Scruffus's Open Salon Blog

Roses: A Visual Tour of Downmarket Retail

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:09:08 -0400

If you've lived in the south anytime in the last few decades, you are likely familiar with the Roses department store chain. I haven't been to a Roses for at least 20 years. The department store I remember from my youth was bright, clean, and well-stocked. The linoleum floor shined and the carpeting was clean. Every September, mom would take us there to get our school supplies and Roses had TrapperKeepers, notebooks, pencils...everything. It was where the toy section was stocked with Transformers and Cabbage Patch Kids dolls. I bought my first slingshot there and later, I got a Panasonic Walkman with my babysitting money when they first came out. Roses had everything.

In town for an extended stay and tasked with purchasing new bedsheets for my mom, I decided to forgo the Wal-mart and Target. I made a detour to the Roses in Churchland. Knowing that the big box stores dominate the department store business like they do, I was surprised that Roses still exists. I was curious to see how they did it. What was their secret to survival? The strip mall hadn't changed much physically since the '70s. The A&P grocery next door to Roses is now a Dollar Tree. Its other neighbor that used to be a Fashion Bug sort of store is now a CHKD Thrift Store. Most of the shops have changed. Roses and Zeroe's subs are the only two remaining original stores from my childhood. Zeroe's hasn't changed. They still make toasted subs. What became of Roses? Did the linoleum still shine?

Words are inadequate to describe the scene, so let's take a photo tour of the goods offered at the south's biggest downmarket department store. The company website now describes Roses as occupying the niche market of "high end dollar store". High end, indeed.

" so we want our customers to see value very quickly when they walk into our stores. We don't want it to be subliminal, we want it right in their faces."

- R. Edward Anderson, Roses CEO, 1995

go-to-hell shoes

day-glo slippers for the neon sasquatch

gold vinyl boots...

Bunny slippers...Roses opened in 1915 as a 5-10-15 cent store. Today the prices range from a dollar to fifteen dollars for most items.

I'm becoming disoriented now

When would this purse ever be right? Who authorized this?

fleece underwear

From Booty Pop padded underwear...

...to bulk stale popcorn in bins on the floor...

ghastly...everything is cheap in the store. Cheap prices and cheap quality.

seeking to horrify you with color...

This distresses me.

"Hey, honey, if you squint, they almost look like Corvette taillights!"

Variety Wholesalers has opened new Roses stores in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia this year, bringing residents of those states more shirts like this.

So ugly, they crucified it

Nausea

Neon socks...nobody told me that the 80s were back in fashion

the most redneck of snacks, next to pork rinds...

These are some sort of disgusting knock-off apple fig newtons. Newman's Own makes their version of the fig newton but Paul Newman is a good looking guy. So if you're trying to sell nasty cookies, put a picture of a good looking man on the wrapper, not a drawing of Daddy Ray.

Last time I was here, the back of the store had cash registers and an exit....now you are barricaded in, no escape, no light from the outside...just fluorescent light.

These things...ugh. You have to be damn hungry to eat these.

At this point I start to question if these places happen in other countries. Do people buy these shirts in other places?

Amen...at least we can count on the hat to be discrete.

Roses changed in the late 90s to begin unabashedly targeting the low-end consumer...they presume people with no money have no taste.

There were very few customers in the store...

Gravesite flowers

Variety Wholesalers also owns Maxway, Super 10, Bill's Dollar Store, Value Mart, Treasure Mart, and Super Dollar.

Disturbing

Roses was bought up by Variety Wholesalers in 1997. Variety Wholesalers changed Roses into what it is today...a downmarket department store or "high end dollar store". The website describes their criteria for opening a new Roses: second or third generation shopping centers in urban areas, 25% or greater African-American population within five miles, and a population with a median income of $40,000 or less. With this business strategy, Variety Wholesalers saved Roses from bankruptcy and closure due mainly to competition from Wal-mart and Kmart. But in the process, Roses became unrecognizable from its former retail platform. It is like a hotel that the new owners refuse to maintain. I understand the dollar store approach, but does everything have to be so visually offensive?

I'm becoming shaky from overstimulation...I have to get out of here.

faucet screens...

