Kmart vs Target

It's been awhile since I've been to Kmart. It used to be my mother's favorite place to shop for acrylic yarn and hardware, socks and underwear, candy and other miscellaneous crap.

I remember being forced to go to Kmart with her on many Sunday afternoons, the "long" drive out to Plaza 20 in Dubuque from the north end. Rmember having to trail her around the store because I was just a little kid of course. When I got older I could wander a bit on my own and would find myself in the pet section where they had fish and a talking Mynah bird.

You could smoke in stores back then (wow...what a weird concept - but there weren't any regulations against it so people did it, I remember doing it! - Regulations are necessary, people!). Anyway, so when I moved to Minnesota in 1973 I shopped at the Kmart in Hilltop/Columbia Heights until a neighbor in apartment below us (on 24th and Emerson Ave South) introduced me to Target. Terri and I used to hop on the #17 bus on Hennepin Ave and ride out to the Target in St. Louis Park every couple of weeks. It wasn't a very cheery store but they had more intersting clothing than Kmart did.

Ooooh, and there was Zayres back then, too. The one in Dubuque opened around the time I left there....but there was a Zayre Shopper's City in St. Louis Park and it was an alternative to Kmart. Apparently Zayre bought out Shopper's City in that location- SC being a dying MN discount chain. The one we went to was over on 100 and Excelsior (where the Computer store is now). You could get gigantic soft-serve ice cream cones for 20 cents! It was about as cheery as the existing Target back in the 70s....sort of crowded with little outside light. Walmart hadn't expanded to this area yet...but it sort of reminded me of Walmart inside. Kmart was still a nicer place to shop.

Over the years I shopped at the Kmart in Richfield and more and more at the Target in Bloomington or Edina. I think I heard someone say that the Kmart in Richfield is gone now. I may have to take a drive over that way and check it out.

Target has been working hard to get the entire market share in the Twin Cities that's fo certain. And they were winning. Now I think Walmart is coming from behind and starting to seriously compete by opeining up the inside, making it lighter and brighter with wider aisles and all that. I still won't shop there, even if they fix the gray, depressing interior...they still treat their employees badly.

Kmart used to be a really cheery store but somehow over the years it has been neglected and so it wasn't the sunshiny place I remembered from my youth when I went into the one on Burnhaven a few years ago. I am planning to make a trip over there later today or tomorrow to find out if its changed much in the past couple of years.

One thing also is certain, I'm not shopping at Target until I see some sign of regret and a change concerning campaign contributions on their part. The right-leaning US Supreme Court and Justice Roberts may think that corporations should be given the same rights under the Contstitution that individual citizens have but that's ludicrous. So maybe if we all stand up against big business involvement in politics they will think harder and longer before trying to buy politicians! One person can't do it alone, it is in numbers that we can succeed.