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Singing and Shuffling
Dec. 22nd, 2003 09:15 amWretched week. Of course, I’d been warned. When I signed on to become a fine Cannery Row merchant, my rental agent told me: "There’s not much of a Christmas bump down here."
But did I believe him? I did not. I was going to be the exception that proved the rule. Because I am me – a creature of rare destiny.
BEEP.
Wrong.
Sales are way under what they were a month ago. That’s because the price of gasoline is high and cooler weather has returned to Bakersfield, Fresno and the Central Valley so the people who live there no longer have a hankering to get out. The tourist season is officially over. And locals avoid Cannery Row like the SARS zone.
Thus I sit here paying bills, aswamp in panic. I still think the business model is fundamentally sound. When people walk through the door, enough of them swoon. "Who does the buying for this place?" a businesswoman from Capitola asked Ben yesterday. "They’re a genius. Every single thing in this store is perfect." A family from Poland bought fifty dollars worth of stuff and then clustered around the cash register anxiously waiting for their Polish credit card to go through. A farmer worker and his wife bought a single chili serving plate, paying in quarters and wrinkled dollar bills.
But you can’t float a business on the wallets of outliers.
Well. You can if there are enough of them and your overhead is low enough. And my overhead is actually pretty low. I look around at the big empty glass palaces that house the Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory, the Pebble Beach monogrammed golf tog emporium, the faux jewelry outlet, watch their employees creep out the door to sneak a smoke or flirt with the little skateboard hustler pushing coupons for half-off Silver Shop purchases on straggling bands of pedestrians. (Has the Silver Shop ever sold an item at full price?) It could be worse. I could be paying their workmen’s comp. I could be paying $6000 a month rent.
A hip-looking couple from San Francisco wander into the store. They buy $20 worth of stuff with clever labels: Pain Is Good; Al Gore: I Invented Hot Sauce.
"Can I ask you something?" the guy says, leaning over the counter. "We come down here every year around this time. And generally there’s a sense of hustle and bustle. But this year. All those empty store fronts. Man, the place looks like a ghost town."
I nod and sigh. "It’s an interesting dynamic. See, the landlords own the properties outright. They don’t have mortgages to pay off. Thus, they have no incentive to lower rents – there’s no mortgages to pay off, no banks breathing down their necks. So they can afford to sit on the empty store fronts. And the town’s political hierarchy are lackeys. The place is entirely dependent on tourism but tourism is down and the mayor and his idiots have no clue how to bring it back. They just light the Christmas trees and suck the landlords’ dicks."
The hip-looking couple laugh. "Throw in a bag of those red chili lights too, why don’t you?" says the woman.
See, that’s what I’m really being paid for. Entertainment.
But did I believe him? I did not. I was going to be the exception that proved the rule. Because I am me – a creature of rare destiny.
BEEP.
Wrong.
Sales are way under what they were a month ago. That’s because the price of gasoline is high and cooler weather has returned to Bakersfield, Fresno and the Central Valley so the people who live there no longer have a hankering to get out. The tourist season is officially over. And locals avoid Cannery Row like the SARS zone.Thus I sit here paying bills, aswamp in panic. I still think the business model is fundamentally sound. When people walk through the door, enough of them swoon. "Who does the buying for this place?" a businesswoman from Capitola asked Ben yesterday. "They’re a genius. Every single thing in this store is perfect." A family from Poland bought fifty dollars worth of stuff and then clustered around the cash register anxiously waiting for their Polish credit card to go through. A farmer worker and his wife bought a single chili serving plate, paying in quarters and wrinkled dollar bills.
But you can’t float a business on the wallets of outliers.
Well. You can if there are enough of them and your overhead is low enough. And my overhead is actually pretty low. I look around at the big empty glass palaces that house the Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory, the Pebble Beach monogrammed golf tog emporium, the faux jewelry outlet, watch their employees creep out the door to sneak a smoke or flirt with the little skateboard hustler pushing coupons for half-off Silver Shop purchases on straggling bands of pedestrians. (Has the Silver Shop ever sold an item at full price?) It could be worse. I could be paying their workmen’s comp. I could be paying $6000 a month rent.
A hip-looking couple from San Francisco wander into the store. They buy $20 worth of stuff with clever labels: Pain Is Good; Al Gore: I Invented Hot Sauce.
"Can I ask you something?" the guy says, leaning over the counter. "We come down here every year around this time. And generally there’s a sense of hustle and bustle. But this year. All those empty store fronts. Man, the place looks like a ghost town."
I nod and sigh. "It’s an interesting dynamic. See, the landlords own the properties outright. They don’t have mortgages to pay off. Thus, they have no incentive to lower rents – there’s no mortgages to pay off, no banks breathing down their necks. So they can afford to sit on the empty store fronts. And the town’s political hierarchy are lackeys. The place is entirely dependent on tourism but tourism is down and the mayor and his idiots have no clue how to bring it back. They just light the Christmas trees and suck the landlords’ dicks."
The hip-looking couple laugh. "Throw in a bag of those red chili lights too, why don’t you?" says the woman.
See, that’s what I’m really being paid for. Entertainment.