Dammit...

"Thank you for shopping with us!"

I left feeling odd, partly from all of the shiny things and bright colors, but also because this store is a microcosm of the way the economy has shifted in the last 20 years. Most of the small department stores are gone or have gone downmarket to compete with the national chains. Seeing this store, that I'd seen in better days, in disrepair was disheartening for some reason. I shouldn't care about what happens to a department store, but somehow I feel that the story of Roses relates to the larger story of what is happening in the economy now. The adaptations that smaller businesses have to make to survive in the wake of larger businesses reflects what we as individuals will have to do to adapt to increasing financial pressures as the economy in the US becomes stagnant. Roses' secret to survival was to shift its marketing focus to low-income individuals. With many more people joining the ranks of the low-income segment of the population, there needs to be a business model for individuals to navigate daily life and find success, even if they have to relinquish their previous notions of what success is...sometimes success is just getting by, no matter how you do it. I am not happy with the changes Roses made, but I have to respect their tenacity and perhaps I can learn something from them.

How a Hoarder Prepares for a Hurricane

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:08:18 -0400

Fortuitously, I happened to be in town for the hurricane, since Grandpa lives alone. Grandpa, about to turn 88 in a few weeks, still lives in a sprawling and rapidly decaying four-bedroom, three-bathroom, colonial-style home on four overgrown acres at the end of a dirt lane, a private road largely ignored by vital city services. Family has pressured him for years to sell the property because he is unable to maintain it. The routine maintenance of a house and lawn of this size is out of his reach and budget, and to compound the problem, he is a hoarder, which further explains his unwillingness to downsize. There would be nowhere to store all the stuff.

The items hoarded includes books, photographs, furniture, clothes, paper towels, cameras, film, paintings and empty frames, appliances, tools, obsolete stereo systems, automobiles, boxes and boxes of antiques and magazines, and so many random and unrelated items that it is hard to make sense of it all. It's a mess to me, but to Grandpa it is orderly and comfortable. He knows where everything is because it is all over the tabletops, counters, and floors. It is stuffed into every drawer, cabinet, and closet. It meanders down the stairs, across the fireplace mantle, and perches on the seats of broken office chairs.

The problem at hand isn't the clutter, it's the approaching hurricane, which by all accounts from the t.v. news, will certainly destroy the house, flood the yard, and blow away our very lives. I offer to take Grandpa to my mom's house to ride out the storm. He refuses. He feels safer in his own home. I can't argue that. Modern home construction, like what was used to slap together the homes in my mother's neighborhood, isn't known for its ability to withstand the effects of time, much less hurricane-force winds. So I make plans to stay with Grandpa during the storm.

The first thing we do on Wednesday is go to the supermarket where he gets his prescriptions filled to stock up on his medication and buy what he likes to eat. I found out that my Grandpa's diet primarily consists of powdered donuts, cookies, ice cream, bananas, Coca-Cola, coffee, and rice pudding. He has trouble walking since a fall two months ago so he rides the electric courtesy scooter around the store. I was caught off guard by this. I dropped him off at the front of the store and watched as he slowly, painfully, shuffled into the grocery. When I got back from parking the car, he was already in the scooter, hunched over the steering wheel and sporting a half-grin that said he was up to no good. Now, most old or disabled people using the scooters normally go slow. Not Grandpa. He flicked the button and rolled back on the throttle and was gone. I chased him all over the store, righting overturned displays and apologizing to victims of his bump-and-runs left in his wake. He paid and as he turned to leave the checkout lane, his gnarled hand reached under the bagging area to swipe a stack of paper grocery bags. He hoards these, too, preferring paper bags to plastic garbage bags.

On Friday, I came over with ice and more water in preparation for the hurricane. Grandpa insisted not to worry, that he had supplies for everything else, flashlights, candles, canned goods, a radio, a propane stove, so I started going over these supplies. When Grandpa says he has something, there's no guarantee on it being in working order. He had dragged out the radio from the utility room. It was sitting on the floor and six D batteries were on the table above it. Six dead D batteries and his battery bin contained only three "good" D batteries that expired in 1996. Ok. So a radio wasn't that critical...we could use the car radio to get updates if necessary. Next item was filling jugs of water, the sink, and the washing machine so we'd have "water to flush the toilet." I heard him say it. Water to flush the toilet was what we agreed. On to the propane stove, which turned out to be an old Coleman model from the 1960s. Inspecting the rubber hose connecting the propane canister to the stove, I had some worries, but it looked like it would have to do. Thankfully, the two of the three flashlights had batteries and were working.

