The Walmartization of Target

A nearly senile woman of at least threescore and ten greets me with a toothless smile and sad eyes. The displays of merchandise are in shambles; goods are strewn haphazardly on dirty shelves, tumbling onto the floor; passageways are crowded with heavy, slow-moving mammals. As I venture deeper, I find myself surrounded by sour-smelling indigents dressed in slothful rags and  undisciplined children scurrying around, while at least a dozen different languages are clucking in my ears all at once. All the while, beady eyes stare at me menacingly, filling me with a constant fear that I might be pickpocketed, assaulted, robbed, or whisked away into some sort of criminal underworld or white slave trade, my loved ones never to hear from me again.

This harrowing description is not of a visit to a Moroccan bazaar, or even to a faraway planet. This is how I feel every time I set foot in a Wal-Mart.

Preppy folk of good breeding, such as myself, have a great appreciation for the finer things in life, i.e. well-made, long-lasting garments, antique furniture, fine silverware, Triscuits, and relaxing trips and getaways. The finer things do cost money, but we can afford them by squeezing our dollars on groceries and household necessities at low-price retailers. Most of these establishments have always attracted a lower-class clientele, whose disheveled appearance and inability to converse in proper English, or any English at all, make bargain shopping a distressing, sometimes even frightening experience for our sort.

Preppies know that many things don't have to cost a lot to do what they need them to do, and know where to find them at a more attractive price. Things like utilitarian glassware, kitchen utensils, placemats, party decorations, giftwrap, and storage containers can be found for cheap at discount stores such as Marshall's, T.J. Maxx, Ross, and even dollar stores. Low prices can be found on attractive clothing as well at many of these discounters (except dollar stores). Still, in order to get their bargains, preppies must conquer their fears of the lower classes and make their way through the writhing masses of mouth-breathers to claim their treasures. Sometimes, one just can't take the adrenaline rush, and just wants to get something at a fair price without offending his delicate sensibilities with the sights, sounds, and smells of trashy people. There was a time, not very long ago at all — not even two years ago — when there was a retailer where we could have our cake and eat it too. It was called Target.

Target offered kitchen wares, electronics, cleaning supplies, health, beauty, and hygiene products, and school and office supplies at prices significantly lower than supermarkets, drugstores, and department stores. Their prices were typically ever so slightly higher than their chief competitor, Wal-Mart, but they offered one very valuable feature that Wal-Mart did not: a sleaze-free shopping experience. The difference at the register added up to pocket change, well worth the privilege of shopping in a clean, quiet, orderly store patronized chiefly by well-bred customers. Target was something of a well-kept secret among tasteful folk for a very long time, and I enjoyed it. The rare expeditions I would make to Wal-Mart felt just like this entry's opening narrative. A subsequent visit to Target was like a gasp of fresh air by comparison, where anxieties melted away at the sight of shoppers to manor born and manners bred.

The walls separating the aristocrats from the unwashed masses began to crumble when Target introduced large grocery sections in its stores. Though offering a smaller selection of brands and varieties than supermarkets, their prices were very competitive, even with Wal-Mart stores, which had already had grocery departments for many years. With cheap groceries as well as cheap household goods and affordable, albeit shoddily made, clothing, Target suddenly became very attractive to Wal-Mart's clientele, and the vermin crept in, little by little, until a full-fledged infestation was irreversibly in place.

Just yesterday I stopped by Target on my way home from the cubicle for some moisturizer, face scrub, and a few groceries. My eyes were soiled at the sight of obese negresses wearing all-too-revealing rompers, a blubbery mother sporting a mullet with her pudgy urchins swinging from the shopping cart, wiry goons with cornrows in their hair and wifebeaters on their slouching backs, and an obese interracial couple to whom I was hesitant to get too close lest I slip in the amniotic fluid that was sure to erupt at any moment from the female's super-sized womb, though in retrospect, her oversized sweatpants probably would have absorbed most of it. Then I caught sight of a sure sign of Target's decline into disrepute: the Shaun White collection. It seems Target has partnered with skateboarder Shaun White to sell garish "skater" clothing inspired by urban street urchins to impressionable preteen boys during that delicate phase of development in which they are striving to develop a sense of identity. The identity of a directionless street-rat loitering in a public park is among the last I would want any son of mine to assume. The Walmartization of Target is happening now, reader, and cannot be stopped. Fellow preppies will soon face a choice of whether to brave the fray and benefit from their low prices on sunscreen and paper towels, freeing up funds for 1.5-liter bottles of Old Crow (which also must be purchased alongside the lowest of society, thanks to the state government's statutorily sanctioned monopoly on liquor sales), or pay premium prices at smaller stores in order to avoid the Target-Mart ordeal.

