JC Penney Might Be Going Belly Up (Along With Sears)

[LizzieMaine]

By the end of the line, the lunch counter was pretty much all that was still a going concern at our Newberry's -- it was a cheap, fast easy place for downtown workers to get breakfast and lunch -- but otherwise you hardly ever saw anyone in there. Too bad, because when I was working at the radio station when it was downtown it was an irreplaceable resource for emergency office supplies, tape cassettes, razor blades, and other radio-studio necessities. I once manufactured an emergency microphone pop-filter with a cheap embroidery hoop and a nylon stocking from Newberry's.

 

[tonyb]

Among the greatest dilemmas and frustrations of my life is loving art but despising the art "scene."

Please, forever keep me as far away from "First Fridays" and "Art Walks" and all that phony **** as you can.

 

[belfastboy]

As a very distant observer, but one who pays some attention to this stuff as part of his business, that market has a very bubble look and feel to it. I am not close enough to the market and all its details to argue that point (I'm sure the local real estate people have a story they believe that justify the prices), but as a person in the financial markets, the warning signs of a possible bubble are there to me.

Hard to say, there are multiple opinions by the real estate industry/pundits on whether it is a bubble or not, crash or a small correction or continued growth. The Provincial government slapped a 15% tax on off shore non resident purchases here in BC that really threw a bucket of ice water on the market. So that money skipped BC and is now super heating the Toronto market. I don't much care, my house is not an investment for me, it is where I live and will continue to live as long as I am able. Got into the housing market 47 years ago, when I paid $26K for my first house. No kids, no desire to leave anything to anybody. Bubble or not I am immune, thank goodness!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Among the greatest dilemmas and frustrations of my life is loving art but despising the art "scene."

Please, forever keep me as far away from "First Fridays" and "Art Walks" and all that phony **** as you can.

The very bane of my life. Wine-and-cheezers sauntering along the sidewalk ooohing and ahhing at every trite and derivative thing in front of them. And then turning their noses up when you tell them they have to pay to come in and see the movie.

 

[BlueTrain]

My daughter rather enjoys art and want to visit the Hirshorn in D.C. next time she visits. The stuff on display make you wonder if they're putting one over on the viewer. But it reminds me of something else.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who is currently fairly well-known. Sixty years ago, an article about her sometimes husband, Diego Rivera, would not have even mentioned her. Anyway, there was a pretty good movie made about her not pretty good life some years back. In the movie, she is taken to an exhibition of her art somewhere at a gallery in Mexico City. Being in Mexico, everyone at the art gallery looks ever so Mexican, yet somehow, standing around the way you do at such things (I imagine), they also manage to look just like the sort of people you'd see at an art gallery. So I guess there is a world of art and I'm not part of it.

 

[belfastboy]

My daughter rather enjoys art and want to visit the Hirshorn in D.C. next time she visits. The stuff on display make you wonder if they're putting one over on the viewer. But it reminds me of something else.

Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter who is currently fairly well-known. Sixty years ago, an article about her sometimes husband, Diego Rivera, would not have even mentioned her. Anyway, there was a pretty good movie made about her not pretty good life some years back. In the movie, she is taken to an exhibition of her art somewhere at a gallery in Mexico City. Being in Mexico, everyone at the art gallery looks ever so Mexican, yet somehow, standing around the way you do at such things (I imagine), they also manage to look just like the sort of people you'd see at an art gallery. So I guess there is a world of art and I'm not part of it.

A travelling exhibit of her works hit Vancouver a few years back. We took the guided tour and a very earnest young woman extolled her art as she related some of the details of her life. I had the temerity to ask..."if Frida had not married the much more renowned Rivera would anyone, outside her immediate family, have ever heard of her?". After shooting daggers my way and an overly long silence she did concede that the marriage to Rivera went a long way in making her fame.

 

[BlueTrain]

We actually employ artists here where I work. One was from Columbia (and proud of it) and had even graduated from the Corcoran School of Art. She said she simply didn't like her (Kahlo's) work and didn't understand it.

We employ another Columbian who is a cabinetmaker for us. I don't know what he thinks of Frida.

 

[Fading Fast]

Among the greatest dilemmas and frustrations of my life is loving art but despising the art "scene."

Please, forever keep me as far away from "First Fridays" and "Art Walks" and all that phony **** as you can.

I do my best to just ignore all of that "scene" / all of the sophistication (maybe it is, but it feels contrived to me - perhaps I'm just not smart enough to get it) and enjoy and learn about what I like or are interested in. There are so many resources today - books, museums (from the huge to the tiny), the internet, etc., and so many people away from the scene that are informed and willing to share - that I enjoy art without getting involved in the art "world."

