Passionate About Penney

We have only spent a few minutes together, but already I’m in love.
I’m speaking, of course, of the new J.C. Penney.
Certainly I was familiar with the locale. This is the address where my mom used to drag me as a little kid from New Jersey to Gimbels. Back then, Gimbels and Macys were two-stop shopping; it was unthinkable in my family to visit one without the other. Then Gimbels went out of business in 1986, marking the end of human civilization. In 1989, something even worse happened, when the space was officially converted into something terrible called the Manhattan Mall, an oxymoron come to life. Up until now, the only spot I remember visiting there was the Mrs. Fields Cookies, which I believe is still on the scene, but I have switched from soft cookies to crisp. I’m a New Yorker now.
Last month J.C. Penney added itself to the Herald Square mix, initiating a much-publicized move into Macy’s territory, spending appreciated advertising dollars in our city’s newspapers and even insisting that there would be a hip, New York-appropriate sense of style in the store. Well. I did not really see that in evidence, and did not want to. Throughout my lifetime, J.C. Penney has been a refreshing break from worrying about style.
It’s obvious that the more welcome emphasis here, at least in the first few weeks, is on customer service. I was treated like a human being, so right off I felt disoriented, but in a pleasant way. I’m used to finding items myself, or not finding them, with the result being of no specific concern to store clerks. But in this Penney paradise, people kept saying they wanted to help me. They were almost convincing. One young fellow even pointed out the men’s restroom. It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t a Megan’s Law offender loitering by the men’s room, but rather an employee of the store who was just trying to move the traffic along.
For me, this was a step back in time and place. Time because it’s always 1983 at Penney, isn’t it? Place because my grandmother from Ohio and I spent so many summers traipsing around the J.C. Penney at the Ohio Valley Mall. Trips to Penney were a big part of my at-least annual outings to see her. These were vacation visits, when things had slowed down enough for me to consider whether or not I needed affordable wardrobe additions. We toured Penney—we called it Penneys—and had lunch at Big Boy and life was good and I would trade most of what I have today for another afternoon like that with Grandma.
Granted, usually I hate it when the United States infringes on this city. I have not set foot in the Olive Garden since its invasion. I am not going anywhere near another new tourist trap, the museum that opened where the New York Times used to be. Walmart? No thanks.
This time, though, I’m opening my arms. “Welcome to New York,” I wrote to the fine folks at Penney earlier today, when I went online to fill out my customer survey. I gave high scores. I’m old enough and wise enough to settle for a little Americana. Because this is Grandma’s store, and because there are needed New York twists that keep this from descending completely into the Ohio Valley Mall: the relative lack of obese people, the signs in Spanish and the speedy access to the N and R lines.
Grandma’s dead, but I have my memories and my quickly purchased $17 Levi’s shorts. In the Recession Summer of 2009, I’m taking my consolations where I can find them. And since I’m in job search mode and not taking a vacation, the new J.C. Penney might be as close as I get to visiting America.