Wal-Mart debuts urban small store format

emersonbiggins

Market saturation rears its ugly head, so it's "into the cities" with a new small-store format by the name of Marketside.

FWIW, I support this move for right-sizing America's retail.

coyote

Smal-Mart? Very Happy

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"If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." — Thomas Hardy

TheDude

Thanks for the heads-up, will studiously avoid these as well.
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Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
C'mon man, who're you gonna believe?

dinopello

Yep, here they come. That particular picture doesn't look too urban of a location though.

Their White Plains store is more of an urban format, but still Gawd-awful ugly

This store has two levels of store topped by about 5 levels of parking and special escalators that you can ride with your cart loaded with junk made in china.

NeoPeasant

I have always thought that the predictions of Wal-Mart's demise by Kunstler and others were greatly exaggerated. Sure the warehouse on wheels will be a broken business model, but Wal Mart will have the foresight and resources to adapt to what still works.

Still it's sad to think that the corner store of the future will be owned by our global corporate overlords. When I was a kid I went to school with the kids of the family that owned the corner store in our neighborhood.
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The battle to preserve our lifestyle has already been lost. The battle to preserve our lives is just beginning.

TheDude

StuckInPhilly · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 24, 2008 Posts: 120

Oh goody gum drops!

Another non-descript concrete consumer box for the already gloriously hideous suburbs.

Do you suppose they have a smaller, more expensive greeter at the door?

TommyJefferson

NeoPeasant

Trindelm · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 14, 2005 Posts: 101

Gotta say I'm on the fence with Wal-Mart.
On one side you have the Sprawl the outsourcing of US jobs and underpaid workers getting locked in overnight.

On the otherside, there are the opportunities and benefits. Penn and Teller did an amusing but insightful look into how Wal-Mart operates and the people that benefit from its presence in a Chicago store. Of course like the anti-Wal-Marters, they have their straw-man and women too.

Penn and Teller on Wal-Mart Hatred

dinopello

I like our local stores. Our hardware store actually stocks stuff we need in our 100 year old homes, and they know what people want that they don't carry and make sure they stock up. I like being able to talk to the owners and they always know what's going on in the neighborhood. They are engaged in the community and sponser youth sports teams, bands, local newsletters, etc. Walmart is probably good for some stuff, but I don't even know where one is around here so can't comment.

neocone · Heavy Crude Joined: Sep 23, 2006 Posts: 257

Wal Mart is Wal Mart for its pioneering success and insight... it is called CAPITALISM for a reason.

Human nature will always be full of envy and scorn for those who succeed through knowledge and hard work.

There will be ants and there will be grasshoppers... sadly if this one party I chose to not name come into power we will have...

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The ant works hard all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and he laughs, dances and plays the summer away.

When winter arrives, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be warm and well-fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, CNN and ABC show up to provide footage of the poor shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a fully stocked pantry.

America is STUNNED by the sharp contrast!

How can it be that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everyone cries while singing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. The news stations film the group singing, "We Shall Overcome."

Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper. They both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Hillary Clinton contracts her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant. The case is tried before a panel of Federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recepients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends with the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while sitting snugly in his new government issued house. Which just happens to be the ant's old one.

The ant has disappeared into the snow.

The grasshopper is later found dead in a drug related incident in the poorly maintained, crumbling house, which is later taken over by a mean gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

Moral of the Story: Be careful how you vote.

Lanthanide

smallpoxgirl · Moderator Joined: Nov 08, 2004 Posts: 6486

Interesting story neocone. I think you left out a bit. You left out the part where the ants show up at the grasshopper colony starving and penniless. After being fed and given shelter by the grasshoppers, they proceed to declare it their manifest destiny to take over all grasshopper lands. They massacre the grasshoppers, push the few that survive onto grasshopper reservations. Take their children to schools thousands of miles away and raise them to act like ants, beating the children brutally any time they speak the grasshopper language or practice grasshopper religion. Then they go to another continent, enslave another type of grasshoppers, bring them to their newly stolen home and force them into generations of slave labor. Once all the lands have been stolen and the slaves have been replaced by machines, the ants suddenly develop amnesia about their history and get highly incensed by anyone suggesting they were ever anything but admirable or questioning how they got all their land and goodies.
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"We were standing on the edges
Of a thousand burning bridges
Sifting through the ashes every day
What we thought would never end
Now is nothing more than a memory
The way things were before
I lost my way" - OCMS

coyote