Trinity Site revisited. Just saw Kristin Henderson's op-ed.
Being ever the disloyal Dem, I more closely agree with former councilor Robert Gibson. Some
consider challenging the Smiths option to be beating a dead horse. I think we
have been beating a dead horse on this for some time now and the dead horse is
that we can somehow create a shopper's Mecca in Los Alamos simply by throwing
land at developers.
Robert Gibson:
I offered my own foaming rant few months ago, but this never
got published by the Monitor.
http://labikes.blogspot.com/2012/01/krogerville.html
It did just get picked up by the Daily Post. Go over and let Carol Clark make some money courtesy of your mouse clicks.
It did just get picked up by the Daily Post. Go over and let Carol Clark make some money courtesy of your mouse clicks.
9 comments:
Dems trying to use government to pick winners and losers. The only thing more offensive is GOPs doing the same while trying to wear a "small government" mantle. Will they simply ban bikes from this taxpayer-funded largesse?
Actually we already have three bikes shops in town.
All three operate out of a home rather than in a business district and concentrate on repairs and special orders. None, to my knowledge, stocks a complete line of bicycles and can compete on an equal footing with the big dog full service shops in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. That, to my knowledge, has not worked here (i.e., Land of Oz) and I doubt having a Krogerville Mall will change that, but time will tell.
I may be mistaken, but I doubt Kroger will place much of an emphasis on nurturing a full-service bike shop, though I could see them stocking cheap cassettes, inner tubes and containers of Slime much like you can find in the bicycle section of the Wal-Mart. Heck, they might even splurge and bring in a small inventory of those hideously heavy, disposable, one-season Taiwanese bikes in a full range of adult and kids' sizes!
It is, after all, a marketplace store! And isn't that what is supposed to make all of our retail dreams come true up here? And isn't cheap, disposable convenience what we're all after anyway?
--Little Jimmy
Oh, and one other thing. Recent changes to American shopping habits and to retail models within the bicycle industry are helping ensure that fewer and fewer full-service big dog shops are going to be in existence. Witness the recent shuttering of all locations of ABQ Bicycle Center after nearly 40 years in business and the slow, quiet, deaths of other well-established shops across the country. This is not time to be in the bicycle industry, I'll tell you that. I must be nuts....
--Little Jimmy
I'm pretty cynical about American (and that includes Los Alamos) shopping habits and core values. Forty years of buying cheaper shit from overseas, coupled with the de-industrialization of the US, has resulted in the country being broke. In part, because we have not done anything to balance the exodus of these industries with something to take their place. I guess like all great civilizations and nations, we are on that downward ride of the roller coaster.
We keep borrowing money we don't have to buy trinkets, and rather than challenge ourselves to develop something (that means invest, not spend) we can export or use at home, we just whine and bitch that we don't have a Big Box store selling cheap shit from overseas within five minute SUV distance. Given where Krogerville is being built, it WILL be SUV distance.
When Uncle Sam starts pulling the plug on jobs up here, this will be a ghost town because the myopic and spoiled descendents of Oppenheimer only cared about a Wal-Mart or Krogerville. That's the blunt way of saying what Robert Gibson said nicely.
Well, you can tell why I didn't bother running for Council. I'd be lucky if my dog voted for me. I'd be lucky if I voted for me.
Well stated! There really isn't much worth while stuff missing from the LA shopping scene... REALLY.
I am always impressed when I go to Walmart for a few simple cheap things (socks, underwear, coffee cups, etc.) and I see fat folks with huge carts full of cheap crap and terrible food in line for checkout. Unfortunately, this is majority America.
do you think this is why some proponents of the new smith's thought wider aisles were one of the selling points?
One of the few points made by the anti-nuke movement that I spent more than a moment considering was that if the Feds shut down the bomb factories, all us Ph.D.s and engineers in BombTown, Oak Ridge, etc., would have to hump the private sector for a paycheck and this might jumpstart more high tech output in the economy (you can't market bombs on the free market--not without getting a knock on the door from the local FBI Office, anyway). Its an interesting thought.
OTOH, I listened to an NPR story yesterday about how our best and brightest engineers are very busy--putting your friend or relative's face and body on violent video games you can play on your cell phone. Wow. I'm inspired....
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