitol of the U.S., I live in a place that doesn't know from convenient, cheap, and varied. And it's not just that I'm in the wrong neighborhood. I lived in poor parts of town in Texas, but never in a place as deprived of grocery stores as this one. In fact, when someone at work asked me what I missed about Texas, I said, "Nothing. Except a clean, bright, 24-hour Albertson's to shop in."

The fact that meat from our local mom-and-pop has come out of the package spoiled before its due date several times has influenced my feelings on this subject. Frankly, they could use a little well-run competition. So could the guy in the independently owned hardware store who had the gall to charge me $20 for a tiny plastic fan to cool down my overheated room. That was a $10 fan, at most, even in New York. At a Wal-Mart, maybe even $8.99.

Honestly, I just roll my eyes whenever well-fed, well-off liberals (and sometimes conservatives) decry the horrible effects of chain stores on our nation, because it smacks of class snobbery to me. If you can afford the precious little boutique that sells the most darling clothes for your baby, good for you. Those of us making less than 50k a year need somewhere to shop too, and we shouldn't have to schlep to the boonies or settle for shopping in crappy, dirty stores to get what we need at a price we can afford.

I think one other element has kept many New Yorkers from embracing change in this respect; a sort of perverse pride in things being harder here than they are elsewhere. A recent Sars essay reminded me of this, and while I think she's great and respect her toughness, (and actually, when it comes to her main point I agree with her) I have to disagree. It's an old character trait of mine that when people tell me "That's just the way it has to be," I get angry. Why, for god's sake? That's just not a good reason. If everyone took that attitude, we'd all still be squatting in caves and grunting, because we were afraid that using fire and inventing speech would make us soft and weak.

Progress can be misused, it can destroy things that ought to be preserved, it's true; but it's not intrinsically bad. Sure, you might end up with Vanilla Coke, but you also get civil rights.

And while I wouldn't rate Sam Walton with Martin Luther King, Jr., old Sam did make it possible for me to buy Keds knockoffs for $5 a pair, pick up a cheap VCR, and buy a package of cheese sticks all in one trip. And that's gotta be worth something.