Friday, August 30, 2002

Wherefore Super Target?

It is a commonplace, I know, to bemoan the loss of independent businesses, consumed by greedy chain stores like dry tinder in a summer wildfire. But I have found myself in the odd position, lately, of bemoaning the loss of something far less noble—a chain store willing to stay small enough to be a neighborhood store, rather than super-sizing itself and relocating to the most money-splashed stretch of busy road at the edge of town.

If you are of a certain consumer profile, and particularly if you have children of a certain age, you will guess immediately that I speak here of the demise of a neighborhood Target store, once nestled right between South Bend and Mishawaka. It has been cast aside for a flashy new Super Target, in a bounder’s location, carefully placed to dip into the deep pockets of Grangerites, though far from any actual neighborhoods, and temptingly propped against the toll road so that out-of-towners may soon come to think of us as the Super Target town—that place where you can jump off the highway between Fort Wayne and the Michigan City outlet malls to pick up, well, just about anything.

And that’s just it—for a certain kind of shopper, that old Target store really did have anything you could possibly want, without needless extras, endless aisles, and piles of cheap melons. Some years ago, those marketing geniuses at the Target headquarters waged and won the war to be the coolest non-department-store place to shop, partially by virtue of its inventory and partially by virtue of tongue-in-cheek advertising that let consumers in on the joke that we might once have thought we were slumming it to shop there, but, darn it, the store really does carry most of the equipment we need for daily living—and somehow without the whiff of bad politics and creepy giantism that has followed stores like Walmart, notorious for destroying small town centers. Even the popular consumers’ reference to Target as “Tar-zhay” reveals this winking knowledge that we are pleased with ourselves for discovering a gem of a bargain store. It’s our store, even if there are a thousand others just like it.

But now we’re left with the awkward mouthful, “Super Tar-zhay,” and because many of us have just survived the frenzy of back-to-school shopping, I have had a dozen conversations recently with fellow Tar-zhay fans that all begin: “So—have you been to the Super store yet? What’ja think?” Here’s the verdict: Bigger is not better. Why go for the gargantuan “venti” when a very satisfying “grande” will do? Maybe we’re all just incapable of change, but my friends and I—none of us shoppers by nature, mind you—have actually been reminiscing about the back-to-school shopping in those now golden yesteryears, when you were guaranteed to bump into a gaggle of friends and neighbors while jostling for protractors, compasses, and Harry Potter pocket folders in the narrow school supply aisle of the old store. For all of its chain parentage, it felt like a neighborhood establishment.

In this new “Super"store, the checkout lanes stretch coldly, Matrix-like, as far as the eye can see, and nothing is where it “ought” to be for those of us who knew the old store’s layout well enough to pick up necessities by rote, blindly, while keeping our attention trained on our weeping infants and drooling rogue toddlers. There was a telling consumer moment this summer, before the old store closed, at a Firefly Festival performance by the children’s musician Tom Chapin. When Chapin affably announced to the audience that Target was one of the event’s sponsors, so we should thank them by “going out and buying a lot of stuff there,” an amused buzz rose over the wide lawns as everyone nodded and laughed self-consciously at the fact that we were, so to speak, so clearly the Target audience. A discerning eye could see that those in the chair section were lounging in 7 dollar Target folding camp chairs and those of us in the blanket section sported tanks and straw hats and flip flops and goodness knows what other Target paraphernalia essential to outdoor family adventures.

Now, I realize my complaint smacks of Ptolemaic self-interest. The fact that this new Über store is further from my house probably means that it’s a closer commute for others. I wouldn’t have minded so much, really, if another neighborhood store had been built. What seems a pity to me, though, is our tacit support of zoning decisions that proclaim it’s right and good to add to the monied mayhem of Grape and Main Roads, which now blaze parallel tracks pointed straight to vehicular hell. My grandparents may have had the ethical upper-hand in mourning the loss of the mom-and-pop corner grocery, but I want to mourn a bit myself for the loss of a neighborhood store we could pop into without venturing onto a crazily busy road. What Super abominations of local businesses might be next? Super Macri’s? Super Lunker’s? Super Hummer? All leading inevitably to a bloated Super Michiana? I shudder at what the folks in Fort Wayne will think of us then.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on August 30, 2002
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