Those who choose the easy way out have many options, which I had long counted out but may soon reexamine. The inter-web is the most obvious solution, for it offers practically everything a gentle-man could want without the need to enter a store, but for a mostly trash-free shopping experience, they have the outdoor shopping complex. Outdoor shopping complexes were created to deter loitering gangs of surly teenagers by removing climate control from the equation and of course prohibiting skateboarding, and also to turn off the grubby riffraff who opt to stretch their greasy dollars elsewhere by filling their spaces with higher-priced merchants in architecturally pleasing buildings among well-manicured grounds with plenty of sunlight and pruned shade trees, all carefully laid out according to years of urban planning research to make shoppers feel at ease. Ideally, the relatively lower-priced stores, like Old Navy and Rite-Aid, are close to the boundaries of the complex, keeping less savory folk from wandering too far into the areas where their social betters are shopping. The whole complex is dotted with eateries offering such cuisine as sushi, baked goods, gyros, sandwiches, and gourmet dishes, all in an effort to keep away the chicken-n-waffles crowd.

How grand would it be to construct a private, members-only shopping center, admission to which was governed by a membership committee? The pipe dream is for a shopping center to be run like a country club, where only members and guests can come to shop, and everyone is subject to a dress code. Membership would be free of charge, and the shopping club would be run for profit like any other shopping center, but the membership committee would be elected by members. Also, a process would be available to petition rescission of membership if a member's conduct or appearance became problematic for a large enough majority of other members. It will never happen because retailers won't want to set up shop where a limited number of consumers can come, but still, a gentle-man can dream. For the time being, I'll have to reevaluate just how much the dollars I save at Target are really worth.

Farewell, Sweet Summer!

While our Northern neighbors mark the official end of summer with the first Monday in September, the changing of seasons could be hardly less noticeable down here in the Dirty South. The day after Labor Day may as well be another hot, stuffy summer's day, making the mothballing of summer's sartorial trappings seem as pointless as a changing-of-the-guard ceremony and as premature as a ninth-grader fondling his first boob. The entire week of Labor Day is an awkward time, when we of good breeding feel compelled to stash away our whites, pastels, and seersuckers, put our socks back on, and keep right on sweltering under the Carolina sun. However, I discovered a way to take some of the awkwardness out of the preppy wardrobe transition: a week at the beach.

The week of Labor Day, my bride and I took off for Long Beach, as the locals have called it since before it was absorbed into the municipality of Oak Island in 1999, per the Southern tradition of clinging to obsolete geographical appellations. Her step-sibs were generous enough to let us stay in their unoccupied rental house for the week. While I thought it appropriate to leave my seersucker shirts at home, I continued to loaf about in lightly-colored polo shirts, khaki shorts, and bare feet while the days gradually grew slightly cooler. By the last evening of our stay, the cool-down after sunset drove me to change into chinos before sitting on the porch for one last session of stargazing. On the drive home, I wore a dark blue polo shirt, khaki chinos, and socks with my Sperrys. In such a casual environment, the wardrobe transition was much smoother and easier to cope with.

I certainly found Long Beach to be quite different from old familiar Wrightsville Beach. The drive down was complicated, involving multiple highways and traffic lights, and took 30 minutes longer than the drive to WB, the route to which I could drive blindfolded by now. The island itself, particularly our section, becomes ghostly quiet after sunset, and if you want exciting night life, you're shit out of luck. However, advantages abound. The house has far more convenient access to the beach than the condo at WB. No doors and gates to lock and unlock, no stumbling down a long, narrow, sandy pathway while dodging tourists lugging surfboards and giant coolers; all we had to do was walk down the stairs from the deck and down a wooden walkway, and we were there on the sand, which was wide-open and as uncrowded as a beach can get without being deserted. Back at WB, especially on Labor Day, we would have been squeezed in among gaggles of cackling high school girls constantly tweeting and hash-tagging, herds of guffawing frat boys chugging Natty Light, trailer-trash families with feral children screaming and running about, and the occasional ghetto-thugz out for a walk. While the people renting the house next door were on the trashy side (every adult male sported at least three tattoos apiece), at least there was plenty of open buffer space between us. No feeling the obligation to "go out" at night and blow money, because there's nowhere to go. The lack of premium cable left us with more time at night to read. And no fretting about keeping Granny's carpet white, white, white!

