Recession kills off local merchants

The buy-local movement struggles under the best of circumstances. All you have to do is walk into your nearest mall to see that: every shopping district in the land, except for those targeted exclusively at tourists, looks identical, a mind-numbing array of the same boring, cookie-cutter chain stores. Even some tourist traps are chain stores.

So it’s disappointing to learn that one of Arizona’s most prominent local merchants, Eddie Basha, had to declare bankruptcy and close a slew of his statewide chain of grocery stores. He’d already closed 10 stores; this latest round of cuts will shutter 14 more.

Bashas’, owned by an old-line Arizona family descended from a Lebanese couple who immigrated here in 1884, actually comprises four subchains:

• Food City, downscale markets that target the Latino population;  
• Bashas’, middle-class neighborhood grocery stores, most of which are small supermarkets;  
• AJ’s, expensive upscale gourmet grocery stores on the Whole Foods model—they actually were here before Whole Foods and in many ways are preferable; and  
• Diné Markets, which cater to Indians on three reservations.

Most of the original Bashas’ markets, at least the ones in the central part of the city, are small and located in aging facilities. They function more as neighborhood convenience stores than as full-blown supermarkets, and so they often have even less selection of goods than the pared-back Safeways with which they compete. In the suburbs and in some smaller towns, the stores are larger, very much like a Safeway. Prices are often better than Safeway’s. But Bashas’ real claim to fame is a friendly, neighborhood-market atmosphere where employees behave as though they care whether customers live or die.

Food City stores appear in barrios and low-income neighborhoods, some of which middle-class shoppers will not enter. These stores, too, are staffed with friendly, upbeat employees, and their merchandise lines are extremely interesting. The Food City near me, for example, carries every variety of fresh and dried chili pepper known to humankind, plus a wide variety of organ meats and animal products with which most Americans are unfamiliar. When pasillos are fully in season, Food City employees set up a big grill in front of the store and roast them over mesquite coals: the perfume is glorious!

Personally, I much prefer this store to the nearby Albertsons, where I haven’t felt safe in years and where customer service is next to nonexistent. Food City stores are frequented by immigrant families; I’ve never been panhandled or hassled in the parking lot, nor have I ever encountered any scary characters inside the store. At the Albertsons, I have actually been chased around the parking lot by a panhandler—two of my neighbors reported the same experience—and I have stood in line with a man who had tears tattooed down his cheek, walked past shady characters doing business on the public phones outside the front door, and otherwise socialized with folks that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. You never see low-life at the Food City.

AJ’s is the jewel in Eddie Basha‘s crown. It’s hard to imagine how it could be profitable, because it’s expensive and pleasant to shop in, and because when Whole Foods came to town, it acquired a competitor with deep pockets and an organic-foods motif. The best of these stores, IMHO, is the original outlet at the interesection of Central and Camelback. Newer, fancier stores with better sushi and wider choices of food and wine have opened in the suburbs, but they lack the warmth and friendliness of the central-city store, a hangout for midtown professionals, socialites, and old-line Phoenicians who still live in North Central.

It’s interesting that the sole AJ’s he’s closed (so far) is the big, gaudy production out in Chandler. M’hijito suggests it’s because all those suburbanites, with their houses worthless and their jobs evaporated, no longer can afford to buy fancy foods. People who live in North Central are largely lawyers and doctors, most of whom are still employed.

We thought our AJ’s would be the first to go, because during the real estate boom the stores at Central and Camelback were slated to be demolished and replaced with another faceless high-rise. We were spared that loss (temporarily) when the bubble popped…but it’s still surprising to see this smaller, less elaborate store survive as 24 other stores in the Bashas’ chain shut down.

The closure of these stores is a real loss to Arizona and Arizonans. Clearly, it’s too late to resist the homogenization of America’s cities, but many of us believe we should cling to those institutions that make our towns, cities and regions unique. Speaking as one bereft American, I find it depressing as hell that Atlanta looks just like San Antonio looks just like Phoenix looks just like San Diego looks just like San Francisco looks just like Seattle. We used to fly up to San Francisco to buy clothes and furnishing, because the City had a wide selection of locally owned, unique stores selling stuff we couldn’t buy anywhere else. Now the place has nothing we don’t have here: nothing but Talbots and Ann Taylor and Crate and Barrel and the Gap and Boston Stores and on and deadeningly on. Clone stores for clone people living clone lives in clone cities.

Is it any wonder we’re so disconnected from our surroundings that we can’t walk without yakking on a phone or drive up the road without texting? The dystopic future imagined forty years ago is here, folks, and we are living in it.

Fight back, my friends. Buy local! Google “buy local” or “local first“plus the name of your city, and you’ll likely find an organization that lists local merchants. Make it a point to do business with one of these merchants at least once a month. Better yet, find one you like and become a regular. Resistance is not futile.