On Saturday, the storm was here. We awoke to rain being driven against the windows by gusting winds and the swaying of the massive oaks and Virginia pines surrounding his home. Before noon, we lost electricity, meaning that we also lost water since the house has well water. That's when Grandpa took a trip to the kitchen. He gathered a bottle of white wine vinegar, a pitcher of water, and a roll of toilet paper, then proceeded to the back room. The back room is an enclosed back porch that he uses for, no surprise here, storage. In the middle of the mess stood a potty chair next to a plywood table. He opened the lid of the potty chair and poured in vinegar. I was trying to figure out what he was doing. He then poured in the pitcher of water. At last he plopped the toilet paper roll on the table in front of this undignified contraption and announced, "This is what we are going to use!" I made up my mind I was going to wait until dark and pee in the field.

The storm raged on and I went to bed with a full bladder. Sometime in the wee hours I awoke to silence. The wind was gone and stars shone in the purple light of the early morning. I quietly got up and tried not to bump into things as I navigated the dark and narrow path to the back door. Outside, the air smelled like leaves, shredded leaves. All over the ground were tufts of leaves and small branches. Behind the camellia bush I lifted my dress and was immediately glad that I had escaped the potty chair. We were lucky all around. All of the trees in the yard were still standing. The house was standing. We were still standing.

In the morning, I went out to rake the driveway and clean the front yard of Grandpa's. The sunlight was beautiful and the neighbors were just starting to clean their yards, too. Generators, the one thing Grandpa didn't hoard, buzzed mightily at every house up the lane. Grandpa had his morning coffee and took a nap in the recliner, content that he was not alone and that his stuff was safe. I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the rest of the people in the storm's path. It wasn't until the electricity came back a few days later that we learned that many people lost everything.

Hurricane Earl: Live Report from St. Thomas

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:08:40 -0400

In fifteen minutes, the landlord is shutting off the generator. The power went out in the early morning hours shortly after the first band of rain and wind swept across Cruz Bay in St. John and began battering St. Thomas. I woke up because my ceiling fan was off and I could hear the gusts of wind pouring across the hillside, making the trees hiss and the Mexican fan palm outside my window bend and dance. I lay awake, covered in perspiration, looking up at the useless fan and hoping that I could get ice in the morning. I didn't expect to lose power this quickly.

I spent yesterday at my laboratory, taping the windows, putting away delicate equipment, and stowing glassware. According to the laboratory's owner, our building lost its roof in a previous hurricane so even if Earl isn't a big deal, it's better to err on the side of caution. I also discovered that there is no insurance on any of the laboratory's equipment, which made the task of preparing for the worst all that much more urgent.

As soon as Cost-U-Less (one of our big wholesale warehouse stores) was open, I went there and got water, food, batteries, and fuel. The store was very crowded but everyone was polite. The tension on the island was palpable. People understand that hurricanes here can mean months with no electricity, water, or shipments from the mainland. Gas station lines weren't bad in the morning, but later, lines formed since gasoline shipments from St. Croix can take a while after a storm. Gas stations frequently run out before fuel can be had again.

Before it got too bad today, I went to Mandahl Market to see if they were open and had ice so I could save the perishables in the refrigerator just a little longer. They had two pitiful bags left in the bottom of the ice locker. I bought them. The roads were littered with leaves and rocks, branches and debris blown down from the hillsides. A radio report noted that at least one of the large trees at Havensight had fallen and was completely blocking the road. Power lines were down all across the island. When I got to the top of my hill, I could see whitecaps on Magen's Bay, usually one of the calmest bodies of water here. The storm surge is expected to be 2 to 4 feet. Some friends that live on Hull Bay have sought shelter on higher ground.

