Sears seems like it faded away long ago

People woke up Monday to the news reports about Sears filing for bankruptcy. And not the kind that allows a company to skip out on its debts while restructuring itself so it can stay alive.

Sears was Amazon.com before Amazon.com existed

No, it seems like this may be the end for the historic retail giant that has been with us for 125 years, and for many of them was a dominant presence in terms of where we all shopped for goods.

EVEN IF YOU didn’t have a Sears store nearby, there was always the Sears catalog. Which in rural parts of the nation was a dominant presence. It really isn’t a stretch to say that Amazon.com was the same basic business model as Sears – except they use the Internet to make goods available, while Sears went to the expense of publishing hard-copies of catalogs advertising their goods.

But Sears most definitely is a part of the past!

One that I suspect most of us won’t mourn in the least. Unless you happen to think like my step-mother, whose reaction to hearing the news would be to wonder what kind of bargains would be available at the inevitable “Going Out of Business!” sale.

I don’t doubt there are some other people who will have the same reaction. Although I have to confess to being confused, since there have been so many cutbacks and reductions in recent years by Sears to try to buy more time for the company to survive that I don’t even know where there is a Sears store anywhere near where I’m living these days.

Sears stores of my youth … 

I KNOW WHERE all the Sears locations within Chicago proper were. As in “used to be.” We don’t have Sears any longer in the Second City that was the corporate headquarters to the one-time retail giant.

Even many of the suburban locations have long-since closed.

Personally, I might be inclined to want to take a trip to the Sears store where my family often shopped when I was a child, which was the Sears that was an anchor to the River Oaks shopping mall in suburban Calumet City.

Except that store closed some five years ago. I’ve heard countless schemes and proposals for how the city wishes to reuse the building, but none of them have managed to come about.

… are already long-gone from the retail scene

ON THOSE OCCASIONS when I happen to be in the area and drive by it, I see a huge vacant structure begging either for a new tenant or for someone to come along and tag it with graffiti. Of which I fear the latter is the option more likely to occur.

The Sears I remember of my childhood was a place where one could purchase just about anything. A “One-Stop Shop” for all of life’s needs.

But then, our society’s desires changed. Perhaps we think we outgrew Sears. Or perhaps some of us wanted the impression of purchasing higher-quality merchandise and were willing to pay a premium for it.

Although I suspect the majority of us were more interested in finding the financial bargains they could find shopping elsewhere. Just as those old neighborhood retail shops are gone because someone else could provide similar goods cheaper, Sears also got undone by the same basic premise.

The original Sears corporate complex

AFTER ALL, IT would cost a lot of money to keep a fully-staffed store with many departments – including many with specialty salespeople who actually understand their product.

From a business end, it’s cheaper to have the big-box model staffed with retail clerks who know nothing and provide next-to-no service or assistance. Something to keep in mind the next time you shop there and can’t get anybody to help you. You’re getting what you pay for.

The 'tower' no longer caries Sears brand name

Some of us will mourn the memory of Sears. We’ll stubbornly insist on using the Sears moniker to ID the building bought by the Willis Group. But then we ought to think of just when was the last time we bought anything from one of their stores?

In my case, I can’t even remember. I suspect I’m not alone. That’s why they’re soon-to-be no more.

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Cook County ‘pop tax’ upsets political structure’s sense of who matters

If you think about it, it’s really not surprising to learn that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, doesn’t think much of the penny-per-ounce pop tax being charged by Cook County government.

Is Preckwinkle's 'pop tax' really a threat ...

Republican political operatives are gloating at the very notion that Madigan, who usually is supportive of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, is trying to concoct measures by which the pop tax would go away.

WHETHER THAT MEANS Madigan putting the strong-arm tactics to certain members of the Cook County Board to get them to shift their support from the tax that, in part, is supposed to help the county cover the cost of maintaining its hospitals and health care programs.

Or by having the General Assembly pass a law that would supersede the county’s ability to impose such a tax.

It could be either tactic. We’ll have to wait and see by which means Madigan attempts to undermine the county’s ability to use its taxing authority to raise money for itself.

In one sense, it could be perceived as the state meddling in county government business. But the reality is that all the layers of government do wind up getting intertwined. And other officials are now deciding to get involved in the pop tax because they’re fearful voters determined to vote “no” on the tax will wind up voting “no” on everything and anything.

IT WAS KIND of like a few years ago when then-county board President Todd Stroger tried balancing out the Cook County government budget with a boost in the county’s share of the sales tax.

... really a threat to Madigan majority?

Which combined with the state tax and any local taxes charged by municipalities. As many critics were quick to point out, the county’s increase drove the whole sales tax within the Chicago city limits to just over 10 percent.

Since the local political perception is that Chicago city government is most important and that Madigan’s long-time influence puts state government at a next rung, it means that the county had to assume a position of lesser importance.

