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As to the "Mom and Pop" aspect--it is real in many cities. These cities are resistant to most large retailers in their cores for this reason, not just Wal-Mart. Local business is preferred to preserve the character of certain cities.
In my community, there were few "Mom and Pop" stores left when Walmart came in. There are more local stores now than there were then (1987). Sears was accused of the same. And the holy Target, Costco, Amazon, have the same effects.
It self-selects. The kinds of people who shop at Wal-Mart typically don't live in the cores of these cities. You may read that as "trashy people" if you so choose.
Hey, it wasn't me who called these people "trash". Go back and look through the thread.
There are 9 in the greater Seattle area, though none in Seattle itself. The upscale city of Bellevue, with median family income over $100k has two, and only one Target.
There are three Walmarts in Portland. I don't know if that means Walmart is taking over the PNW but that's less than most areas I guess.
With Target headquarters a state over (Minneapolis) and Shopko headquarters in Green Bay, Wal-Mart still has a large-enough presense in Wisconsin, but a fight is put up fairly regularly. In Milwaukee, the closest Wal-Mart to me is still pretty far (15-20 minute drive), like in most of the larger metros in the country I would assume.
You can only imagine what would have happened a couple decades back if Wal-Mart had been able to bully their way in. Green Bay just this year turned back a Super Wal-Mart that was going to rehab an old area of west-side downtown. A larger (than Viroqua) city that understands Wal-Mart is a dime-a-dozen shop (there are already a couple of them in town) and a "real" downtown needs real local non-chain shops: Broadway gets back to business after Walmart 'chaos'
I cheer any opposition to Wal-Mart, because I'm old enough to remember many bustling smalltown downtowns and their utter collapse when Wal-Mart moved in and priced the competition out of business with loss leaders and cheap garbage that breaks in a week. Target may not, when you back up and gain perspective, be all that different from Wal-Mart, but they aren't as predatory or destructive, they offer slightly better products, and I've never seen a town put up the same fight with Target as they do with Wal-Mart - there's a very good reason for this.
Wal Mart is cheap and it offers the same crap as everywhere else for half the cost, why pay more? I know they treat their workers like **** but I am too cheap to shop at Kroger's.
I do most of my food shopping at Wally World, then buy the couple "higher end" things at Kroger haha. Walmart has been slowing changing it's image and trying to appeal to different people. I've noticed a huge increase in natural/organic foods with that new brand their carrying. Now with them putting up Walmart Convenience stores, there going after 7-11's!
No, but I had a pastor who said that a lot. I don't know how I made it ugly. It's meant to tell some of these people to quit being critical of people who are different from them, even when the difference is economic rather than racial, which is I think what most people mean when they talk about the "trash" at WM. I find the supposed cartoons of overweight unkempt people shopping at Walmart disgusting.
I apologize for taking your intent in the wrong context.
^Please refer to my lengthy post re: Walmarts and Targets in the Twin Cities. There is a Walmart about a quarter mile north of the northernwestern tip of Minneapolis in Brooklyn Center, and another one about a quarter mile east of the northeastern tip of Minneapolis in St. Anthony. Neither has a Minneapolis mailing address, they probably just share zip codes with the city.
I don't think anyone is trying to argue that Walmart has no presence in the Twin Cities, but the pattern on the first few pages of this thread was people discussing Walmart locations within city limits. The more interesting point is that there are more than twice as many Target locations in the Twin Cities than Walmart locations.
Walmart has no control over most big northern cities.
Thank the lard!
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