Mom and Pop businesses are almost extinct around here!!!

I went driving around my suburban area today. Large part of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.

I found exactly TWO mom and pop eateries in all that area that I covered. One is a Tex Mex place with only three locations and fantastic food and one was a Vienamese cafe that looked like it was a breath away from closing down. I had bubble tea at the cafe and ordered fajitas to go from the Tex Mex place.

HOW IN THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESSES IF THEY NO LONGER EXIST?

It was truly heartbreaking. All I could see were big chains everywhere.

There is not a SINGLE independent or small hardware store to be found in my burb of 160,000 people. It's Home Depot or fuck you.

The little independent coffee shop that opened a few blocks away closed up shop after just three months.

I know this doesn't seem like the worst tragedy in the world, but to me, it's very telling and incredibly sad. CVS just bought out Eckerds which means there are not three drugstore chains around here but two. And Sears and KMart just came together.

It seems I woke up several years too late. :cry:

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And since I don't patronize the big chains (except FUCKING Home Depot because I have no FUCKING choice), this is actually saving me money. Because I sure have been spending a hell of a lot less since having my eyes opened.

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RIP ACE.

Where were you looking?

Also, while there are many corporate stores here, there are still a few mom and pop stores still around.

L-

I think Elliots Hardware is still mom and pop.... I think there are a few locations- I know there is one close to downtown, maybe too far to drive depending on which suburb you're in.

glad they are still around, but it would be a very long drive.

Dallas is pretty bad, even in 'the city'. I am just north of downtown and most of the "mom and pop's" are high-end boutiques and such, but we do have quite a few choices as far as restaurants go.

I have been trying to think of stores I know are still family owned.... I cant think of many. Its been sad to watch. Half Price Books is family owned still and is very good to their employees... and they are all over the country now. That is really the only good one I can think of. :(

Our souls and everything. Lock, stock and barrel.

:evilgrin:

And neither will corporate America.

Chains are all we're going to have at our disposition. In my neighborhood we still have a small grocery store I try to go to as often as I can, and a coffee shop that's doing quite well, it is atracting young singles in the area, but then I live downtown. Suburbs are the death of individuality.

My husband and I decided that a couple of years ago. I think they were originally sold as being the best of both city and country but they are NEITHER.

You don't get the quiet and the relative isolation of the country and you don't get the vitality and convenience of the city.

You get neither. What you get is screwed. I hate the burbs and I have for a while. I'd rather live in the middle of a bustling, thriving city and keep a nice, small country home far away from it all.

But not this. Dull drab slow death.

in my city of 85,000 here in Massachusetts.

Hardware store,lots of restaurants,gift shops,and bookstores. Even some independent women's clothing stores,although they are fairly pricey.

if this, too, isn't a blue state-red state thing.

Seriously.

especially since it's the Republicans that are all for small businesses,or so they say!

We still have lots of local businesses. Maybe it's the size of the city. We are about 250,000 in Lafayette, without the surrounding smaller cities that are now in our metropolitan area. I guess you would more accurately portray us as a purple state. Sure didn't seem like it with Vitter and Kerry, though. I think our vote was skimmed. Vitter should not have done so well, and Kerry should have carried more of the vote.

the nearest one to me is in Reading, I think.

I shop at mostly locally-owned business with the exception of Costco, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's. It's more expensive in some cases but it helps the local economy.

go to Framingham for Walmart but I hate it so who cares?

what a pit. I live near the Target in Somerville so I tend to go there when I'm craving a chain store experience.

I love Trader's. There's one Cambridge too-they have great deals.

maybe we'll see these yuppie types who pride themselves on never learning how to cook actually DO so. Even the packaged frozen dinners at the supermarket are incredibly high in salt and chemicals. They're a godsend to elderly folks like my father, who lives out of his microwave, but a steady diet of it is really not good for us. Freezing destroys flavor, so they have to boost it with extra salt and monosodium glutamate, and here comes the hypertension!

Anybody who watched "Supersize Me" knows that fast food is killing most of the people who eat a lot of it.

Merger, megastore and monopoly has killed the hardware store around here, something that annoys me no end. I end up going to a local lumber yard just so I can avoid Home Depot, and I really miss the old guys at the hardware store who knew how to fix everything and could always find and sell you exactly the right thing for the job you needed to do.

Restaurants, we got.

It was freaking disgusting.

I live in a suburb of Philadelphia and it is similar here - small Mom and Pop businesses are going out of business. Probably due to Bush's lean towards corporations squeezes out the smaller businesses (who are taxed without mercy )not just Mom and Pop!

Real cities still have plenty of mom and pop businesses.

My neighborhood has a locally owned coffee shop, four locally owned restaurants, a locally owned hardware store, a locally owned ice cream parlor, a locally owned food coop, a locally owned camera and film store, and lots of other good stuff.

My neighborhood in Portland was similar.

A lot of the suburbs and exurbs were built overnight in the cornfields and never had any businesses of any kind to begin with, so the chains just come in and take over.

I was looking at pictures of New York City streets today and was amazed at all the independently owned businesses. I've never seen that many in one place in all my life.

We live in the suburbs between Baltimore and DC. In our town we have a WalMart and a Home Depot. We also have, in very close proximity, Best Buy, CompUSA, Lowes, Target, Barnes and Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, and many more national chains. But for virtually every one of them we have local alternatives. My last two computers came from a small store where a wonderful young man named Sam built them for me, custom, for less than I would have spent anywhere else. Much of our home improvement stuff comes from a local ACE Hardware store; next in line is from Lowes, and last choice is Home Depot. When we recently remodeled our kitchen, all the appliances came from a Mom and Pop appliance store; we got exactly what they had at Home Expo (Home Depot's upscale overpriced store) for less money and with better service; he even undercut internet pricing! For restaurants we have many local ones from which to choose. Safeway for groceries, but a local Asian market for fish and produce.

The list goes on and on. Locally owned eye care/glasses shop. Locally owned Mom and Pop jeweler. Locally owned, two store, do-it-on-site dry cleaner. Single store soft serve ice cream (on most summer nights the wait is half an hour for a come and people gladly do it, even though there are chain options available too ... kinda a local institution and a place to meet and greet).

I suspect if the chains left, we'd not miss very many of them. Some of these merchants have been here for generations and they're our friends and neighbors.

All this is in a blue state. While there's much new development going on, the old stores stay and thrive. I suspect this is a phenomenon of older, more established places. The more recent "boom cities" tended to not have had any downtown to speak of and all that comes in are the malls and the big box stores. Plain vanilla. WalMartization.

I'll take tradition and old fashioned values any day of the week, even if it costs me a buck or two more ... which it usually doesn't.

there are frozen mexican entrees (at super wal marts) and some find asian specialties in the frozen-food sections (also at super wal marts).

There are many other fine products made in mexico and in various asian countries at your friendly neighborhood wal mart.

thank you for shopping at wal mart! <smile>