tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post915669000825259303..comments2024-01-16T00:30:02.493-05:00Comments on That's the Press, Baby: At the CoreDavisullhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-43675071895166716542016-01-24T11:10:38.304-05:002016-01-24T11:10:38.304-05:00You can be a forty-seven year old and still protes...You can be a forty-seven year old and still protest about your beloved Ziggy being pulled from a comic section or no longer sold as a calendar. Stuff changes. Having lived through the last days of the grand dame department stores as a teenager in the 1980's and seeing the Macyfication of what was left of Federated-May in 2006, this period has really been depressing. <br /><br />When the fun is gone out of shopping for stuff, and life leaves you with a 5 item for $4 menu at Burger King, something terrible is happening. So many of us are floating at the bottom of the food chain, that not much is worth getting too excited about.honchojockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11724249296974576846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-21188252739361278492011-10-24T11:20:11.513-04:002011-10-24T11:20:11.513-04:00The Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans -- which not only ...The Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans -- which not only occupies Maison Blanche but part of the Kress 5-and-dime as well -- has a huge amount of area facing the street. Maison Blanche was built as a giant office building with a department store, and it would have had as much window frontage as any hotel of its time.<br /><br />The Chateau Bourbon -- which occupies the Holmes store -- would be a different animal. Holmes was built sort of like a cross with frontage on four streets. But it was not a behemoth like Macy's or Hudson's -- stores in the South tended to not have as many floors as in the North or Midwest, except for Atlanta -- and it seemed that all the parts of the store had been rebuilt or adapted or built above except for the Canal frontage.Davisullhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871644412923946894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3266566846399659219.post-36842845986470448412011-10-23T15:39:40.318-04:002011-10-23T15:39:40.318-04:00Unless everything bar the facade has been destroye...Unless everything bar the facade has been destroyed and reconstructed, I'd think a department store would make an extraordinarily bad hotel. Seen from above, department stores are big blocks; hotels are long snaky things so as to maximize their surface area. After all, who wants a hotel room with no window at all? Even facing another brick wall ten feet away is better than that.<br /><br />Sure newspapers can make money as providers to the elite. The Wall Street Journal has been doing it for years. What happens then, though, is that you sacrifice all claim to special political significance. You are no longer, even in principle, the guardians of the republic, the watchdogs who expose public and private misdoing. You are just another special interest, no better than the automobile companies, hopefully no worse.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.com