spatch | (no subject)

I absolutely love the last sentence in this snippet of a Globe article on the closing of a Roxbury liquor store. It comes in the middle of a section describing those other than the store's owners who stand to lose income from the closure (the homeless who redeem their empties at the store, or who earn a few bucks a day sweeping up and running errands, for instance.) And then there's this fellow:

David Mays has even more to lose. The president of Tow Happy earns about $2,800 a week towing cars from Liquor Land's lot, where people visiting the hospital often park illegally. "There's no way I'll replace this income," he said, after nearly towing the car of a reporter who had been at the store.

This is amazingly beautiful because it tells the entire story right there.

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From:

ron_newman

CVS seem to be pursuing total world domination, don't they? They opened a new store on Washington Street in Downtown Crossing, the size of a small department store. It's one block from an older CVS which I thought they would now close, but no, it's still open too. I could take you on a 10-minute walk through downtown Boston where we would pass by seven CVS stores, and no competing drugstores.

From:

spatch

Well to be fair, the new, larger location on Washington Street replaced a location across the street that was completely too small for it and constantly overcrowded, but you're right, they've become the Dunkin Donuts of Boston-area drugstores. I mean, if you don't wanna go to the CVS on Washington Street, you can just walk a bit down Summer past Macy's, and...

I wish I'd gotten a picture of that section of Washington Street when both CVS facades were still up. Reminded me of the infamous intersection in Revere with Dunkin' Donuts on opposite diagonal corners from each other for a while.

The camera doesn't do well for long shots, however.

From:

ron_newman

If you stand in front of Kinko's or Copy Cop, across from the Pi Alley Garage, you might be able to get the old (still-open) and the new CVS signs in the same shot. But I doubt both would be readable.

From:

dcart.livejournal.com

Not just Boston. CVS bought out Revco, Eckerd's and a bunch of other regional chains. They were also part of the group that carved up Albertson's last year. In a lot of places, there's little more than token competition from Walgreen's or Rite-aid.

I was almost happy to find that CVS isn't in this area when we moved here. So far, every time they've bought out some other chain that I used, the place really went to crap under CVS ownership: longer lines, poor customer service, etc, etc.