Standing at the corner of Airport and Cerrillos Roads, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that you're in a place that dares to call itself the City Different. Except for vague use of earth-toned stucco and the farcical fauxdobe elements of fake vigas and impractical canales, the heavily commercial intersection is dominated by chain stores and any corner, any town, USA businesses.
But scratch at that veneer, look a little further, and it becomes apparent that difference and vitality are in abundance. Squint your eyes a bit and the tilt-up, big-box architectural mush fades away as clouds break apart in the distance over La Bajada, the Cerrillos Hills are blown golden with deep sun and the long-standing Airport Road Stupa casts a sweet evening shadow toward a crowd gathered around La Diligencia Tacos y Tortas. Shades of Mexican streets and hippy ingenuity blend in the Magical Kitchen food truck, and work is still busy on the construction site that will be the new home to venerable local business Toy-Auto Man, moving out from Second Street. Down the road a cultural mash of sounds emanates from Half-Rack Studios and polished metal glints from the window full of custom car rims at Llanteria Chihuahua. This part of town is as possessed by the heart and soul of Santa Fe as any other-which is why it's going to really suck to drop an extra-large Wal-Mart on the south side, essentially choosing to ignore the blossoming culture and broadcasting the classist and racist notions that the easiest consumers to prey on are the poorest, that it's convenient to go ahead and locate affordable housing, discount shopping and the county lock-up in close proximity and, worst of all, that a community is something created by corporate-controlled amenities rather than by the people who live there.
Why not drop a Super Wal-Mart out there, between Airport Road and I-25? After all Tierra Contenta, San Ysidro Village and a tangle of future developments all need "affordable" shops and services, and there's nothing out that direction anyway except the Santa Fe Outlets, the highway, the state penitentiary. It's not like we're putting it downtown, right? That super-sized Wal-Mart parking sure could make for a bully Indian Market or a better Fiesta. Or how about next to the Opera? You'd never have to fret again about forgetting chairs or Dijon mustard for the pre-Puccini tailgate. I say drop that sucker right on the Railyard-forget the park, forget Warehouse 21 and the Farmer's Market-I want 50 gallon drums of margarine. But if we're not comfortable, ultimately, with putting Super Wal-Mart in the center of our city, then why the hell would we allow it to be put anywhere in our city?
According to the full-color, tri-fold brochure printed on thick, handsome paper stock that arrived in my barrio-addressed mailbox prior to the blow-out City Council meeting where a sleep-deprived council handed the south side to Wal-Mart on a platter, it's because a "Wal-Mart Supercenter is expected to offer a full-service grocery store with a deli, bakery, fresh produce, frozen and dry goods, pharmacy, tire & lube express, gasoline, vision center and a one-hour photo lab," while bringing in 300 to 400 jobs and a handsome nut in both gross receipts and property taxes. All this in "a pedestrian-friendly site design using Northern New Mexico architecture and unique landscaping that preserves the city's long history and rich cultural heritage."
The Aug. 22, 2005 issue of The New Yorker has, barring house ads, only one advertiser: Target-that other behemoth-box with the hipster promotional strategy. Target contracts with name brand designers to sell specific goods only at its stores. Target has freaky, trip-hoppy television advertisements. Now, Target has every page in the premier magazine of the cultural elite, never bothering to mention its name, or the price of linens, but instead commissioning dozens of illustrators, including several regular contributors to the magazine, to do hip, New Yorker-style drawings incorporating that ubiquitous bullseye. Many of the drawings are graphically compelling, even beautiful. But like Wal-Mart's mailed brochure, it's just advertising. It doesn't have anything to do with what the company really does and who it does it on behalf of.
Target is co-opting an aesthetic in the same way that Wal-Mart is co-opting the cause of the working class. But Target is no more a true ally to innovative design and high culture than Wal-Mart is to the mother who needs to save a couple bucks on diapers. Instead of getting sucked into an argument about rich or poor, ask what would happen to a community like Tierra Contenta in a time before Wal-Mart could have been imagined? Independent businesses, like La Diligencia, Toy-Auto Man and Llanteria Chihuahua would have sprung up everywhere to fulfill the needs of the community. That process can be slow, but it's happening. Why kill it? Which provides a community with richer ties and memories: Knowing the name of the grocer on the corner, the woman at the hardware store and the mechanic down the street or the fluorescent numbness of an anonymous box where you can buy Cap'n Crunch and ammo at the same time?
Target doesn't make you cool and Wal-Mart doesn't help the working class-both traffic mainly in stuff made by working people in third world countries who couldn't shop at Wal-Mart on a year's salary. Wal-Mart's going to use "Northern New Mexico architecture" in the same way that Wendy's makes a "Santa Fe Chicken Salad" or the Hyundai Santa Fe "preserves the city's long history and rich cultural heritage."
But hey, they say it's going to be a great place for pedestrians-never mind the fact that it's 75 percent parking lot-maybe there'll be a nice little bench and a dog run over by the tire & lube express.