My girlfriend's mother has two PhDs (art history and eduction), has taught art history at the university level, is ridiculously smart, is a modestly successful artist (her paintings sell or sold when she was younger) and is not the least bit bitter as she's had a good career in the arts. But she has no interest in the art "scene" as she genuinely cares about the art and artists - what makes them tick, how art reflects the world, how you can use art to show different perspectives, how one medium versus another can be leveraged in a special way, etc. The "scene" to her is a pretentious sideshow (but she would say it in a nicer way - she's from a generation and culture that says little and criticizes rarely and demurely).

 

[LizzieMaine]

Best movie about art ever made? Banksy's "Exit Through The Gift Shop." It pretty much says all that there is to be said about the "art scene."

 

[Bruce Wayne]

LizzieMaine my downtown isn't that much different than yours. The conciliatory is concerned about two buildings while ignoring numerous other vacant areas.

http://chestertontribune.com/Town of Chesterton/rileys_railhouse_owner_set_to_bu.htm

 

[TimeWarpWife]

We never had Murphy's here, but we did have J. J. Newberry's, which was, I believe, part of the same octopus-like dime store combine. Our Newberry's was one of the last in the state but it shut down in the late '90s and its building -- a beautiful thing with terra-cotta bricks -- was engulfed and assimilated into just another dreary red-brick annex by the local art museum. Where once old ladies in hairnets sold hamburgers now old ladies in black turtlenecks sell Wyeth postcards.

I loved going to Newberry's when I was a child! It was a great place for a kid because you could browse the toy section, buy a new pet (gold fish, parakeet, or turtle), and get one of the best hamburgers I've ever eaten with a side of crinkle cut fries and a cherry Coke (Coke with real cherry syrup added to it). I looked forward to Thursdays during the summer when I lived with my grandparents because that's the day my grandmother "went to town" to do her shopping and pay bills. We always either had lunch at the Newberry's counter (I also loved spinning around on their counter chairs) or White Castle. Sadly that Newberry's closed in the late 80s.

As far as Penney's and Sears, again I have fond memories of shopping there for clothes in the 70s, but as an adult I've rarely shopped at either. The last time I shopped at Penney's it was only because ours has a Sephora in it and there was a perfume I wanted to try. Penney's is much easier to get in and out of than the Sephora store located inside the mall and quite a distance from all the entrances.

 

[tonyb]

Best movie about art ever made? Banksy's "Exit Through The Gift Shop." It pretty much says all that there is to be said about the "art scene."

My wish, which I'll never live to see, is for fine art to be an ordinary part of the average schmo's everyday life.

I never have accepted that a person who drinks Schlitz and munches on potato chips is any less capable of appreciating good art than is any tweedy member of the Brie and Bordeaux bunch. I fear that for those in that latter category, their participation in the "scene" is a cultural signifier, and that they would rather we declasse types keep our distance.

No need to ask me twice.

 

[Haversack]

There used to a fair amount of art, (or at least representational art), incorporated into public buildings for everyone to see. It might be subtle like the frieze of walrus heads, sea serpents, and icicles which adorned the old Alaska Commercial Company building in San Francisco. Or it might be monumental. I was reminded of this this past weekend while browsing in a bookstore. A book on the work the San Francisco architect, Timothy Pflueger, showed one of his drawings for the center anchorage of the suspension portion of the Bay Bridge. It depicted in bas-relief a 500' tall muscular man, streamlined in the Art Deco Style, grasping two ends of cables together.

Granted these are both examples of public art which have context and relate to the purpose of its setting. A lot of modern public art does not. Since most large modern buildings have to use a certain portion of their budget for public open space and art, we have tended to get what architect James Wines called "the turd in the plaza". A piece of abstract sculpture with no relation to its setting or location.

Humans beings, being what they are of course, sometime find a derisive meaning in the piece of art. In San Francisco in the plaza in front of the former headquarters of the Bank of America sits a large piece of public art named "Transcendence". It is a lump of 200 tons of polished black granite. It quickly acquired the name, "The Banker's Heart".

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the most important contributions of the Works Progress Administration to the American people was its arts program, a program which has more than recouped its costs in the enduring cultural value of the works its artists created. It's one of the things of which the Era is most entitled to be proud.

 

[tonyb]

On the Fourth Avenue side of a 50-story black box of a building in Seattle, a structure which was known as the Sea-First Building (an abbreviation of Seattle First National Bank) when it was built, in the late 1960s, is one of Henry Moore's "vertebrae" bronze sculptures. A few mikes away, up in Volunteer Park, is Isamu Noguchi's "Black Sun."

These pieces, placed as they are, where they are seen by people going about their everyday affairs, are finer works of art, and have a far greater effect on the lives of everyday people, than anything in the Olympic Sculpture Park on the shore of Elliott Bay.

Art galleries and museums have their place, but I'm all for putting art where it can be seen by people who aren't necessarily looking for art to gaze upon.

