Posted 2:46 PM by Gene

A key tenet of RENDELLISM is, "Well, it's better than nothing." Case in point: Williams-Sonoma has opened a cutesy-pie high-end pillow and accessory store on Chestnut Street, in an old Woolworth's. The Woolworth's occupied two floors of a four-story building, stretching end-to-end a half a city block, and at its height was crowded with unpretentious customers buying household goods and candies, or getting a decent hamburger at the counter. This store occupies perhaps a quarter of that space (the back has a forlorn looking "customer pick-up entrance"), the wood floor screams, "LOOK AT ME! I'M AFFLUENT!", and it's supposed to appeal to the yuppies and gays who are at the center of the RENDELLVERSE. As you might expect with a cutesy-pie high-end store it's sterile, and fake, and uninviting, and there's little for the eye or mind to linger on, and the few customers wandered in and out, as did I. (Another irony: probably most of the merchandise is made in CHINA.) Apparently all manner of cutesy-pie high-end stores will soon be its neighbors, all looking alike with exposed ceilings and high-intensity lighting and look-alike goods. I get mad because had some decent middle-class retailers not fled our city screaming, and had they not been replaced by ghetto hoods selling $2 sneakers and [C]RAP equipment, this wouldn't have happened. Instead, we get a city for the walking dead in a dying city. And they're AFFLUENT!

P. S. The building's second floor will soon be occupied by a HIP BOWLING ALLEY, meaning in time all of Center City will be occupied by HIP, AFFLUENT, YOUNG, UNMARRIED, WALKING-DEAD ANDROIDS!