Your Delicious Prom McNade

Steve Stajich
Mirror contributing writer

   Here’s a fun puzzle for you, your family and friends, or maybe City Council: If every brand of clothing and sports wear has its own branding store on the Promenade, then what’s the point of shopping at Santa Monica Place? Part Two: If every store in the mall and the Promenade is the same as every store anyplace else in the western world, then why would any tourist leave Germany?  Because the bratwurst are better at McDonalds?
   The beauty part of this week’s column is that I don’t need to ladle on the research, because you can go to the Promenade and instantly understand what I’m talking about. That’s also the sad part.
   It might be fair near the top here to observe that retail selling in America is a wildly unpredictable beast. As much as we often feel played like musical instruments by American retailers (Harry Potter tie-ins), there’s always a dark side we hear less about (a warehouse full of unsold Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle toys). Want darker still? How about strong buzz that K-Mart will die unless absorbed by Wal-Mart? Then… will the President tell us it’s our patriotic duty to support wall-to-wall Wal Marts?
   That retail needs help is, in fact, their problem. It doesn’t mandate that Santa Monica cooperate with every major brand franchise willing to pay higher rents for showcase “presence” on the Promenade. I might then say that it doesn’t mean the character and the personality of the Promenade needs to be vaporized by the appetites and desires of chain retail. I might, except many feel it’s already too late. That character and personality are, in fact, gone.
   There was a half-hearted tug of war two years ago when a Promenade food court was consumed by the lust for higher price per square foot rents. Where there used to be a variety of interesting and independent food concessions, including the finest French fries in LA, you now have chain retail. A fine restaurant was replaced with Tommy Hillfiger’s. How’s this for an energy swap in the Promenade cosmos: Where once food, drink and conversation mingled, admittedly among those who could pay, there are now stacks of jeans and idly wandering shoppers who could (literally) get the same stuff a million other places.
   Which brings us, perhaps, to a great big “So what?” If the Promenade is just another chain retail dispensary with all the personality of a Formica booth at Carl’s Jr., well, what difference does that make? So the texture of life in our city is the same as a shiny blue can of Pepsi, so what? Those that are really bugged can, of course, flee to Montana Avenue. The rest of us can just shut up and take it.
   Or not. Hennessey and Ingalls Art and Architecture Books, now the oldest continuing business on the Promenade, is considering relocating. Manager Douglas Woods, who has been with the store at the Promenade for ten years, says that the Promenade has lost the stores that gave it a unique feel. “We can go to any other mall and be part of the scene. What was special here has been lost.” Woods adds that the increasingly high rents for Promenade square footage are not only a burden, but they painfully underscore what’s missing. The feeling that the Promenade contained a diversity of what Wood’s calls “independent destinations” is gone, with the possible exception of Midnight Special Books and the H&I store. “It’s not worth paying a premium when it’s no longer unique.”
   In Woods’ view, big chains will pay more than the square footage at the Promenade is worth because they made plans made years ago to have a presence in Santa Monica on the high traffic Promenade.
   And the fruition of those beautiful plans can be experienced today. While street performers labor mightily to bring something interesting to the Promenade, the reality is that their craft must play against two high walls of the most virulent strains of retail branding. All the jugglers and hammer dulcimers in the world can’t soften the steely cash register patina of over-lit, shiny bright corporate commerce. Like the sports and entertainment figures brought to TV commercials to “keep it real,” it makes the tang of consumerism bitter, not tart.
   But I promised puzzles, not diatribe, so let’s try a few more: You’re eating a Johnny Rocket hamburger at their outlet across from the Beverly Center. One hour later, you are eating the exact same food at the Johnny Rocket’s on the Santa Monica Promenade. Have you, in fact, moved or traveled in any way?
   What is place? If it’s memory combined with location, then you may already be unable to conjure a sense of place regarding the Promenade. I can’t be the only person who now finds it difficult to differentiate the various blocks of the Promenade because of the turnover in the facades down there. John and Yoko used to make time-lapse films of buildings being built. How would they have chronicled the last five years of the Promenade? Perhaps by fixing a camera on one storefront, and watching the tenants change like the seasons.
   One final puzzle: If the rents keep going up, and only big, shiny glass redundant retail chains are willing to pay them, when will the Promenade return as some place interesting to be, or even, as some place?
   Woods says that his store could stay if rents would stabilize and the city would do its part to keep the business climate fertile. And then there’s the question of whether all the street activity and performance is attractive in the strictest sense.
   And then there’s the question of whether the Promenade is now, or will ever be, what many thought it might become.

This Week’s “Know Your News” Quiz

1) A San Onofre nuclear power plant worker was
   a) arrested after making threats against co-workers.
   b) found to have 250 weapons at his home.
   c) found to have a rocket launcher nicknamed “Homer.”
2) Colin Powell will visit India and Pakistan
   a) in search of the hottest mustard on earth.
   b) in an attempt to ease tensions.
   c) as part of his “Cut The Crap Tour 2002.”
3) Experimental musician Esquivel
   a) died at age 83.
   b) cha-cha’d into God’s Main Room.
   c) was buried in “Living Stereo” and “Total Hi-Fi.”

Answer Key

a, b, and c. “Search the house?! Doh!”
(b) “Search for nukes?! Doh!”
(a) “Search for martinis?! Yeah!”