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Shopping with a sense of the big-box store blues |
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Kate Heartfield, the Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, March 19, 2007
Griping about big-box stores is a particular kind of snobbery, snobbery of esthetics. I'll admit that I'm prone to it. I'm not going to apologize for it.
Ugliness offends the spirit. It's about time Canadians stopped feeling guilty about noticing that some buildings are ugly, and timid about declaring them to be so.
My urban neighborhood looks like an Eden in the spring, when the air is full of petals. But, with the exception of a few community garden plots, Sandy Hill doesn't do much in the way of food production.
My little effort to change that began one recent Saturday, as I shopped for containers and potting mix.
The few bags of brown stuff I could find downtown were full of vaguely described additives of inorganic or animal origin. I like to know what my veggies are growing in, so I allowed myself the luxury of renting a car to do some comparison shopping in the suburbs.
I didn't have much trouble finding the simple products I wanted, once I'd driven to a few big-box gardening centers. But the experience left me grumpy and headachy. My effort to get a little of the simple life led me to fume-filled parking lots and noisy check-outs.
There are intellectual arguments against big-box stores, and I rattle them off whenever anyone challenges my supercilious attitude toward them. A typical big store is an example of bad urban planning. It's surrounded by parking lots and big roads, which makes it annoying to reach by foot or bus.
That's fine when your shopping trip requires a car, if you're buying big bags of soil or a new toilet. But as little hardware stores within walking distance disappear, people get into the habit of driving to the big boxes to buy little things. That car dependency encourages big crowded roads.
That's my intellectual argument. My real objection goes deeper, down to the gut. As soon as I get into one of those stores, I can't wait to get out.
In some, especially the huge hardware stores, I get a little panicky and claustrophobic. I think it has to do with the high and narrow aisles stacked with items and information. I can't see the trees for the forest.
Deeper still is the sense of loss at the disappearance of quality as a cultural value.
This isn't a classiest objection. Of course families on budgets need to think about affordability. Affordability and cheapness are not equivalent. We've forgotten that, as we seek quantity and convenience. We'll go to the big-box stores year after year to spend $20 a pop on frying pans that peel non-stick coating after six months, rather than spend $50 on a cast-iron pan that will last. |
Source:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=
b2fd3274-0208-4040-9d8d-701b52ab0ced |
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