Taking sides on the aisles on Wal-Mart expansion
Here we go again, Wal-Mart bashing without any facts. In the May 4 Community Letters, Chris Cruse states that there are 40 Wal-Marts within 100 miles of Springfield, Mo. What he fails to say is that there are more than 150 towns and cities within that 100 miles. There are six Wal-Marts in the whole Springfield area.
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The letter writer says there are no Safeways or Ralphs, that they all left town. Let's look at the facts. There never has been a Safeway in Missouri or a Ralphs, but Kroger, which owns Ralphs, has five Dillon supermarkets in Springfield and there are other name supermarkets. Nobody is forcing anyone to shop at Wal-Mart.
GORDON CULBERTSON
San Diego
Sunday's Dialog section contained a letter from Chris Cruse of Poway, who clearly has a problem with Wal-Mart.
It seems the letter-writer's brother moved to Springfield, Mo., last summer and in that time has gone out and made a census count of how many Wal-Marts are within 100 miles. The premise is that there are 40 Wal-Marts in the the Springfield/southwest Missouri area. It also is said that all of the mainstream supermarkets have left town and, of course, they took the low prices with them.
In doing a search on the Internet, it is hard to find any evidence to back up the claim. I can find only about 10 Wal-Mart establishments, superstore, pharmacy, regular store, etc., in the 100-mile radius. In fact, the population of Springfield and southwest Missouri is not large.
The only question I see from what is happening with food/gas pricing problems is: How soon can Wal-Mart get into the gasoline business?
Wal-Mart is big, yes, but for some reason, one can still go there and buy just about anything cheaper than the “mainstream” supermarkets!
When was the last time you saw some guy out on the corner changing the gas price to go lower than the guy across the street, just to get your business? I would love to see that yellow dot/happy face from Wal-Mart at the local gas stations!
TIM WING
Chula Vista
Theater going dark will be a big loss
I'd like to respectfully disagree with a recent letter writer (North County Letters, April 19) who said she is a patron of the Ultra Star Cinemas at Flower Hill Mall but is not alarmed by the demise of those theaters.
In fact, all patrons of that cinema should be alarmed. When replaced by Whole Foods, fans of independent film will forever lose the only theater in the north coastal area devoted to regularly screening indy films.
The Flower Hill theater is a specialty cinema which has been a part of our north coastal communities since the 1970s. To minimize its loss by rationalizing that “there is still a theater at Del Mar Highlands” is to not understand that Highlands currently shows only mainstream movies and, as such, will most likely not be committed to replacing those mass-market money-makers with small, independent films.
Do you remember the many indy films nominated for Academy Awards this year? Well, the only theater nearby where we could enjoy them was at Flower Hill, not Del Mar Highlands.
And if people are “tired of driving to La Jolla” to shop at Whole Foods now, it won't be long before they will have to drive there (and beyond) in order to see these wonderful “small” films – and at substantially higher ticket prices.
So I, and many of my neighbors, don't believe that the addition of Whole Foods by the subtraction of Flower Hill Cinemas is a good thing. In a more perfect world, we might have both. But please, don't minimize or rationalize the impending loss of this one-of-a-kind movie theater to our community.
RON YARDLEY
Carmel Valley
