At 8:30 on Sunday morning, the parking zone on the 99 Cents Solely retailer in Santa Ana was already starting to fill. A number of days earlier, the chain had introduced it was closing all 371 of its shops in California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas.
This location off Foremost Road had seen higher days. Unhoused folks wandered close to the trash bins. The partitions and walkway resulting in the entrance door had been dirty. A large window decal of recent fruit close to the doorway was peeling.
Nobody smiled whereas grabbing a purchasing cart and strolling in, although all objects had been 10% off and indicators screamed “The whole lot Should Go! As much as 30% Off.” Clients expressed their condolences to anybody with a reputation tag and vented to anybody who would hear.
“I blame [Gavin] Newsom,” mentioned Rick Juarez, 53, referencing the California governor as he entered the shop to refill on batteries. He had shopped at this location for “no less than” 20 years. “Too many taxes, too excessive the minimal wage. These firms simply can’t compete, and they also have to shut. And it’s poor folks like us who find yourself struggling.”
Victor Barrios mentioned he hopes the rumors of buyers wanting to avoid wasting the 99 Cents Solely empire had been true.
“This wants to remain open,” the 38-year-old supply driver mentioned. “I make OK cash, and shopping for right here helps me. However think about should you’re on WIC? When you’re on Social Safety? You want a spot like this. Are folks now alleged to go to Ralphs? Or Goal? With what cash?”
I can depend on my arms the variety of instances I had beforehand shopped at 99 Cents Solely, and perhaps even on one hand — I’m extra of a swap meet form of man. I’ve solely gone with my spouse, solely to this location. However I needed to go to out of respect — and disappointment.
The 99 Cents Solely Shops’ demise is one other blow for the thrifters who make Southern California tick.
For generations, thousands and thousands of us — immigrants, long-timers, working-class people, or individuals who simply need a whole lot — have fueled an alternate financial system far faraway from fancy division and grocery shops. We patronize swap meets, Salvation Military shops, half-off warehouses and storage gross sales. Meals comes from bartering with neighbors, or retailers like 99 Cents Solely. My folks impressed Carey McWilliams to half-jokingly name Los Angeles the “junkyard for a continent” in his 1946 masterpiece, “Southern California: An Island on the Land.”
Even at this time, as I make a superb dwelling and my spouse runs her personal restaurant, we stay a penny-pinching life. A grocery splurge for us isn’t Entire Meals or Erewhon; it’s Dealer Joe’s. I get my shirts and khakis at Marshalls or Ross Costume for Much less, and guayaberas on the Anaheim Indoor Swap Meet or Olvera Road. The final time I spent greater than $100 on an merchandise of clothes was a black swimsuit from Nordstrom for my mom’s funeral.
These of us on this fellowship of frugality hunt down bargains as a result of we all know that California’s booms inevitably finish in bust. That’s what makes the upcoming finish of the 99 Cents Solely empire — which began in Westchester in 1982 — so distressing.
Marta Lara, left, helps Anita Hernandez at a 99 Cents Solely retailer in Los Angeles in 2008.
(Nick Ut / Related Press)
Interim Chief Govt Mike Simoncic mentioned in a press release that the chain was closing due to “vital and lasting challenges within the retail setting.”
Though it was a multibillion-dollar firm, 99 Cents Solely operated below a premise straight from the Nice Melancholy: a good shake for everybody who entered. Right here, the retiree shopped alongside the hipster, and the one colours that mattered had been the brilliant blue and pink on the marquee of every retailer. The chain had places in blue-collar cities equivalent to Santa Ana and Colton, but in addition suburbs equivalent to Alhambra and Santa Monica.
Sure, off-brands and remaindered merchandise made up the majority of choices, however treasures awaited for individuals who usually got here. Sooner or later, you’d get a generic model of sriracha, one other time, common Tapatío scorching sauce at costs you final noticed throughout your childhood. And who knew whenever you may encounter a small blowup doll of AC/DC frontman Angus Younger, like I did on Sunday?
There was a camaraderie amongst followers that rivals equivalent to Greenback Tree or Greenback Normal and even Walmart had been by no means in a position to match. Founder Dave Gold was a SoCal enterprise iconoclast on the extent of In-N-Out founder Harry Snyder and cafeteria magnate Clifford Clifton, who made positive that the least amongst us might eat and store like kings.
These days, low cost purchasing is simply an Amazon click on away — a race to the underside of inferior merchandise and loneliness.
“I might purchase toys for my youthful children, my older children might get pens for varsity, and I might do groceries for all of us,” Altagracia Nuñez instructed me in Spanish as she perused the wonder aisle, the place sticks of males’s and ladies’s deodorant seemed like tumbled dominoes. “And the costs, in fact.”
She stayed quiet, then supplied a weak snicker. “Properly, every little thing is dearer these days, so I suppose this needed to finish.”
Associates instructed me that their native 99 Cents Solely shops had been starting to look as bereft because the pandemic days. However the Santa Ana department I visited was properly stocked. It was fascinating to see what was accessible and what wasn’t.
The cabinets that after held reusable containers had been empty, however the Easter decorations hadn’t moved. There have been no extra bleach bottles by LA’s Completely Superior, however the remainder of the model’s cleansing merchandise had been accessible. Milk was bought out, however stacks of bland El Comal corn and flour tortillas — already marked 50% off — had been barely touched.
Everybody’s purchasing cart appeared fuller than common, they usually all appeared to have no less than one bundle of each bathroom paper and cleansing towels. I didn’t want both, or something, actually. So I purchased an array of canned items from a bygone period — Hormel canned tamales, Armour potted meat, Libby’s rooster Vienna sausages and pork luncheon meat, no matter on Earth that’s — to mark the tip of one other Southern California traditional.
Customers exit the 99 Cents Solely retailer in Huntington Seaside
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
The Frito-Lay and Takis shows close to the checkout counter had been picked clear, as was the Pepsi cooler. Cheery new jack swing tunes performed on invisible audio system. Behind me, a person softly sang to himself “Se va, se va la 99” (“It’s going, the 99 goes”). In entrance of me, a girl introduced in Spanish to nobody specifically, “I believe I’ll come again right here one other time.”
“We shut June 3,” the cashier responded. “Come again.”
He let a beat move. “Come right here till we’re performed.”