The winds are gusting to 60-70 mph and the eye isn't expected to pass us for at least another hour. All I can do is hole up and wait for the weather to calm down. My back deck faces the oncoming storm and I tried to take pictures, but I had to wrestle the door from the grip of the wind. The sky is nearly grey with sheets of sideways rain. Out front, my landlord has lost most all of his banana trees, they lay in heaps on the ground and his mango trees' leaves have been piled by the wind in a heap outside my front door.

Hurricane Earl is expected to strengthen as it leaves here and makes its way to the North Carolina/Virginia coast.

Updates to follow as the electricity and cell tower service permit.

8/31 - The landlord put the generator on again this morning. Last night the gusts of wind as Earl was leaving rattled the walls of my house and were so loud, I couldn't hear myself speak. As the rain subsided, I could see the lights were out all the way up and down the hills. A 6 p.m. curfew was enacted last night until 5:30 a.m. this morning, but that has been extended until 9 a.m. The road crews needed more time to get out and clear trees and power lines from the streets. All public schools are closed today.

The steady buzzing sound of generators is the only manmade noise to be heard. No cars are out. Overall, everything is fine where I am. I hope everyone else on the island is okay, too.

When Your Vacation Ends With a Death

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:07:11 -0400

There is a rising presence of gangs and violence in the Virgin Islands. While Mexico gets much of the press for the violence incurred by the drug cartels, the Caribbean is slowly catching up.

Around the end of June, there was a daytime shooting at K-Mart. A teenaged man walked up to a group of rivals and opened fire in broad daylight. One man was shot in the head and killed and the other was wounded. The word around the island was that this was in retaliation for a death a few weeks previous when a bullet-riddled man was dumped at the hospital by a group of men who did not identify themselves. He was dead long before his "friends" dragged him through the ER doors.

The gunman in the K-Mart shooting was found hiding in the bushes behind the mall and arrested by VIPD. At 18, he was on his way to being a convicted murderer and had effectively destroyed his young life, other lives and set in motion further events.

The man killed in the K-Mart parking lot was being buried on Monday in Coki Point. The cemetery is near a beach very popular with tourists and frequented by the safaris, carrying passengers on excursions from the cruise ships. As the funeral was proceeding, a red Honda pulled to the curb and at least one man opened fire on people attending the burial of the previous victim. Again, this was a shooting in broad daylight. As gunfire ripped across the street, a safari with cruise ship passengers was heading for the beach. A 14-year-old girl riding in that safari was struck in the chest by a bullet and another passenger injured. The girl was transported to the hospital where she died of her injuries. Her family was on the cruise ship Carnival Victory and it was reported that they were flown back to Puerto Rico. Words cannot describe the horror for them.

Tuesday, it was abnormally hot and humid and the air was filled with an oppressive tension. Daylight shootings were not the normal thing here and we just had two in a couple of weeks. Typically, death on St. Thomas occurs in the dark and on some less traveled road. Rarely are the tourists victims of anything more than rudeness. St. Thomas relies heavily on the tourists who come here from the cruise ships and there are frequent advertisements in the newspaper reminding the locals to be nice to the tourists. Do we have to run ads to now remind the locals not to shoot the tourists, too?

My son is 14. I couldn't imagine taking a vacation with him and losing him over someone else's turf battle or wounded sense of "respect". Sometimes I wonder if the gangbangers here even understand the word respect. I think they confuse it with the word "fear" since it is fear and not respect that they are wishing to cause by murdering people in front of others.

The owner of the red Honda turned himself in late yesterday night. But he did not act alone and the problem here is far from over. Many children here grow up without opportunity to do better and find acceptance and opportunity within the structure of gang life. The public school system does a poor job of passing on any useful skills to the students. They are ill-prepared for life, much less college or trade school. Poverty is overwhelming here.

We are well on our way to having 50 murders here in the Virgin Islands this year. With a population of not much over 110,000 people between three islands, that makes the USVI worse than any mainland city's murder rate. Most of the murders are gang related, as in, somebody had earned it. There was a shooting outside of a cockfighting bar recently where the word was that the deceased pretty much had it coming considering the activities they had involved themselves in, owing people money. The common theme here is retaliation. The victims and perpetrators know each other. But in the escalating battle over turf and who is going to fear who, the bloodshed is occurring more often in very public and sunlit places. And that is when murder is no longer a dark and secret act, but a painful and horrible thing that takes along the innocent.