Its sales tax hike had to go in order to get the overall sales tax in Chicago below 10 percent.

JUST AS NOW Madigan is fearing that his rank-and-file legislators in suburban Cook County might have their lives complicated when they run for re-election next year, IF the pop tax remains in place.

How quickly would Wrath of Rahm reign down on Toni?

So Cook County government, as an entity, may have to sacrifice its tax, because the carbonated beverages lobby (I refuse to use the label “Big Soda,” it just sounds so lame) doesn’t like the idea of anyone else making money off their products. People are just as offended by the 7-cent-per-plastic bag at stores in Chicago, yet nobody's telling the city they have to drop it!

I have to admit the pop lobbying effort appears more successful than that of the healthcare advocates, including former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who failed to take on pop in his own city by restricting the sale of those 32-ounce cups of pop – which really are vulgar is you think seriously about such a portion.

My own thought is that, while I agree with the premise of the tax and think that trying to benefit a public health goal is noble, seeing vending machines reading “kidney failure” and “Type 2 Diabetes” is just a bit too phony – and just as lame as the “Big Soda” label.

SO NOW MADIGAN is going to get involved, for his usual reason – self-preservation. There have been many noble concepts throughout the years that have died political deaths because Madigan felt his Illinois House leadership would be threatened by such efforts. Although there is some legitimacy to the converse position -- you can't accomplish anything if you lose the prior election.

How phony Illinois GOP rhetoric can be at times

Of course, I found it somewhat ridiculous to read the Republican response Friday to this issue – they want us to believe that any Democrat who NOW votes against the pop tax is merely being “Madigan cronies simply following the leader.”

Not that I ever expect Democrats (or any Chicago interests) to be worthy in the minds of the Illinois Republican Party. It’s usually best to ignore the perception of GOPers who, at times, seem embarrassed to be from the “Land of Lincoln.”

All I know is that it is just as likely that if this tax does die a month or so from now and does result in county funding cuts for health care services, I fully expect many of those same people will shift their ire to the health care cuts! Some people are just determined to complain – no matter what the issue.

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Chicago’s self-segregation hurts city’s chances of gaining future success?

I’m never sure what to think of people who want to point out the fact that Chicago is a racially- and ethnically-segregated city.

In this Chicago map, black people are blue, the whites are orange, and Latinos are the greens interspersed throughout. Map provided by Metropolitan Planning Council 

Oftentimes, the people who bring this argument up come from places that are so overwhelmingly white (compared to Chicago’s roughly one-third equal split between white, black and Latino) that the only reason they don’t have separate black enclaves is because they don’t have black people living there at all.

BUT I’M NOT going to deny the reality our city exists in a way in which people can avoid contact with individuals who aren’t exactly like themselves – unless they happen to wander into a nearby neighborhood to try out an ethnic restaurant.

Dinnertime may be the only time we integrate, before rushing back home to our fortress-like neighborhoods meant to keep out those not like ourselves.

This issue was the focus of a study by the Metropolitan Planning Council and the D.C.-based Urban Institute, which released a study Tuesday saying that Chicago is the fifth-most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.

I suppose we can take some joy in the fact that we’re better than the Milwaukee metro area (number four) and that places like New York or Cleveland are comparable, but it doesn’t really mean much.

THE STUDY, FUNDED in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that we often hear about if we pay attention to public television, tries to make an economic argument for increased integration of the multitude of groups that reside in Chicago.

A better-integrated city would mean more economic opportunity for all residents, implying those segments of our city’s society that now could be perceived as a financial drag on us all would actually provide a boost.

NEIGHBORHOODS: Chicago strength, or impediment?

Chicago-area residents would earn an extra $4.4 billion per year in income, the gross domestic product for the area would boost by $8 billion and we’d have 30 percent fewer homicides – but 83,000 more residents with bachelor’s degrees. Or so the study predicts.

Of course, achieving this theoretical economic growth would require some serious changes in the way things are perceived in Chicago.

FOR ONE THING, the concept of various ethnic groups each having their own unique neighborhood is something that often is thought of as a strength of our city – you can find people with ties to just about every place on Planet Earth in an ethnic community somewhere in the city.

I suspect if extraterrestrial life ever were found elsewhere in the galaxy, it would be just a matter of time before those outer-space lifeforms would immigrate to Earth, and set up residence in their own Chicago neighborhood.

Although would that add to the mixture of diverse Chicagoans? Or to the idea of segregation, since they’d be living off by themselves?

Chicago wouldn’t be Chicago, or at least the city we now know and many of us love, if we truly pushed for increased integration on racial grounds.

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS thought one of the most interesting parts of “Boss,” the biography of former Mayor Richard J. Daley by newspaper columnist Mike Royko, was where he described the “ethnic state” nature of Chicago’s composition and how it affected the way we perceive things.

