bound by chains
Recently I learned, via Neil Gaiman’s blog, that Cody’s Books, a longtime fixture of my birthtown Berkeley, is closing their Telegraph Ave. store, due to mounting competition from online booksellers (read: Amazon).
This unhappy news got me to thinking about how many of my regular shopping visits are to chains and not independent/locally-owned shops:
office supplies: Staples or Office Depot
books: Borders (usually)
groceries: Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s
DVD rentals: Blockbuster
DVD purchases: Best Buy, online superstores
I find myself frequently shopping for whatever reason at: Target, OSH, Home Depot. All national chains. Hell, even my lunchtime stops are often at chains: Baja Fresh, In-n-Out Burger, Panda Express. Computer stuff? It seems to be often PC Club, or online giants (who so often coincidentally ship from the San Gabriel Valley anyway) — forget CompUSA, which I despise.
I’m not suggesting that Pasadena (or Los Angeles in general) is lacking in independent shops where I could make my purchases. Indeed, Vromans Books in Pasadena is a fabulous and venerable bookshop. And I can nip across the street to the well-stocked Bungalow News. I’m afraid the reasons are more mercenary: I get all these coupons all the time from Borders, which offer enough of a discount that I can actually afford to buy books on occasion. I simply couldn’t afford to pay the full cover price that Vromans charges.
And that’s where the chains have us, or the online people. Look at Amazon, which often has discounts on merchandise ranging from 25 to as much 40 percent off list. For someone like me, with a tight budget, this knocks pricey stuff like computer books from “impossibly expensive” down to at least “barely affordable”. I just can’t afford to pay $45 for a computer book at Vroman’s.
It doesn’t make me feel any less guilty. It’s for this reasoning that the owners of Cody’s had to recently close their Telegraph Ave. location (they’ve still kept the Fourth Street location open). I would be gutted to learn that Vromans had to close their Colorado Ave. location here in Pasadena. I’d feel that, at least in part, it was my fault. Horrible thought.
America is a land seized in the iron grip of national or international chains, squeezing out independent and locally-owned businesses in every imaginable sphere of our economy. Banks: chains. Grocery stores: chains. Pharmacies: chains. And on and on.
This ongoing battle about Network Neutrality, with companies like AT&T throwing money around to seize control of the Internet, is one battle in millions that corporations have waged on the populace since the corporate world took off well over a hundred years ago. The corporate mentality dictates that it’s not enough to be a successful company yourself, you must also strive to destroy your competition.
Let’s not even get started with Starbucks, shall we?
It was singularly unpleasant to realize just how much a proportion of my shopping is conducted at chains. I like neither how it changes my perception of myself, nor what it implies for our economy in general. I like the notion of businesses owned and conducted by their operators. The lazy indolence of people such as myself, to not demand the way of life with their buying dollars that they wish around them, depresses me.
Oh, gotta run. I’ve got to pick up lumber at Home Depot, swing by Trader Joe’s for some groceries, return my DVDs to Blockbuster, get a bite to eat at Baja Fresh, get some new printer cartridges at Staples, get a couple shirts at Target … and bemoan the fate of the mom-and-pop shop.