UP AGAINST THE WAL-MART

My wife’s aunt Elizabeth came to stay with us last week. Although she was born in Culver City, nearly three decades ago she married and moved to a small town in Nevada – so small that Reno’s the closest major metropolitan area, and it’s two hours by car.

One day, toward the end of her visit, she asked if there was a Wal-Mart nearby. I must confess, I've never been inside a Wal-Mart. Maybe it's my middle-class elitism, but I've always disliked the way it destroyed small businesses around the country, and created a horrible sort of sub-economy whereby millions became dependent on low-paying, low-esteem careers inside the gigantacenter’s depressing retail assemblyline.

But Elizabeth loves Wal-Mart. I'd imagine when you're a small towner, it's the only game in town, and it has a kid-in-a-candy-store effect. I sort of feel that way when I walk into Target. So, without thinking, I said, yeah, there’s one up at Roscoe and Van Nuys in Panorama City. I gave her directions and she ran out the door.

When she returned an hour later, she was breathless and pale, looking like she’d survived a war zone. Seems I’d neglected to inform (warn?) her that this particular Wal-Mart, sitting in the space one occupied by The Broadway department store, caters to a different demographic than she's accustomed to. She pretty much figured it out when the store's signs said stuff like "Siempre precios bajos. Siempre." And, to put it delicately, she saw a lot of hostility surface among her fellow consumers.

(Warning: Transitional understatement ahead.) Times have changed. When I first moved to the Valley in 1973, the Panorama Mall was not enclosed. It was a long strip of weathered shops, with a Woolworth, maybe a nickel and dime fabric shop, and a lot of mom and pops that smelled like musty old peoples’ apartments. Needless to say, not a desirable shopping locale. In the shadows lurked three creaky department stores – Broadway, Orbach's and Montgomery Ward. It was the kind of center that peaked probably in 1961. Meanwhile, indoor megamalls like Northridge Fashion Center were all the rage.

I lived nearby in Sepulveda, and often rode my bike past Panorama Mall on my way to the library, or for a Saturday matinee at the Americana 6 theater on Van Nuys (saw Jaws like five times there!), or, slightly later, the Tower Records that inexplicably expanded into Panorama City.

By 1979, the Panorama Mall was reinvented as a compact, one-story enclosed mall, with Broadway as its anchor. Didn't do much good, though. The center remained a ghost town. I got a job at Hickory Farms and there were nights when I literally had no customers for four hours. I got realy good at cleaning mold off cheese, however. You can ask my wife -- those mold-cleaning exercises were valuable lessons that have lasted a lifetime. By the time I left the Valley for college in 1982, Panorama City was in the rear-view mirror for good. Or so I thought.

When I moved back as a family-toting homeowner in 2003, it was an entirely different neighborhood. One in which the presence of Wal-Mart made perfect sense.

Sorry Aunt Liz. My bad.