Wednesday Morning in East Mesa: Christmas Eve Shopping at the Signal Butte Wal-Mart SuperCenter

After getting the New York Times and iced tea at the Starbucks on Signal Butte Road in far east Mesa near our house this morning, we moseyed over to the shopping center across the street to check out Christmas Eve shopping at the Wal-Mart SuperCenter.

It was just 9 a.m., but we thought the store would be more crowded.

The Great Recession has hit this part of the Phoenix metro area hard, with lots of foreclosures and a halt and reversal of the phenomenal Arizonan growth early in this decade (our house was bought in 1999).

Where we live, the Apache Junction unified school district, whose greatest problem always seemed to be keeping up with demands of an exponentially growing community, is now contemplating closing two schools due to fewer students.

Although yesterday's Census figures show Arizona still growing slightly, local leaders suspect the numbers are a desert mirage and that Cactus State growth is at a standstill or even declining like our former home state of Florida.

Still, we were surprised by the empty aisles and lack of shoppers. Of course, maybe everyone did their Christmas shopping on time. Or maybe the last-minute people will come later in the day.

Anyway, according to the New York Times blog Bucks yesterday:

Retailing groups...have been noticing that shoppers have been procrastinating a bit more than usual this year. According to the National Retail Federation’s 2009 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch and released last week, the average person had completed 46.7 percent of their holiday shopping by the second week of December, less than the 47.1 percent completed by this time last year and the lowest percentage since 2004.

But most of the people at the cash registers seemed to be buying groceries, not gifts.

Certainly, a few people were stocking up on Christmas presents, but we didn't see much evidence of frantic last-day shopping here.

Of course, we have nothing to compare what we saw today with, so this could be a very good Christmas shopping season for all we know.

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, our family had a place at the Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop, the South's largest flea market, and we were highly attuned to the ups and downs of Christmases in years of recession and boom.

For the sake of the 2010 economy and our fragile recovery, let's hope everyone got out and spent more than we did.

After paying about $16 for socks and underwear - with only one guy with one item ahead of us at the cash register - we headed home to Apache Junction. As often as we see it, we're always in awe as we approach majestic Superstition Mountain.

Merry Christmas!

Monday Morning in Howard Beach: Halloween Houses on 102nd Street and 157th Avenue

We saw a lot of Halloween decorations around 8 a.m. today in Queens' scariest neighborhood.

On this cool autumn morning, with a Columbus Day holiday off from the two colleges we teach at on Mondays, we decided to go to Howard Beach, so we took the L to Broadway Junction and got the A going to Far Rockaway. We got off at the Howard Beach station, which is now also a place to get the Airtrain to the JFK terminals.



We went upstairs to the top level to find a men's room. The terminal had the feel of an airport, not a train station.



Our destination was the Starbucks on Cross Bay Boulevard to read the paper, drink iced tea and eat oatmeal. We know Howard Beach pretty well, but only by car.

From where we grew up in Mill Basin/Flatlands and Rockaway Park, it was a quick ride - maybe 15 minutes on the Belt Parkway from Flatbush Avenue or, when we lived in Rockaway, straight up Cross Bay Boulevard from the Cross Bay Bridge via Broad Channel.

Even in pre-ZIP code days, we had some friends in the 11414 neighborhood, like Arlene, our uncle's sister-in-law, who we'd known since first grade when she lived near us in East Flatbush and was the flower girl to our ring bearer at the wedding of her sister and our uncle.

We also used to hang out at some of the places to eat along Cross Bay Boulevard like Pizza City and The Big Bow Wow [pics below by Bill Aiello], which we put in our story "Heat of the Moment" in And To Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street.


In the 1980s, when we came up from Florida for the summer, we'd sometimes take our grandmother to Howard Beach for New Park Pizza or TCBY.

Like Dyker Heights in Brooklyn, Howard Beach has homeowners who are serious/funny about decorating their homes for Christmas. But as we walked from the station to Cross Bay Boulevard, mostly on 102nd Street and 157th Avenue, we noticed a lot of Halloween decorations in this neighborhood near the airport where jets fly overhead constantly.

At first the decorations seemed kind of subtle.

Like this buried skeleton, which can't really be seen from a passing car.

Or just these guys hanging around in the breeze.


Some of the bigger decorations haven't even been blown up yet. After all, Halloween is still almost three weeks away.


The blocks seemed pretty festive, though.


Jack-o'-lanterns, of course, were prevalent.



Scarecrows too.

As we walked, we noticed some decor was slightly more elaborate.


Yeah.

Crows are big this year.

Witches not so much. Maybe objections from feminists?

Anyway, it made for a nice walk when it was still pretty chilly around 8 a.m.

One look at this scary guy and we speeded up toward Starbucks.

While there, we read in the Times an article citing data that holidays like Halloween make Americans happy, according to data from Facebook. We guess folks in Howard Beach must be really happy. They seem to know how to celebrate Halloween.