RE: http://www.washtimesherald.com/local/local_story_318223029.html


Well-organized recap of local businesses leading w/ the DCCC Director's reassuring words that the fundamentals of our economy are strong. The one to watch is the turkey industry. Any suffering there could spin off & set back trucking, farming, & shaking down indentured servants.

Chamber-of-commerce type looking through rose-colored glasses with some hints of underlying problems as in "“In order to stay even we have had to expand our customer base and diversify a little bit to maintain our sales flow,” Stoll said."

Local business is going to #### unless you are Wally World, fast food, or second hand somethings. No business person I've spoke to says it's up, but the above are "kind of" holding to past sales.

The "fundamentals" of music are the same today as they've always been -- but that does not mean today's music is any good.-- --[same with local business]

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Originally posted by OBSERVER:
The "fundamentals" of music are the same today as they've always been -- but that does not mean today's music is any good.-- --[same with local business]

Hamm's or Fridrich's, OBSERVER?

How interesting that once upon a time Washington could boast of two Music Stores selling Olds Trombones, Conn Cornets, & who knows how many other instruments. WalMart didn't kill that business, but I've a hunch that if somebody started a successful enterprise selling musical instruments as Fridrich's & Hamm's did, the Super Colossus would jump right in to usurp it w/ cheap Oriental knockoffs as has been unpatriotically done in many other lines of merchandise.

Attention WalMart shoppers! Has anyone ever seen Jethro in there shopping for those cheap oriental knockoffs or does he shop incognito?

WalMart here is a strange place. they sell cut off tools but not the wheels that the tool uses. they sell staple guns but no staples to refill it.
its the same thing in vincennes, but you can get the same tools cheaper.

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Originally posted by Jethro Bodine:

quote:

Originally posted by OBSERVER:
The "fundamentals" of music are the same today as they've always been -- but that does not mean today's music is any good.-- --[same with local business]

Hamm's or Fridrich's, OBSERVER?

How interesting that once upon a time Washington could boast of two Music Stores selling Olds Trombones, Conn Cornets, & who knows how many other instruments. WalMart didn't kill that business, but I've a hunch that if somebody started a successful enterprise selling musical instruments as Fridrich's & Hamm's did, the Super Colossus would jump right in to usurp it w/ cheap Oriental knockoffs as has been unpatriotically done in many other lines of merchandise.

Most fairy tales begin with "once upon a time..." Those days are long gone. We now live in a "throw-away" society. Buy it cheap and throw it away when it quits running. No need for small business repair shops anymore.
I can remember taking shoes with holes to a shoe repair shop on Main Street. How long since anybody has had a pair of shoes half-soled or rundown heels replaced?

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Originally posted by Mr. No Name:
Those days are long gone. We now live in a "throw-away" society. Buy it cheap and throw it away when it quits running. No need for small business repair shops anymore.

Er, Mr No Name, the music stores to which I referred -- Fridrich's & Hamm's -- sold new instruments. They hardly had a reputation as "repair shops."

Your belief that the heydays of musical-instrument shops "are long gone" reflects the fleeting present, but we have no basis to believe that future generations won't pick up where the past left off & play instruments of some type again. We became entranced w/ little flashing lights & buttons to escape into cheap worlds of "fantasy." No reason to think that cheap entertainment will hold sway forever.

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I can remember taking shoes with holes to a shoe repair shop on Main Street. How long since anybody has had a pair of shoes half-soled or rundown heels replaced?

Just a few weeks ago I had my combat bootsoles re-sewn. Specialists in this field tend to be Nicaraguans. What goes around comes around. We just have to keep our eyes open. Dylan's adage that the Times They Are A-Changin' is truer now than ever before.

Who said anything about those stores being repair shops?

Only a dreamer would imagine society going back to the days when there was no big box stores. I've long lamented the passing of such family owned stores as Donalson's men's store where the service was personal and with a smile. I know it will never be that way again, alas!

