10:33pm Christmas Night – Fear not, Portland, I’m back. It’s late on Xmas day and the Bard of Black Friday, the poet of post-Christmas discount shopping, is back in the snippy, brisk Walmart parking lot coming to you live and bringing you all the latest news of crowds, shopper’s riots, pepper spraying for bargains and any other depravity or inconvenience I can find among the price conscious shopping superstars here in the naked city.
A few days ago someone asked me why I report from parking lots. I said, “I report out of parking lots because that’s my beat, to cover holiday shopping from the automotive fringe while my lovely wife is inside uncovering deals.” And that’s the truth.
On December 22 I reported the following from the Gateway Mall parking lot, and truer words have never been said, “I’m finishing off the holiday season in the same way I started it: freezing in a parking lot with only George Noory for company. James McCanney is the guest, not bad. Linda Moulton Howe is coming up. This was a great holiday season, only a few rainy days. Loved the long string of cold, sunny days. The rains are predicted to come back on Christmas, but by then more than half the battle is over. December is the worst month of the year. Get through that and the rains of Jan., Feb., March are easy peasy.”
Live it, Ross shoppers. This is how we roll. We shop clearance racks. We slay depression. We kill time until our spring vacation in a warmer climate.
But I don’t need to tell you that. You’ve been with me for more than year. What follows is how it went down tonight.
We began the evening at Wong’s King in King Plaza on Division a few blocks east of 82nd. This is a very popular place to be on Christmas Day. The place came well recommended and if we doubted the wisdom of the folk who suggested the place, the full parking lot told us that this was the best food available on Christmas Day. It was a painful and cold wait with the area right outside the restaurant thick with carbon monoxide and cigarette smoke irritating my aging nose. The cigarette smoke, however, told us that the place is authentically Chinese, as did the chaotic queue waiting for tables. From my vantage point in the waiting area I was able to discern that short skirts and astonishingly high heels are very definitely in among the twentysomething ladies dining with family.
Wong’s King specializes in seafood, and the menu is loaded with fantastic photography of each dish. No surprises as to what you’re ordering here. The patrons were equally divided among Asian and European descended people and a good number of families with elders were speaking Chinese. This was indeed the place at which to be, December 25, 2011. Merry Christmas and Gung Hay Fat Choi. (Next month. I’m wishing you this for next month. I realize that Chinese New Year doesn’t take place until well after the start of the calendar year.)
We started there around 6:40 and didn’t leave until 9:45ish with an hour wait to be seated, then another hour wait for the food. But the food was definitely worth it. Our hot and sour soup was both hot and sour and able to wash the memory of carbon monoxide out of my throat. Our spicy beef with wine sauce was rich, spicy, winy and, best of all, brought to the table in a tiny wok with a bunsen burner underneath to keep it simmering through the meal. The burner wok and its’ attendant mongolian barbecue effect exudes a powerful air of authenticity, but it also consumes a lot of oxygen and may have contributed to my confusion and carbon monoxide poisoning. Our sizzling cod filets with XO sauce didn’t sizzle and were a little mushy but had a great flavor and many fresh, delicious vegetables. We walked away with a bill under $40, excellent for a relatively (by East Portland standards) high end dining experience.
Wong’s King is open late and around nine pm the hipster contingent started to wander in, among them Wild Flag/Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss with a male companion, and an unrelated group of intense gay men with a handful of anorexic young ladies, both genders impossibly stylish, lightly cosmetized and superbly athletic. My guess was a dance troupe.
After Wong’s King we headed immediately to the Eastport Plaza Walmart, near the corner of Holgate and 82nd. Internet searches earlier in the evening lead us to believe that the Mighty W would be opening at midnight and that we should get in line ASAP. Upon arrival, there was much activity in the parking lot as Walmart employees were arriving to start their shift and the nearby Jack in the Box was very busy drawing diners. However, a sign on the Walmart door said they would not be opening until 5am and no one was lining up yet. We decided to go home for a few hours sleep before we return.
So, this has all been a big tease so far, all intro and no shopping. We will be back at Walmart for their 5am opening, make the most of an hour or so there, then head to the Troutdale Outlet Mall (Troutlet Mall) in time for their 7am opening and after that, either call it a day or head over to Clackamas Town Center for their 8 am opening.
So, hold on, I’ll be back with you soon.
6:30am December 26 – The sun isn’t up yet and already the battle is over.
My lovely wife and I made our way to Walmart, in the clear, crisp, pre-dawn dark, for the five am open, expecting a holiday lights and wrapping paper riot with bargain hunters pitted against compulsive coupon clippers in a battle to the death of whatever tiny sum remained of their bank accounts after Christmas.
We found no such thing. Mostly, we found fatigued and sleepwalking Walmart employees rattling around in a store which still looked like it had been ransacked. A managerial muezzin crackled and cajoled over the intercom, “Attention Walmart Associaties,” the voice would intone, “our deadline was 5 am and we haven’t made it,” before describing an area of the store in need of attention. There was a chemical spill, for instance, adjacent to “seasonal.” I was in “seasonal” at the time and wondered what chemical had been spilled around me. Couldn’t smell it. My guess was that one of the Walgoons had spilled their last Red Bull of the night, its’ sticky redness on the floor prompting supervisorial overreaction. The Wal actually aromatized better than usual. Gone was the unchanged diaper/rotting salami smell to which I’d become accustomed. In it’s place was a much less offensive sour milk/disinfectant taint, as if someone had installed an enormous Glade Plug-in with Mr. Clean‘s head and torso upon it beating into submission Elsie the Borden Cow when the poor bovine was long past her sell-by date.
Judging by the small amount of red and green merchandise left over this morning, it must have been a great Christmas season for Walmart. There was little for them to peddle at the traditional 50% or more off for which Xmas stock goes at Walmart on the day after the nativity. There were fewer Christmas lights than in recent previous years, less wrapping paper, a fraction of the Christmas themed candies. The bulk of these items must have sold in the optimistic weeks prior to Christmas when newsgabbers assured us that Christmas sales were up and prosperity just around the corner. There were no visible Walmarkdowns whatever in toys, clothes, DVDs, each of them low-priced treasure troves in years past.
As for the fewer things which actually were available at 50% off, well, there were an inordinate number Stetson cologne and soap products in Xmas packaging, many of them endorsed by Tim McGraw. Apparently rank and file Walmart shoppers don’t like men’s perfume named for a hat. Only actual stage-going country musicians who are paid for the opportunity are willing to don the scent.
Also available at a discount were a cornucopia of perfumes, soaps and creams named for B-List female celebrities. Faith Hill products were in particular abundance. She must be out this year. Also a goodly amount of Britney Spears, Halle Berry and Sarah Jessica Parker remained on the shelves. Kim Kardashian fans, if you looked really hard, you could find her stuff selling cheaply as well. When a celeb announces her divorce on the eve of the Christmas season– as Kim K. did– it will still put a damper, even in this forgiving age, on fan girl scented romance products.
The pickings were so slim this Dec. 26 that my lovely wife decided to call off her shopping excursion after Walmart. No Troutdale Outlet Mall (the Troutlet Mall) and no Clackamas Town Center this year.
We breakfasted at McDonald’s on oatmeal and egg biscuits. With our brains full of Walmart and our stomachs full of McDonalds, we headed home to sleep, another year’s visions of sugar-plums danced into oblivion by hardcore discount seeking.
By the time we reached home, a thick fog had rolled into Portland, a harbinger of the rains to come. Up to this point, December has been filled with sun, but a storm is on the way. TV Weatherfolk predict a hammering of rain to batter us as we close out the year.