The best advantage of all, possibly scoring the winning point in the battle of Long Beach vs. Wrightsville Beach, was the absence of any prohibition of drinking alcohol on the beach. Yes, dear reader, after years of having to find increasingly devious means of disguising and concealing my hooch from the hawk-eyed lawmen of Wrightsville Beach who were born too late for the Prohibition Era, I was finally free to sit quietly on the beach and consume all the beer and liquor I wanted with utter impunity. Imagine the serene feeling of inner peace as I cracked open an ice-cold Yuengling and savored the smooth, medium-bodied taste of freedom, the only rumble being that of the surf and not the coppers' pickup truck.

This past week lived up to an ideal I had been missing out on: the classic preppy beach experience. I was free to drink myself stupid on the beach without fear of brushing with the law. I could get out to the beach itself in less than a minute and sit right in front of my private walkway instead of walking down an endless breezeway, taking an elevator, walking through a courtyard, unlocking a gate, and trying not to get knocked over by a surfboard on the long walk through the dunes, then having to walk another 50 feet or so before finding a bit of unoccupied sand among the throngs of tourists, and reversing the process every time nature called. Instead of going out on the town, I spent my days and nights reading, snacking, eating home-cooked meals, and staying up late talking and drinking, comforted by the fact that bedrooms and clean toilets were just steps away, instead of two or three blocks down the street. I made a day trip to the neighboring town of Southport for shopping and sightseeing, where I made the obligatory visit to the town's premier casual dining restaurant, Provisions, and purchased a souvenir t-shirt to add to my collection of souvenir t-shirts from preppy North Carolina coastal restaurants. The house itself was true to the preppy standard: vintage appliances still in working order; hodgepodge of flatware, dishes, and cookware; simple furniture covered with hard-wearing, easy-clean upholstery (in patterns to camouflage stains); color scheme of white, light blues, and pale greens; nubby, sand-colored carpets; the obligatory model tall ship; the collection of seashells gathered over many years straight from the beach (never purchased); shelves full of old puzzles, decks of cards, board games with pieces missing, and faded, dog-eared books; storage areas full of beat-up, half-rusted folding chairs, musty life vests, and children's beach toys; a musty, salty odor all over the house; and decades of family memories (for my bride, anyway). And of course I spent every day wearing the classics of casual preppy beach attire: chino shorts, polo shirts in light colors to reflect the sun's heat away; topsiders without socks; Leather Man Ltd. belts with nautical motifs; and my Tilley hat.

One day I hope to build my own classic beach house, in a 1920s or '30s style, the goal to be as architecturally correct as possible while taking advantage of the most modern materials for the sake of energy efficiency and easy maintenance. The house must appear as if a grandparent or great-grandparent bought the place new and the family has shared it ever since without changing the house's original design. The kitchen sink will be of white porcelain or enameled cast iron, countertops and backsplashes will be simple tile, and the floor will be linoleum, but the appliances will date from the '70s and '80s. Furniture will be plain and hail from various decades. The entertainment system will include a big clunker of a TV from the '80s hooked up to an antenna (no cable), separate VCR and  DVD players, a collection of nautical and beach themed movies on DVD and VHS, a '90s CD & cassette boombox, and an even older turntable with big wood-enclosed speakers. Of course I'll have wi-fi. All walls will be white, and I'll probably carpet the whole house for sound dampening and for the comfort of bare feet. The bathroom fixtures will be replicas of those found in houses in the '30s, down to the exposed shower pipes. I'll keep lanterns, nonperishable foods, and a propane camp stove in a closet for stormy weather. It will be a fun project getting things to look faded and time-worn. Best of all, everything I need will already be there — clothes, hats, shoes, flip-flops, sweaters and jackets for off-season visits, a blazer if I go someplace fancy, beach chairs, beach bags, coolers, sunscreen, towels, sheets, toiletries, and even cooking spices — permitting me to hop in the car with just some groceries and booze and take off for the whole summer.