At Woolworth’s, The Price And Place Were Always Just Right

I don’t care how un-chic this may sound. And I don’t want any patronizing lectures about “progress” or the realities of a free-market economy: The Woolworth Corp. has announced that it is killing off all of its F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime stores - and I hate it.

I hate it the way I hate that a new car in this country costs more than my parents paid for their home. The way I hate that schoolteachers don’t earn a quarter of what they’re worth. The way I hate that Nike chief executive Phil Knight is the 39th richest person on the planet ($5.8 billion, according to Forbes magazine), yet his Indonesian contractors balked at raising the minimum wage of factory workers there from $2.26 to $2.46 a day.

Yeah, yeah. It’s the way of the world. Woolworth’s five-and-dimes posted a $37 million operating loss in 1996; they gotta go. I hate it.

From the time I was a little girl, with a whole dollar in my plastic coin purse, right up to the present, as a middle-aged working woman with five crisp new $20s from the ATM in my wallet, something special has happened when I walked into a Woolworth’s: I’ve felt like a rich person.

Or at least the way I perceive that rich people feel when they walk into a store to buy just about anything. Equipped. Capable. Entitled. Covered. Welcome. Child, teenager or adult - through more than four decades of retail consumerism - I have never not been comfortable in a Woolworth’s. And I cannot say the same for any other store.

It isn’t just about the five-and-dime prices of a Woolworth’s compared with, say, a Coach store or an Armani boutique. The behemoth discounters that have made it impossible for Woolworth’s to compete - Wal-Mart, Kmart Payless, Toys ‘R’ Us - have never inspired the sense of belonging that Woolworth’s always has.

From their airplane hangar dimensions to their predominantly disinterested, just-passin’-through sales staffs, these big, busy stores overwhelm me and make me feel very small.

And weary.

Conversely, any Woolworth’s perks me up. Always has.

My grade school, junior high and high school diaries are peppered with references to the treasures I obtained in various Woolworth stores in my Indiana hometown. That’s where I went when I had “my own money,” first for toys, then for Spoolies and Cutex nail polish, then for “pearl” earrings, pantyhose and picture frames.

I still buy my picture frames at Woolworth’s. Either the store out on 23rd and Mission, with its working-class Latino clientele, or the flagship San Francisco store in the basement of the Flood Building at Hallidie Plaza.

The latter is my all-time favorite Woolworth’s, mostly because of its kaleidoscopic clientele: Tourists from everywhere, drawn to the vast array of San Francisco souvenirs. School kids, with a few bucks burning holes in their pockets. Young mothers, pulling out precious cash from between the WIC coupons and food stamps. Old women and men from the nearby Tenderloin, dressed up and browsing despite incomes fixed far below the comfort level.

And people like me. Middle class, working women and men who grew up relying on “the dime store” for all manner of necessity and an occasional bargain treat.

In the winter of 1992, the Hallidie Plaza Woolworth’s closed for a downsizing “facelift.” The store shrunk from two levels and 110,000 square feet to 45,000 subterranean feet; it was dark for more than a year and a half. And I was miserable.

Woolworth’s is and always has been for me about the past - the company was founded in 1879 - about the often economically lean present and about future dreams. The old Fields-McHugh song embodies this feeling perfectly.

“Gee, I’d like to see you looking swell, baby;

Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn’t sell, baby.

‘til that lucky day, you know darn well, baby;

I can’t give you anything but love.”

Just the idea - Woolworth’s gone forever. I really, really hate it.

xxxx