Viva Target

There is no question that the whole thing has a certain twilight zone sensation about it. We have a Target in the middle of Columbia Heights. I took this picture yesterday which pretty much sums it up.

Just for the record, I am not one of those anti-big box people. I'm just somewhere between awestruck and mystified. I mean, I can walk to Target. Who does that? Targets are supposed to be in the middle of sterile suburban malls to which it's probably not even legal to walk.

At the end of the day, though, it's excellent. I got an email this morning from Jim Graham (our councilmember) announcing that on Target's "soft" opening, last Wednesday, this store had the 2nd highest gross of any Target in the entire country. And that was a Wednesday, several days before their official opening was supposed to happen!

So, while I would rather buy coffee from Tryst than from Starbucks because I prefer the personality and community of independently-owned businesses to the sterile blandness of your average big corporate store, there's really no neighborhood equivalent to Target. Everyone needs kitchen gadgets and socks and candles and other stuff that Target sells. We used to go to the suburbs to buy these things. Big boxes are a fact of life, and to deny that would be to deny that we need automobiles and cell phones. Given that, I would so much rather go to a big box that's part of the walkable urban envoronment in which I live, than have to haul my butt out to some wretched suburb like Wheaton for the same. I just don't see a downside.

I, for one, welcome our new concentric circular masters. Viva, Target!

More pictures from Target