The beach by Coki Point is not the most upstanding place. I would rate it as one of the scariest beaches here, yet the safaris and cruise lines continue to shuttle unwitting passengers to that end of town. The snorkeling is fabulous but if you really just want to catch a contact high or witness shady activity, it's the place for you. I ride by the intersection every morning on the way to work and by 7:30 a.m., people have already taken up their positions under the shop awnings, cussing, drinking and smoking weed. It's paradise in the third world. But if we are so reliant on tourism, the government here needs to protect not just the tourists, but all citizens, and not allow such a popular excursion destination to be a powder keg of illicit activity. The fact that the international media picked up on the story was an embarrassment to the VI Department of Tourism. The funny thing in the USVI is that without outside scrutiny, things are very slow to change, if at all. The USVI needs to face the gang problem and do more than offer platitudes after the murder has occurred or we face becoming the new Caribbean Mexico where everyone will soon live in fear of what the drug trade and gang wars can do to us.

Rastafari Agricultural Fair

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:01:42 -0500

I didn't know much about Rastafari lifestyle before yesterday. On the mainland, there were very few to be exposed to. Here on St. Thomas, there is a large farming community of Rastafarians.

Rain poured sporadically this weekend during the 13th annual Rastafari Agricultural and Cultural Food Fair. Thick clouds climbed over the mountaintops and generously watered everything, plant and animal. We all got wet.

Before, when I thought of Rastafarians, the only thing I imagined they would grow was weed, but Rastafarians actually grow a variety of fruits and vegetables, including papayas, bananas, plantains, lemongrass, starfruit, pomegranates, coconuts, peppers, avocados, okra, tomatoes, bok choy, and squash. Everything is grown sans pesticides or herbicides. Farming is central to their culture. In Rastafari culture, the body is a temple and what is put in it should be pure. Alcohol and fermented foods (pickles and such) are shunned.

While the USVI chapter of NORML had a strong presence, the fair was largely about promoting agriculture and clean living. Smoking ganja is part of Rastafari culture, however the central beliefs are actually more associated with worshipping God (Jah), taking care of the body and clean living.

In modern society, it is easy to forget the importance of agriculture. One of the farmers yesterday told a story of an 11th grade student he had on his farm. He gave the student a sack of corn kernels and instructed him to go into the field and plant the corn. Two minutes later, the student returned and said he was finished. The farmer was astounded and couldn't believe how quickly the student planted all of that corn. He went out to the field to check and found that the young man had planted all of the corn in a single hole instead of spread over the entire field. The moral of his story was that the youth have become disconnected from their agricultural roots and that the production of food is a skill necessary to survival. He lamented that so many young people were growing up in the territory without an understanding of where their food is coming from, without a connection to the Earth.

The colors red, gold and green (and sometimes black) are tied to the Rastafarian movement. Red is associated with the blood of black Jamaican martyrs, gold with the wealth of Africa, and green with the lushness of Jamaica and Ethiopia.

Fresh and prepared food was available for purchase. I sampled some of the ital soup. Ital is derived from the word "vital" and this delicious vegetarian soup is made from squash, onion, sweet potato, tofu, corn, carrots, and beans. The stock was sweet and nicely spiced. A diet of ital foods is said to increase Livity, the life energy of the individual. Ital foods seemed to parallel the dietary restrictions found in orthodox Judaism. Although there is no central doctrine regarding dietary restrictions for Rastafarians, there is an avoidance of modified foods, those with preservatives, colorings, or other artificial additives.

Plants were offered for sale including many herbs, fruits and ornamentals. In the supermarket stateside, I'd seen plenty of papayas, but never had any idea what kind of plant a papaya came from. Above is a type of taro. It is difficult to go from an area where you know the names of almost all of the plants to an area where you have no idea what each plant is.

Metal utensils and cooking pots are often avoided in favor of wooden or clay implements (clay pots used to serve hot food pictured above).