Shopping’s End

Most downtowns are gone, replaced by Walmart and the other retail giants that brook no competition from the old mom & pop stores that were once the heart of rural communities and county seats across the country. Springsteen’s lyrics that meant something personally to his blue-collar audience working the steel mills and textile mills of industrial America now reach nearly everyone. Most people have now been victims of their own special form of urban blight that has erased the golden past and replaced it with soaped windows, plywood, and Main Street sidewalks filled with people whose acquaintance is avoided by those with fond remembrances of better times.

Economic reality is the new city planner.

First the big downtown shops fell to the shopping malls, where huge stores could carry brand names of almost every item that once were the exclusive property of a few special places downtown that dressed their windows in the finer things that had their customers wondering how such exquisite merchandise could ever find its way to their little burg from New York, Chicago, or (could it be?) Paris.

Soon the great local marques vanished; no need to make a special trip just to buy a new dress when one could get the same thing at a discount from the Macy’s in the mall…and pick up some chocolates, a book, and maybe a new computer at Sears all at the same time.

Time moves on.

Except for the massive monstrosities that have hundreds of stores surrounded by an amazing variety of entertainment ranging from movie theaters to amusement parks, where a trip to the mall involves (and demands) the same degree of planning and commitment reserved from excursions to Disney World, most modest shopping malls are staggering slowly toward bankruptcy, replaced by on-line shops whose vast variety of merchandise and ready access with virtually no need for expensive inventory or any sort of store at all, save a web presence.

For those too poor to join the electronic revolution or who insist on actually coming into physical contact with such mundane needs as fresh tomatoes and toilet paper, there are still plenty of Walmarts, but there is also the biggest Walmart in the world on-line.

For those so newly rich that shopping remains a sensual experience best relished in public, Neiman Marcus will not be closing any time soon either, although most of its retail business depends on catalog sales done almost exclusively on-line.

Malls whose primary draw was their comparatively low prices and their “everything-under-one-roof” strategy that lured customers away from downtown in droves are being replaced by a mouse, a MasterCard, and machinery that is ever so much cheaper than a fancy retail outlet.

With very few exceptions, most malls have become places one goes for the services that cannot be obtained (for the meantime) on-line. Dentistry, dog grooming, and giant hot pretzel kiosks are now the financial backbone of places that once counted their daily revenues in the millions.

Some cities hurt worse than others as we steadily become a population that seldom leaves home to accomplish anything anymore. The gregarious spontaneity of a Saturday afternoon spent shopping downtown passed just as the new malls rose to provide a climate-controlled social setting especially attractive to financially well-endowed young folk where they could escape the watchful eye of parents busy bouncing from shop to shop, trying their best to leave no essential merchandised unpurchsed.

The advent of on-line shopping sounded a death knell for this sort of social interaction. The refinements bringing computer shopping ever closer to perfection will be its ultimate end.

At breakneck speed, we are entering an age where simulation supplants real experience, and where consequence is the outcome of a computer game in which our input determines the result in terms of groceries delivered to the door. Anonymity protects us from the unpleasant reality just outside our electronic gates, and identity theft is swiftly becoming the new “rape”.

What once demanded random personal interplay and an effort to reconcile one’s persona with that of the surrounding community has fallen to a new age where there is absolutely no need whatsoever for genuine social; interaction. The generation of the hermit is upon us, where we can be whatever avatar best suits our mood, and we rapidly approach a day when that which cannot be ordered from the security of our homes with the punch of a mouse button is not worth having.

Even the dog groomers are making house calls.