I was just saying that the "fundamentals" are the same as they have always been -- however in these harder times, it is NOT business a usual as the article in WTH would like it to seem. Very few people are "throwing money to the wind" as they did before. It's to the point of most -- "Do we Have to have this?" -- and not as much "I want" buying. Lot's more -- "If it's something we HAVE to spend the money only. If it's not a have to, we won't do it."

WASHINGTON (AP) - Another round of massive layoffs at Citigroup and more bad financial news Monday led investors to shrug off the lengthy action plan from world leaders designed to address a sagging global economy.
"To put it harshly, there is little point in trying to figure out ways to prevent a disease once a patient is sick," Credit Suisse Japan analyst Shinichi Ichikawa said in a report released Monday.


A sad outlook.

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Originally posted by OBSERVER:
I was just saying that the "fundamentals" are the same as they have always been -- however in these harder times, it is NOT business a usual as the article in WTH would like it to seem. Very few people are "throwing money to the wind" as they did before.

Precisely, OBSERVER. Mr No Name apparently hasn't been around the block enough times to know that the one constant in life is Change. Big-Box stores are based on the outdated fashion concept of four-cars-in-every-garage for each nuclear family.

Washington's Latino influx tends toward extended families, bunching uncles w/ grandmas & other ways 'round. The future of our town can be glimpsed at the corner groceries & snack shoppes that've popped up down in The West End. Parking the smoke-belching gas guzzler to drearily toss stale Wal-Mart-origin cuisine into the oversized shopping cart is oh-so-20th Century. The huge dinosaurs will be taxed out of business for ruining so much good soil w/ their excessive pro-cement policies.

I'll never forget a certain former Mayor shrugging & saying that WalMart's dominance of small-town economies was "inevitable." He should've gotten out more to smell the fresh coffee of a downtown cafe (a New New Cafe) or perused the pupusas that WalMart can only sell stale. Salvadorans'll never buy their basics from a soon-to-be-extinct T-Rex too big & arrogant to care for community Quality concerns.

Who are you kidding...big box stores are becoming extinct! Hogwash. Been shopping in any city larger than Washington lately? Why is it that grocery stores are getting bigger, and selling more prepared foods, so busy working wife's can pick up dinner already to be popped into the microwave or oven.

With super Target stores popping up everywhere along with super Walmarts I think their stock is still a very safe investment. Four cars parked in driveways of homes is more common than ever. Just as every bedroom must have a TV w/game boards, every adult in the family must have his own car. The economy must get much worse before that changes.

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Originally posted by Mr. No Name:
Been shopping in any city larger than Washington lately?

Been to Brooklyn lately? Nimble Chinese entrepreneurs there & elsewhere have no trouble outsmarting WalMart, which after all is merely an ungainly middleman for Chinese junk.

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Why is it that grocery stores are getting bigger, and selling more prepared foods, so busy working wife's can pick up dinner already to be popped into the microwave or oven.

Images in your anonymous rearview mirror, Mr No Name, are smaller than they appear. That stale old WalMart concept of "healthy fresh" microwave-fake food is sinking like the proverbial stone in the soup.

I'm as emotionally (read financially) attached to the future of microwaving as anybody, & don't expect popcorn-popping to go back to the days of Jiffy Pop. But Good Food is far more important to the rising generations than to stuck-in-the-mud "moderns" who never learned to cook. Food traditionally is the largest investment a humble housewife or househusband makes; thus they take Food Quality far more seriously than "with-it" latter-day Baby Boomers do.

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With super Target stores popping up everywhere along with super Walmarts I think their stock is still a very safe investment.

Wanna buy KMart stock, too?

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Four cars parked in driveways of homes is more common than ever. Just as every bedroom must have a TV w/game boards, every adult in the family must have his own car. The economy must get much worse before that changes.

The Big Three are all on the verge of bankruptcy. Oilman Bush Jr's four-cars-in-every-driveway is about to go the way of Herbert Hoover's chicken-in-every-pot prophecy.