Friday, January 25, 2002

THOSE OF YOU who looove written English as composed by non-native-English speakers will undoubtedly enjoy this instruction sheet from a box of imported Chinese "stop-smoking" tea bags. (Warning: 235K .jpg file!)

posted by clark 2:41 PM

YOU ARE, I devoutly hope, all planning to attend our scrumpdilyicious MISCparty! this early Saturday evening (6-11) at Second Avenue Pizza, on Second north of Virginia in Seattle. The live band Laguna plays sultry pop-rock; DJ EZ-Action and DJ Superjew spin suave Europop sounds. There's also odd video, readings, games, strange snax, and much much more. It's all ages, with beer and wine available for the over-21ers. And it all benefits the print MISC mag. Be there or be quadrangular.

posted by clark 2:38 AM

SILENT 'K': On Thursday, I did my patriotic duty by helping support a valued yet endangered American institution.

Yes, I shopped at a Kmart.

Specifically, I obtained the Apex AD-3201, described by several websites as the best cheap DVD player currently available. It plays DVD movies, audio CDs, even MP3 audio files from CD/Rs. And with the right adjustments, it can even allegedly do things some much costlier players can't.

The AD-3201 wasn't out in the traditional back-wall TV/video display area (which had ample empty shelf slots). I had to hunt around to find a boxed unit, which I successfully did. I tried to reassure the clerk that the chain's current crisis could indeed be nonfatal, as had the bankruptcy reorganization of the Bon Marche's parent chain. She seemed insufficiently encouraged.

A leisurely stroll through the massive space revealed why she might have felt a bit down. About half the departments had at least some empty or near-empty shelves. Strolling customers were quite sparse (even for a recessionary January weeknight). Other display sections looked like they hadn't been straightened up all day. Many floor tiles looked scuffy. Much of the apparel merchandise still looked thin and shoddy.

Stock clerks chatted aloud to one another, comparing the number of work hours they'd just had reduced. At the front, the head checkout clerk was dressing down her subordinates, demanding to know which one had been keeping an opened bag of potato chips at her checkstand.

The cheery signs and banners seemed an exercise in desperate, manic positivity. The whole place gave me flashbacks to the last six months of Frederick & Nelson.

Granted, the 130th & Aurora unit is one of Kmart's oldest buildings, acquired in the early '70s from the even cheaper old White Front chain. The other Seattle Kmart, in West Seattle's lost valley of Delridge, is a lot nicer looking on the inside. But if the chain's gonna mount any kind of serious comeback, it'll have to get serious about making them inviting, fun places again.

posted by clark 2:29 AM

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

ABOUT TO FACE another lonely Valentine's Day? Treat yourself to Bittersweets, candy hearts with downbeat messages. (found, like the two items below, by Fark.)

posted by clark 8:17 PM

SOMETHING SO FUNNY, I wish I'd written it: "The Geek Hierarchy!"

posted by clark 8:14 PM

OLYMPIC OFFICIALS don't want those innocent Utah audiences tempted by figure skaters doing splits.

posted by clark 8:09 PM

INSTANT NOSTALGIA is now possible, thanks to eBay and its diligant participating merchants. Case in point: Get your very own Enron Retirement Planning coffee mug, only while supplies last! Slogan on the back: "Who decides where to invest your money? Only YOU!"

Also available, at least as of this writing: A copy of the company's "Conduct of Business Affairs" book, complete with a memo by CEO Ken Lay and the following unattributed intro: "As officers and employees of Enron Corp., its subsidiaries, and its affiliated companies, we are responsible for conducting the business affairs of the companies in accordance with all applicable laws and in a moral and honest manner."

posted by clark 11:41 AM

Tuesday, January 22, 2002

'ATTENTION, KMART CREDITORS': So the onetime discount king, descended from the old S.S. Kresge dime-store chain, is now on the veritable fiscal ropes. Its market position has been crowded on one side by Target's pseudo-hip image and by Wal-Mart's special status as the only chain retailer in many small towns. Now, it's the biggest retail company to ever file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. (The previous champ was Federated Department Stores, parent company of the Bon Marche (which finally has a web site!).)

