Apr 21st, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
Costco and City Centers
This past weekend we went to Costco. We barely ever shop at big box stores, there isn’t much we need there, but every now an then we need something bulk and don’t want to waste our membership. This was fine when we lived in Lancaster, or any other city I’ve lived in, but now that we are in Philadelphia, I went to the map and found the closest Costco. It was showing up as 19 miles away, west of the city. There was another about 20 miles away in New Jersey. I didn’t really believe it, so I went to the Costco site and, low and behold, it really was 19 miles away. So we went, and it was like a road trip. It got me thinking, “I bet this is the farthest from a major city center that any Costco is in the entire United States”. I kind of didn’t believe myself, but I told Hope, and she laughed but agreed. The one thing that I was banking on was the fact that Philadelphia is retarded. White flight hit this city really hard and most of the suburbanish conveniences that you come to expect ( and make fun of ) aren’t really there in center city Philly.
So today I did some research and this is what I found.
Amazing. Both NYC and SF, two extremely dense and urban cities have Costco’s within 3 miles of their city centers. The only comparable city to Philly is Dallas, which makes me depressed. There is something about Philadelphia that discourages people from taking part in life close to the center. The other sad part is that you’d think since the big national chains aren’t there that nice, quality local stores would crop up. Nope, they are all shitty, half-assed affairs.
I’ll leave you with this fun fact: Our closest Apple store is out in the suburbs and it takes half and hour to drive there. I live about a five minute walk from city hall. FML.
