Comments

1

Congrats on your appearance on KUOW! I've lived in Seattle my whole life but I don't think I've ever been in that Macy's. I'm not sad to see it go but I worry that if their Alderwood location closes as well there may be no place left to get my Frangos!

3

When was the last time anyone went to any Macy’s? They’re garbage stores. Even back east they are kind of lowbrow.

My hope is that Amazon opens up some interesting retail in that space and a Whole Foods in the basement.

4

“… when was the last time you even went in that Macy's?”
I think it was last May and I did find what I was looking for.
I still remember it being The Bon Marche’ back in the days, with better service and merchandise and even a fancy restaurant. Their holiday events were worth taking the kids to.
It struggled for some, then Macy’s further watered it down. You can still get there good deals on home stuff and clothing, especially when using their coupons.

Some nostalgia for the older folks- does anyone remember Frederick & Nelson?

6

@2, you subscribe to antiquated gender norms for far longer than is appropriate.

8

I don’t think pushback against the Fair Pay to Play Act is specifically coming from UCLA, it’s coming from the UC system (and CSU and Stanford and USC). And, in fact, it’s former UCLA basketball player Ed O’Bannon who sued the NCAA and got the ball rolling on compensating college athletes.

9

That Macy's is something else. Everything is always on sale, and nothing there is ever worth buying.

10

I'm going to bet that 99% of the 18 million are the simplest automated detections from a database of known bad images. That number is about the dumbass pedophiles trading abuse imagery over Messenger. The abusers who are described aware of encryption and the dark web, requiring 'fresh' abuse, they're not even in these numbers because it takes serious (and fucking horrible) undercover work. The other side of that is we have no direct data here on whether these people are increasing in number.

Had to devote their resources to abused infants and toddlers. Jesus.

11

To be fair, Adam Schiff has claimed to have secret documents and smoking gun evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, and has not lifted a finger in over two years to expose that evidence, or even tell anyone what it is.

Seems kind of traitorous to me. Well, I suppose he could just be lying, but why lie about something like that?

14

The problem w/ Macy's is the problem with the North End of downtown - it's struggling in foot traffic. Even when 2nd and Pike was an open-air drug market there were still more shoppers about. In the late 90s the core of downtown migrated back south to Union/University and I'm sure more recent development has pulled the center of gravity further south.

15

@11: God, you're stupid.

17

Sorry, I should have assumed that you needed to be told to look up first.

18

@17: Feel free to provide a link to Adam Schiff saying he has secret documents of smoking gun evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia. Schiff's argument is that the evidence is in plain sight, which it is (except for dummies).

19

@13,

Seriously! Even before he took the oath, I figured he was destined to be the funniest guy to hold the office in our nation's history. But then he's actually managed to exceed even my expectations in this realm. The "stable genius" line, covfefe, Anthony Scaramucci, this hilarious fucking salad in response to a question about nuclear power...

“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

And that's just what I recall while spending two minutes sitting here at my desk thinking about it. He's a repugnant excuse for a human being, and I've certainly never seen or heard him do anything that he intended to be funny. But that doesn't really make it any less so. At least until he does in fact get us all killed.

20

@18: A facetious remark is one that is not really meant to be taken seriously or literally, and serves chiefly to lighten the tone of something, or to poke fun at something that is already known to be silly or exaggerated.

Now take this new knowledge out into your world, and it may make people dread interacting with you less. Good luck!

21

@20: To be clear, are you saying that you were kidding in your comment @11? Cuz to be honest considering that you stan for the current administration on a pretty regular basis that comment really strayed into Poe territory.

24

Trump is tweeting like a wounded, cornered badger.

25

The Bon and F&N. Good times. I’m surprised it lasted this long as a Macy’s.

26

"Self Driving Garbage Can" is the name of my new Cars-Trashmen fusion band

27

Last time I was in Macy’s junkies had attached themselves to the windows like zombie barnacles.

