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Wal-Mart: Nice When It's Not In Your Neighborhood
By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 22, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Aug 22, 2005
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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It's the backdoor retailing maneuver! Wal-Mart is trying to make its NYC inroads by getting a store approved in Staten Island, and one of the reasons it may actually succeed is because the borough is more Republican than the others. But the most telling thing in this NY Times article is that many residents, in spite of loving Wal-Mart's low prices and even traveling to NJ for them, is that they don't want Wal-Mart in their backyard, proving that NJ was made for turnpike jokes, big hair and big box stores. The article also reproduced one of Wal-Mart's borough-specific ads, and it's pretty underwhelming. And Gothamist laughs at Wal-Mart saying that it's getting a raw deal, since there have been other big box stores approved in the city (K-Mart, Home Depot, Target), because, as one of Staten Island's state senators, Diane Savino, says, "Wal-Mart would mean a lot of low-end entry-level jobs, and New York City isn't suffering from a lack of entry-level jobs. We're suffering from a lack of middle-income jobs and high-end jobs. In addition, Wal-Mart has a reputation as being not just vehemently antiunion but of violating every labor law in the book." Not to mention encouraging movie studios and record labels to sanitize their movies or records to their liking. And, besides, there's something depressingly real about being in a KMart and something something aspirational but not really feasible (because how much are we really going to invest in a rental) about visiting the Home Depot.
The Village Voice investigates the anti-Wal-Mart-in-NYC movement. There's going to be an Ikea in Brooklyn. And after a little searching, it seems there are Wal-Marts in the sixth borough!
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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