Like many post-boomers, I grew up with the bizarrely soothing pastel blue-and-pink color schemes of the chain's massive stores (particularly at the lunch counters). These days, like a lotta folk, I don't get in there much--essentially because there are three Fred Meyer stores between me and the nearest Kmart (on 130th and Aurora, in a building inherited from the short-lived California chain White Front). And when I do get there, much of the merchandise, particularly the clothing and shoes, still looks like shoddy knockoffs ready to fray apart within a week.

Chain management insists it's got a plan to save the big K. But in case it doesn't work, or in case it sheds some locations during the restructuring, let's think about recycling the real estate.

Many Kmart locations, such as the one in West Seattle's lost valley of Delridge, are standalone sites, sufficiently far away from other big-box stores and strip malls as to be less than ideal trafficwise. A smart and progressive developer (perhaps a nonprofit) could buy up such a site should it become available and re-lease part of the front parking moat for small-retail development. Then, one could put the Kmart building itself, along with the rest of the lot, to new mixed uses.

An old Wired article once suggested something like this. It posited a community of artists taking over one of those 80,000-square-foot structures for production and living spaces, creating something like a permanent indoor Burning Man-esque community. That's one potential reuse, but not the only one.

Local electronics manufacturer John Fluke turned an abandoned Everett discount store into a factory (too bad he didn't call it Ye Olde Mall).

The B&I Shopping Center in Tacoma (known mainly as the former home of Ivan the Gorilla) was originally a discount hypermart whose second-generation owners decided would be more profitable not as one big store but as a bazaar with sections rented out to indie entrepreneurs.

The buildings' simple structures, which necessitate interior supporting posts every 20 linear feet, make them hard to reconfigure for big-open-space uses (arena football, roller skating, etc.). But they could still be used for certain other non-selling purposes. They could become innovative affordable-housing solutions--the vastness of the space could be easily broken up with skylights and open-air courtyards; since the roofs are held up by all those steel posts, pieces of said roofs could relatively-easily be knocked out). Tthey could also be divvied up into alternative work spaces, not just for artists but also for sweat-equity entrepreneurs creating their own lines of clothes, cookies, snowboards, and such.

And, almost needless to say, they'd be awesome party/dance/concert spaces (even with those view-blocking posts).

Meanwhile, the company that wanted to be the retail goliath of the Internet, our own Amazon, announced an honest-to-goodness net operating profit for the first time ever this past quarter (not merely the not-counting-assorted-expenses "pro forma" profit management had promised). This doesn't mean the firm's out of the proverbial woods, and it certainly doesn't mean its investors will see a proper return anytime soon. But it does mean the basic idea of e-tail can indeed work, sorta, with the right products and the right focus. (I still say Amazon would've been in the black sooner, and wouldn't have had to lay off so many Seattle workers, if it had stuck closer to its books-music-video core and hadn't thrown millions into ventures to sell pet food, video rentals, and power tools.)

posted by clark 10:42 PM

TAKE A BREAK from all those content-rich websites and enjoy a page about Nothing.

posted by clark 9:50 AM

ANOTHER M.L.K. DAY has come and gone, and I would not at all be surprised if you didn't notice it unless you either had the day off from work/school or if you'd waited for mail delivery on Monday.

Mainstream-media coverage of the day was reduced to the bare minimum (Sunday op-ed pieces about The State of Race in America; quick TV clips of politicians' speechifying about the great man intercut with children's choirs doing old black spirituals).

Even the traditional MLK corporate "public service" ads, re-imaging Dr. King into corporate America's preferred idea of a visionary (someone who shifts paradigms and thinks outside the proverbial box), were noticably diminished this year. Part of that could do with companies cutting back on expenses deemed unnecessary for fiscal survival.

But there might be another potential reason. The politicians, the companies, and particularly the media just might (might, I say) be particularly uncomfy this time around with Dr. King's real messages. The man wasn't just a dreamer. He was a dissident. He demanded to challenge the U.S. status quo, to insist this country live up to its professed ideals of liberty and equality. To King, being a proper American didn't involve sanctimonious complacency. It meant working, fighting, to make this a better place, a more just place.

It's almost certain that if King were around today, Lynne Cheney's think tank would brand him as a bin Laden sympathizer.

posted by clark 12:26 AM

ARCHIVES:

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