28

Of course a congressman is not a traitor for lying, they fucking lie all the time. Jesus tapdancing Christ, I am so sorry for assuming any of you had anything but concrete between your ears. This whole "Team A rules, Team B is Nazis" shit you are all huffing is destroying your brains.

Except for Urgutha. You're still cool.

31

@28: You're dumb.

32

No mention of WeWork withdrawing its IPO in the wake of the CEO stepping aside at the request of its board? Maybe that news broke just a bit late for the AM roundu; I assume a thousand-word post equivalent of "Ha ha ha ha ha" is already being typed up presently.

@31: Don't forget David in Shoreline. It's a dead heat between those two.

34

@28,

Calm down there, Theo... We all recognize your genius. Though the way you're ranting here, your stability may be called into question at some point.

35

@ 32,

The award for best headline over the coworking IPO debacle: “WeBlewIt.”

Can’t recall whose, but it’s very New York Posty ; )

37

@28: Jiminy Xmas dude! So your little joke didn't land, no need to get bent out of shape about it. Just try to come up with better material next time. :)

38

Come on guys, Glavset workers and admirers are perfectly clear about their intentions. When they're kidding, they use plain text. When they're serious, they put it in block letters over a crude drawing of a sad frog. There's no excuse for confusion, at this late date.

39

@32- yeh, David is getting to be more of a troll, in that he seems to be posting stuff just to be provocative...
in the past it seems like he would post stupid stuff because, well, he is a right-winger and he felt he had a pov that wasn't being represented.
Now he posts crap that he obviously can't believe, just to be annoying.

40

Macy"s (that is, Federated Department Stores, HQ in Ohio) is partly responsible for today's meltdown in US retailing. Yes, it's not all Amazon's fault.

Back in the 1990s Federated began an aggressive expansion by acquiring the real Macy's in New York. It then began acquiring local department stores all across the country at a breakneck pace, renaming all of them Macy's (which was the name it used because it had the highest national recognition, despite the fact there no longer was a Macy's per se).

A major piece of its strategy was to standardize merchandise across every store in its ever expanding chain, which led to the insanity of down jackets being sold in stores in Florida and bathing suits carried year round in Minnesota stores. No matter what Macy's you walked into anywhere in the US, you saw the exact same merchandise "curated", in 2010s overly pretentious terminology, by buyers centralized in NYC who were now going to be the enforcing arbiters of local tastes across the US.

Shopping was no longer a revelatory exploration, but a boring and frustration experience since if you couldn't find something you wanted/needed in one Macy's, there was no point in going to another. Macy's strategy was a major influence on the rest of retailing and soon this strict standardization of merchandise across all stores in a chain was the norm.

So, when you once had a good chance of finding something you wanted by going to another store in a different location or mall (because many larger local stores and chains once had their own on-site buyers), now there was no point in doing that.

This spartan approach to retailing inventory became entrenched just as the very early days of online shopping were starting to kick into gear. Now, if you couldn't find what you wanted/needed in a store (which was becoming more likely), you had an alternative source to explore -- the World Wide Web.

It didn't take very long for consumers, frustrated with the limited selections (and SIZES) carried in stores, to begin looking for additional merchandise selections online. And as consumers became more and more rewarded by the ever expanding online selections, the more looking for what was wanted/needed online first became the preferred mode of shopping. The convenience of at-home shopping and delivery only added to its appeal.

So now Macy's is closing stores across the country because its bottom line is in trouble, hurt by online shopping. Well, for those of us who've lived through the de-evolution of US retailing kicked off by Macy's (Federated), only crocodile tears are available. The irony that so many floors of the downtown Macy's store are occupied by Amazon is not lost on us. Sympathies is available only for the soon-to-be former Macy's employees. We wish them the very best fortune in finding future employment.

41

I remember when Macy's was the Bon Marche on Third and Pine, and we still had Frederick & Nelson, alongside Nordstrom. And now Macy's is out of business and owned by Amazon. sigh.
@40 Purris: Agreed and seconded. My heart goes out to all former Macy's (as well as Amazon) employees. Obviously, that means a lot of retail workers in Bellingham will be out of employment soon, too, if not already---just in time for Christmas 2019. How sad.