“You could always tell, even with your eyes closed, which state you were in by the odors of the food stores and the open kitchen windows, the sound of the foreign or familiar language and by whether a stranger hit you in the head with a rock,” Royko wrote.

That was Chicago of perhaps three-quarters of a century ago, yet in some ways, it hasn’t changed much. Except for the fact that black people used to be penned up into a single neighborhood (Bronzeville), rather than occupying much of the city’s South Side. With white and black neighborhoods often separated by Spanish-speaking enclaves to serve as a racial-tension reduction presence, of sorts.

A status that the study says “we need more deliberate interventions to accelerate our progress.” Although I don’t doubt that some knuckleheads amongst us would perceive those “interventions” as somehow being unnatural and against Chicago’s very character.

TAKE THE MOST recent presidential election results.

 

TRUMP: Has his Chicago backers

While Donald Trump may only have received 12.41 percent of the city’s vote, consider that some of the most intense white enclaves had precincts that gave him nearly 70 percent of the vote, compared to overwhelmingly black neighborhoods where he was lucky to get just over 1 percent.

Maybe it means the Trump mindset has established its niche in Chicago, and any effort to “desegregate” is going to be a long, drawn-out process that I likely won’t live long enough to see complete.

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What did Thursday's ‘Day w/o Immigrants’ accomplish?

I wasn’t the least bit shocked when I read through some of the commentary posted on Facebook in response to several stories that had been written about the “Day Without Immigrants” protests that took place Thursday.
 

I complied, inadvertently

The nativist nitwit segment of our society wanted to make sure we all knew they think the people who participated in protest are irrelevant to our society, and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials would be wise to arrest protesters so as to garner a large share of future deportees.

IF ANYTHING, WHAT appalled me the most was the poor grammar of most of these nattering nabobs of negativism (to steal from the spirit of one-time Vice President Spiro Agnew’s quote that was his one positive contribution to our society).

Their spelling stinks and their grammar was atrocious. This coming from the people who go about thinking they’re the “real” Americans.

I suspect many of the immigrant protesters for whom English is an acquired language probably speak and write it better!

For it would seem that these protesters, consisting both of immigrants to this country and people who want to make it clear that the nastiness emanating from the mind of our current president has nothing to do with the American Way of life!

PEOPLE WERE ENCOURAGED not to go to work or school or spend any kind of money. The protest was meant to be a one-day example of the economic impact the so-called foreigners (or whatever stupid slur one might choose to use) have on this country.

Spirit reminiscent of this 2004 film

There were noon hour protests in Chicago with people marching from Union Park on the Near West Side to the Federal Building plaza. Which actually seems like a common destination for protests in Chicago these days.

The women marched there. Now the immigrants – although they didn’t achieve the hundreds of thousands of participants that the ladies did when they chose a Saturday morning to participate.

It makes me think that many immigrant types had to work for a living. Otherwise the crowds could have been larger.

AND WHAT DOES it say that many of the xenophobic types had the time to take to Facebook (and probably Twitter too, I haven’t bothered to check) to write their rants all through the afternoon?

Was Elia really talking about nativists?

It reminds me of one-time Chicago Cubs manager Lee Elia’s famed obscenity-laced rant when he said “85 percent of the world are earning a living” while the other “15 percent” have the time to go to weekday afternoon Cubs games so they could harass the ballplayers.

Could it be that the “15 percent” who write these pathetic rants and the “46 percent” of people who voted for Donald Trump to be president are the same people?

It also amazed me the degree to some businesses acknowledged reality and closed for the day – and not just a few shops in the Little Village neighborhood. Chicago’s famed Berghoff Restaurant forced its usual noon-hour lunch crowd downtown to have to acknowledge the immigration issue.

Bayless joins in the cause

WHILE CELEBRITY CHEF Rick Bayless closed four of his Mexican-oriented restaurants, and said he’ll donate proceeds from the two restaurants he kept open to groups fighting to defend those immigrants being harassed.

Certainly a good move on his part – since he can now claim to have made an economic sacrifice and gain positive publicity by taking an action he had little choice but to do. Although I expect the Latino activist types who get all worked up that the pop star chef of Mexican cuisine is actually a white boy native of Oklahoma won’t want to give him any credit.

Forced downtown lunchgoers to address issue

There was even the Pete’s Fresh Mart chain of supermarkets that focuses its business on neighborhoods that often are ignored by Jewel. Their Southwest Side stores were closed. I wouldn’t know personally because I didn’t do any shopping Thursday.

Sure enough, I complied with the protest by not doing shopping or engaging in commerce. Athough I did keep a previously-scheduled doctor’s appointment – does that make me a “traitor” to la causa?

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