But that's bye the bye; you don't care about that.
No, you come here for the drama. The insight. The sturm-und-drang. So I'm here to announce that we really ARE in a Great Recession. Y'know how its said that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job and a depression is when you lose yours?
Well. it's officially a "Great Recession" when the local lingerie coffee kiosk goes under.
"Sadie's Hot Spot", a.k.a "Sadie's Ladies, "Home of the D Cup", the bra-and-panties java hut on my way to work in Oregon City is closed and up for lease.
Mind you, it's not like things are dandy elsewhere in Strip Mall Land, down there along McLoughlin Boulevard between Milwaukie and O-City. I'd say that some of the older, seedier strips are anywhere between one third to one half vacant. Several places are looking increasingly scruffy and tattered, too, like the old, starving caribou, you know, on those nature specials where the wolf pack is getting peckish and the deep cold and blowing drifts are slowing the herd? You can tell just driving by that there's gonna be blood on the snow pretty damn soon.
Or panties. Whatever.
I always figured that, people being people, there'd always be a way to sell coffee using breasts. That Sadie had a gimmick that would never lose money. That the Starbucks' and Dutch Bros. might go but the gals in teddies - like the shapely adorable on the right (yes, there's even a "myspace" page full of snapshots of the lovelies pouring jamoke...) would be there frothing milk long after I retired.
But maybe not. Maybe things really ARE that bad. Because when the guys of Southeast Portland decide that they can't afford to pay $4.50 for a cup of joe to look at the woman serving it in a schoolgirl outfit and gawk at her cleavage, times really ARE tough.
3 comments:
So many businesses are closing in our area.
All marinas have closed save for one; all photo shops; many car lots. One of two malls is almost totally vacated, save for the cineplex and two stores.
Yet I read they're building houses in Las Vegas, while so much inventory sits empty -- what gives?
Lisa: I don't know, honestly.
My cynical thought is that the economic game is now so rigged that we can't "see" the hands moving the cups and can't figure out where the ball is hidden. The "derivative" shell game is a perfect example - my understanding is that even the Wall Street types have only the vaguest idea where all the money is going...and yet they are frantic to kill Lincoln's bill to regulate the damn things.
I think that, in the old catchphrase the troops used during the Civil War, that this is a rich man's Recession and a poor man's Depression.
FDC,
I have heard the same re. the derivatives ruse.
Thank you for the catchphrase -- that seems to sum it up.
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