42

@4 CMDwannabe: "...does anyone remember Frederick & Nelson?" I sure do!!
F & N had everything, including a kickass cafe on the fifth floor (French dips, Tim's Cascade chips, and Frango mint shakes, baybee!!) It was also the ultimate place for the kids to go see Santa. I wept upon Frederick and Nelson's closure in 1993, just as I was getting out of the U.S. Navy after four years. It was about the same time Trader Vic's fabulous Polynesian restaurant (that used to be in the Westlake Room in the Westin Twin Towers Hotel) also closed ITS doors, after so many years. After the initial shock wore off, I asked my mom: "Is the Bon still there?"

So Trumpty Dumpty is accusing its impeachment investigators of treason, and its loyalists are fighting each other like sewer rats. That's rich. Well, they can sink in their own shit. Death to the GOP.

43

Thank you, Purris dear, for explaining the Macy’s situation so succinctly. The last twenty years of the downtown store was a series of missed opportunities, mostly because there were no local decision makers,

And auntie dear, it was the Frederick & Nelson TEA ROOM, not some generic “cafe” (there was a cafe, but it was in the “arcade” (née the bargain basement) in the old Paul Bunyan Room space. When I think of the last years of F&N, I think how appealing it would have been to millennials - a quirky store, full of character and with a wide variety of merchandise. They even had a cigar store and a stamp collectors counter.

But thank you for finally identifying where the Westlake Room was located. By the time I worked at the Westin, that was Trader Vic’s. I am fascinated by the layout of the original Washington Plaza.

44

@43 Catalina Vel-DuRay: I don't remember a Tea Room, although I'm willing to believe that there was one, as elegant and upscale a department store as Frederick and Nelson was, complete with 8 floors. Actually, I really do remember a Frederick & Nelson cafe being on the 5th Floor, downtown--back in the '80s up until 1993. I swear, Cat. They had kick ass French dips and trademark Frango shakes. Nordstrom has cafes, but has never sold Frango mints. F&N had first dibs on the yummy melt-in-your-mouth confections until the Bon Marche, then later Macy's bought them out. Wasn't Frederick and Nelson initially owned by Marshall Fields out of Chicago?
And yep--fond memories of Trader Vic's is my reminiscent sharing of the history of Seattle's Washington Plaza.

45

Ohhhhhh, Trader Vic's curly fries were the BEST..................

46

....and Trader Vic's coconut ice cream was to die for.

Well, anyway, nobody can say we haven't lived, right, Catalina?

47

@2 -- you mean, for a man?
Well put, @6.

Perhaps Shorline Dave's recently been trapped under a kitchen sink for days on end with a bad/possibly incurable drip drip drip and the little teevee on the counter has FOX (mostly) tuned and blasting away AT TIP TOP VOLUME. That's bound to make anyone a little lopsided.

48

Auntie dear, we are talking about the same thing: the Tea Room was on the 5th floor. There was also a “men’s grill” (no ladies allowed!!!) and some sort of quick lunch thing.

The men’s grill was gone by the 70’s, of course, and I think they may have renamed the tea room for a time (I want to say they called it “The Restaurant” in that annoying 70’s way) but when Sabey tried to save the store they changed the name back to the tea room.

Fun fact: the bon also has a nice restaurant - the Cascade Room.

49

@30 Doofus in Shoreline: Methinks your MAGA cap and wingnuts are clamped on way too tight. Seek medical help.

@48 Catalina Vel-DuRay: "The men's grill was gone by the 70's, of course and I think they may have renamed the tea room for a time (I want to say they called it "The Restaurant" in that annoying 70's way)". I was just a kid in the 70s, and by then we'd moved north of Seattle so it should come as no surprise that I have no recollection of the Tea Room or men-only grill at Frederick & Nelson, Catalina.
Anyway, thank you for sharing the fun facts, sweetie. We can both say we have been blessed with some of Seattle's truly good old days and locales and have a lot of colorful stories to tell. :)


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