big-ish
Big-ish news at work today: another new store opening announcement! Well, sort of (hence the "ish"): the Kirkland store, currently our oldest—and second-smallest—operating store (opened 1978), will move to a new location a mile north, with 30% more floor space, late next year. So, by the time that store opens, we will have the same number of operating stores that we did prior to the current location closing. It'll be very much like when Seward Park moved a mile northwest to its new location in Columbia City, also a mile away (and so, I expect, we will get the same dipshittery from nearby customers of the current location bitching that we are moving their store a whole mile away from them).
Also, I did figure out that once the current Kirkland location closes, that will leave View Ridge as our new oldest-currently-operating store, having opened in 1987. View Ridge has long also been our smallest store, so honestly I won't be surprised if that one also relocates for a larger space sooner than later. And! In addition to that, by the time the new Kirkland store opens, it will be one of either 16 or 17 operating stores, assuming Downtown does indeed also open in 2021, and if Madison Valley by some miracle finally becomes a reality by next year (hahaha!). If that miracle does occur, though, that will mean three new store openings in 2021. During a pandemic! I mean, does anyone really think COVID-19 will actually be history by 2021?
Anyway. This news is in addition to two stores opening in 2020—very much during a pandemic—and, in fact, today's news release first focuses on the more immediate news: an official opening date for the Bellevue store, which is Wednesday, August 12. Much like last year's new stores in West Seattle and in Ballard, which opened six weeks apart, Bellevue will be opening all of eight weeks after the opening date of the Central District store.
We have long assigned stores a number, which until recently were easy to keep straight because they were merely in chronological order of store openings. Now they are weirdly jumbled, because they get assigned once PCC knows there will be a store, but not necessarily when that store will actually open, and having so many openings close together, with differing and changing timelines based on a host of factors, they have become much harder to keep straight, especially since last year's Ballard became store 18 and West Seattle 19, even though West Seattle actually opened first. Same thing with Central District and Belleuve this year, which are numers 24 and 20, respectively.
And did you notice that sequence skipped three numbers? Well, here's the breakdown of stores in order of actual (or currently expected actual) opening dates:
West Seattle, opened 2019: 19
Ballard, opened : 18
Central District, opened June 17, 2020: 24
Bellevue, opening August 12, 2020: 20
Downtown, opening 2021 [initially slated for 2020 but postponed by pandemic]: 21
Madison Valley, opening who the fuck knows [initially announced in 2016 to open 2018]: 22
Kirkland, opening late 2021: 23
Side note: even if a new store opens just to replace an old one from the same neighborhood, and even if it is literally in the exact same spot (as in West Seattle), it still gets assigned a new number. That's why Kirkland will store 23 even though its current number is 2 (what would have been #1, Ravenna, had to close in 2000 due to the impact of a Whole Foods opening nearby), and even though by then we'll actually have only 16 or 17 stores actually open. So, the whole "system" just gets more and more confusing!
Well, anyway. I had known about Downtown and Madison Valley for some time but assigning Central District the number 24 left one store a mystery. That's solved now: it's the new Kirkland store.
We have an all-staff Zoom "Town Hall" at 1:00 this afternoon, and I'm sure these things will be discussed. And probably an update on the search for a new CEO. Whoever that is, frankly, I really hope they rein us in a bit on the aggressive expansion ushered in by Cate, which I always felt was just a little too much too fast.
Not that I am complaining about having the Central District store less than a mile away from home, mind you. I love it! First I had been thrilled that the Madison Valley store would be only 1.1 miles away. Then I was even more thrilled the Downtown store would be about the same distance from home but in the opposite direction and all of three blocks off my regular commute route. And suddenly CD opened even closer before either of those other stores even came to fruition!
But okay, I'm happy now. Fuck all those people in other neighborhoods and cities who want a store near them too. Rein it in!
Shobhit has an incredibly rare two days with no work shifts in a row, yesterday and today. He tried to go to the beach yesterday afternoon while I was working, and was back in no time because he could not find a place to park. In retrospect that was unsurprising considering how warm it was yesterday—I got rather sweaty biking to the office and back to exchange receiving paperwork after work. It probably meant the nude beach he intended to go to, at Howell Park, would have been far too crowded anyway. Under normal circumstances Shobhit doesn't mind crowds at all, but even outside, crowded in a pandemic is not a good idea.
"Pandemic" this, "pandemic" that! I so look forward to not having to use that word so often anymore.
Anyway. Shobhit baked the rest of our Costco spring rolls for dinner. We watched a few episodes of Designing Women. And I set to cleaning up the mess that was made of my music library and playlists in Apple Music app. I've gotten my mom-death-related playlists back up to speed ("In Memoriam," of grief-related songs; "For Mom," with tracks that all remind me of her; and "Dreaming of Jeanni: The Wendy Bird video soundtrack," which has maybe half of them as crossover with "For Mom"). I need to update the playlists for artists who released new albums this year: Fiona Apple, Lady Gaga, Rufus Wainwright.
A new issue: I cannot find the vast majority of the Beatles tracks—all from CDs I ripped from the library like five years ago, so I suppose technically I never had the right to have them anyway. Still, it's annoying. I found pages online indicating other people with this problem, finding the literal mp3 tracks missing from Music folders that had been ripped from CDs. Amazingly, I had actually synced to my iPod Classic, which has no wireless syncing capability, shortly before all this mess happened by my getting a new external hard drive and attempting to copy over the folders. And I did check the old hard drive: the tracks aren't there either. They are still all on my iPod Classic, however, so I am holding out hope—perhaps in vain—that I can find a way to retrieve them from there. We'll see.
[posted 12:26 pm]