 

[Fading Fast]

On the Fourth Avenue side of a 50-story black box of a building in Seattle, a structure which was known as the Sea-First Building (an abbreviation of Seattle First National Bank) when it was built, in the late 1960s, is one of Henry Moore's "vertebrae" bronze sculptures. A few mikes away, up in Volunteer Park, is Isamu Noguchi's "Black Sun."

These pieces, placed as they are, where they are seen by people going about their everyday affairs, are finer works of art, and have a far greater effect on the lives of everyday people, than anything in the Olympic Sculpture Park on the shore of Elliott Bay.

Art galleries and museums have their place, but I'm all for putting art where it can be seen by people who aren't necessarily looking for art to gaze upon.

I find that most museum exhibits have reasonable explanations (the boards and other things they put around and exhibit that you can read) that (for the most part) aren't "art scene" or "over-intellectualized" craziness. Usually, they just tell you about the artist, put his work in the context of the period, will explain some things that made his work special (how he uses light, or brush strokes, etc.) and, maybe, a few other details. Even if you have almost no experience with art, they are helpful and, if like me, you like art and pay attention, but have no training or eduction in it / aren't into the "scene," they are still quite helpful and informative.

My guess is the museums want money from dopes like me, so they don't make those exhibits intimidating or beyond a regular person's grasp. I don't think I've been in more than a handful of art galleries as I feel out of place in them and the conversation with the people who work there are awkward. It just doesn't work for me at all.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our local art museum is a good place for a once-over walk-thru, even if you don't like the Wyeths -- they have a pretty good representation of other American artists with a Maine connection such as Homer and Hopper, and the presentations are not overbearing. One of the most interesting exhibits they ever had there was Jamie Wyeth's original courtroom sketches from the Watergate era -- I was transfixed by that.

It's the social scene, however, where they lose me. The glad-handing fundraising "all the right people" stuff is just too too too too too.

 

[Fading Fast]

Our local art museum is a good place for a once-over walk-thru, even if you don't like the Wyeths -- they have a pretty good representation of other American artists with a Maine connection such as Homer and Hopper, and the presentations are not overbearing. One of the most interesting exhibits they ever had there was Jamie Wyeth's original courtroom sketches from the Watergate era -- I was transfixed by that.

It's the social scene, however, where they lose me. The glad-handing fundraising "all the right people" stuff is just too too too too too.

A few years back, my department underwrote a fund for a major foundation that sponsors a large museum (don't want to use names for obvious reasons). The foundation invited me to a celebratory party at a museum where they are a super huge donor (all this was approved by our legal and compliance departments, etc., - I always check first and, even then, only went not to offend the client).

The museum was closed that night just for this crazy stupid private party. The main party, the food, band, etc. were in the center hall and a few small surrounding rooms, but you had the ability to freely roam most of the museum. The center hall was packed all night (which had very little art in it as is is the "gateway" to the rest of the museum), but the exhibit rooms were empty or had one or two others roaming through. I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode as I spent a few hours looking at these incredible paintings by or nearly by myself. It was cool but eery.

The following day I read about the "gala" in the papers and how it was about the arts and how much this famous / important / wealthy so and so admired this or that painting, artist, etc. Maybe true in the quoted case, but if so, they were one of the few party goers who actually went to see the art.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Meanwhile it now seems that our JCP will be biting the dust after all. Liquidation sale begins in April. Hard telling what will go into that plaza -- it took three years to fill our abandoned Wal Mart with a "job lot" store and a Dollar Tree, so it's not like retail is beating its path to our doors. Maybe they can turn it into Maine's biggest upscale sushi joint or something.

 

[Fading Fast]

Meanwhile it now seems that our JCP will be biting the dust after all. Liquidation sale begins in April. Hard telling what will go into that plaza -- it took three years to fill our abandoned Wal Mart with a "job lot" store and a Dollar Tree, so it's not like retail is beating its path to our doors. Maybe they can turn it into Maine's biggest upscale sushi joint or something.

Retail isn't beating a path to almost anyone's door today. The only beating going on in retail is what Amazon is doing to everyone else.

It's brutal if you work in retail today (although, many internet retailers are hiring, but usually not the same people getting let go from the physical stores), but at some point a new equilibrium between internet and bricks-and-mortar shopping will be found and the stores and jobs will stabilize.

It's mainly consumer driven. At some point, Americans will decide what and how much they want to buy online versus going to a store. The market will resize accordingly and that will be that.

The horrible pain is the adjustment from more to fewer physical stores - pain for the workers, pain for the towns that rely on these stores, pain in the real estate market (mall owners are getting destroyed) and pain for the retail-company owners and shareholders (remember, many shareholders, via mutual funds, are just small savers).