OK, folks, here's the deal with WalMart and the fall-out from all the other "big-box" stores. Americans vote with their dollars. Over the last 30 years, Americans have voted for the "big box" stores. Americans have voted the local merchant out of business because it's easier, quicker, and cheaper,to go to the mega super market, the mega department store, and the mega pet shop rather than support the local Main Street merchants. However, as many Americans have painfully discovered, easier, quicker, and cheaper isn't necessarily the ultimate outcome of a landscape dotted with "big box" stores.
I wholeheartedly agree that WalMart is a curse and a big contributor to the blight on the economic landscape of regions, towns, and neighborhoods. WalMart has been a major contributor to the decline and death of innumerable local shopping areas (downtown, uptowns, whatever one wants to call them). It doesn't matter if those areas are small farm towns in the Midwest or "suburban sprawl" areas in metropolitan regions.
Local politicians court and sell out to companies like WalMart. These elected officials want as many of the "big box" stores as possible because they contribute a significant amount of commercial and real estate tax dollars, ostensibly for the "good of the community". Well, we know how well that plan works for the "good of the community".
In the 1950's and early 1960's my Father-in-law was part owner of a locally-owned, thriving, honest-to-goodness "downtown" department store that carried everything from ladies' lingerie to microwaves and TVs. That store was a part of the thriving and growing downtown in a large Central Illinois community. In 1964, he knew the end of local downtowns was a matter of time when he saw that K-Mart could sell a TV at a lower price, retail, than what it cost him to purchase the same TV at wholesale. By 1968, my Father in Law's store was in the process of closing. It was gone by 1970.
The trend continued in that Midwestern town throughout the '70's. Downtown died. All major commercial activity went to the suburbs...and the steady tide of "big box" / "big parking lot" stores continues to this day.
As a "hometown" girl, it would almost break my heart to visit my family and see what had happened to the downtown of my childhood. Familiar business and favorite stores had become parking lots or were closed. I never could figure the parking lot thing since so much of the commercial business had gone to the big box shopping centers at the edge of town. Obviously, the downtown parking lots were empty and the mega-stores' lots were packed. So much for the wisdom of local policiticans. Oh, and the tax money that these gargantuan monuments to commercialism generate...in this case, it's going to a different town, ajacent to my hometown.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area...population is in the millions. I moved here to a "bedroom community" 25 years ago. At that time, my family could buy well-made clothes, shoes, toys, groceries, Rx, automobiles and applicances from local merchants. Many were the hours I wandered the globe while browsing through the travel section of our locally-owned book stores. If I remember correctly, there were 2 or 3 very good fabric shops. I could get Pendelton yard goods easily. I had little to no reason to leave town to shop. I knew the merchants and they knew me.
Today, I can't buy a pair of well-made anything in my local community. It's all at the "big box" stores...with employee turn-over at obscene rates.
Between San Jose and and Hayward, CA, along I-880 on the east side of the bay, there is a Wal-Mart and / or a Home Depot in San Jose, Milpitas, Fremont, Union City, Hayward. You don't want to know how many other redundancies of other "big box" store clog that corridor. What I've described is a distance of about 40 miles -- through traffic and world-class traffic.
I'm completely sympathetic --and just as angry / frustrated -- with the plight of my fellow quilters and the angst of fabric stores' closing. Those fabric stores are to us what "Cheers" was to Frazer, Cliff, Norm, and all the others. "Everyone knows your name" -- or what colors we like for our quilting projects.
When I had what turned out to be minor sugery a few years ago, after I had talked with my family, guess who I called to give them the news. Yep...my friends at the quilt shop, all of whom had been praying for me and my family. Unfortunately, that store has closed...because the owner retired.
There are some other quilt shops in the area, but I'm having to travel further and further. As my friend from the now-closed quilt shop told me, "You could go for 10 years and never buy another piece of yardage." Well, yeah, she was right, but... :wink:
The convenience of a one-stop shopping "big box" store does enable an economy of scale, i.e. lower prices (sometimes), but at what price? That's where the choice of how and where we spend those "left over" dollars comes into play. "Left over" dollars = what's left after all the assotred taxes levied on us by those who are so concerned about the "good of the community", allowing us to attempt to acquire some of the necessities of life.
In the context of those who are so concerned about the "good of the community", I'm reminded of a bumper sticker I saw recently. "Your Village Called, Looking for You. They Want Their Idiot Back."
There is one thing that even the frustation of "big boxes" can't take away from quilters. They can't take away the fun and satisfaction of our creativity. Continue on, friends.