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The Cupertino-centric holiday shopper
By JON HOORNSTRA
Museums and universities are interesting places. So are amusement parks. But no place is more interesting than one where you can watch people. And there are few better places for people-watching than bus stations, airports and shopping malls. Close to Christmas, malls are the grand arenas from which to observe human emotions as they play out on the faces of people spending money.
It was dinnertime and just two days before Christmas when I set up my people observation post inside Vallco Shopping Mall, one of the city's financial nerve centers. I settled in for a long winter's dinner at Fresh Choice, a restaurant with an interior table that offered a wide view of the mall's south end. From there I could pretend to admire the architecture of the malls walls, while really watching people. At some point I had to fight off a headache due to music clash. The restaurant was running "elevator music" into my left ear, while the main mall played holiday tunes in my right ear--like fingernails on a chalkboard.
But it was the perfect place for people-watching. I counted the bags hanging from shoppers' arms, some filled and obviously heavy, others light. As in years before, I marveled at how women juggle shopping bags on both arms as well as purses big enough to need their own interior lighting systems. Good news for chiropractors, I think.
I also monitored the "whine factor," an easy but pretty accurate way to gauge how worn out kids are ("mommy, mommy, I want ..."), as well as how impatient parents had become. To my surprise, I heard little whining. For the most part, the kids made happy sounds, charged with excitement--maybe too charged. And parents seemed pretty patient, though their faces suggested they had resigned themselves to the taxing role of holiday shopping. And some looked worried, perhaps wondering if they'd spent too much money, or perhaps not enough.
All of them looked tired and hungry. I laughed to myself, though, as I couldn't think of a better place to huddle America's tired and hungry masses than a shopping mall. There, merchants will feed them, dress them and thank them with a smile--once money changes hands.
It's anecdotal, of course, but there didn't seem to be as many shoppers in Vallco this year as last. That impression was later supported by a Dec. 26 CBS Marketplace report that called sales at big malls "the worst in a decade." Other reports said the auto industry's zero percent financing on new cars took big chunks of money away from retail sales, though sales of electronics devices were strong. And that's good news for our Silicon Valley.
What happens at Vallco isn't monitored on Wall Street. But it's terribly important to Cupertino. One percent of the sales tax on all transactions there, as well as at all the other retail businesses in the city, goes to city hall. That's money to help build and furnish a new library, or something more mundane like neighborhood speed bumps. And that's why I've become Cupertino-centric when deciding where to buy things, and not just at Christmas. If I can get what I want here, I won't go to Sunnyvale or Saratoga.
And that brings to mind some important, unfinished business our political leaders should put on the 2002 agenda. If you find yourself in Saratoga on what used to be called Highway 9, you will note that Saratoga named the road "Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road." If you leave Saratoga and drive through Cupertino to Sunnyvale, you will see that Sunnyvale named it "Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road." Excuse me, but did someone forget that we are here--that Cupertino separates Sunnyvale and Saratoga?
For sound economic reasons, De Anza Boulevard should be renamed Cupertino Boulevard. Or we could have some fun with our neighbors and call it "Cupertino-Cupertino Road" for a month or so--just long enough to make the point.
But we definitely need a new civic push, a Cupertino-centric movement, one in which we make a conscious effort to spend our dollars in Cupertino and think of De Anza Boulevard as the Grand Cupertino Boulevard.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
