Sameness kills Valley's charm

By NICK BLANCHARD

Up and down the great Central Valley, one encounters the same town time and again. I hazard to guess what an out-of-state driver must think while driving through.

She must see the familiar Target/Best Buy/Borders alliance while approaching the off-ramp, slam her fist into the steering wheel, and sob exasperatedly, “I thought I just left Fresno.”

You need not even leave the city to recognize how this cancer operates. Simply stop at the nearest supermarket. You will find: a haircut place, a sandwich joint, a mobile phone store, a cigarette monger and perhaps a flower peddler.

Drive to the next supermarket. It will anchor the same stores. The same businesses show up over and over again, at or near the same time, and often in the same places.

I am not referring to Wal-Mart or Starbucks. No, these two have woven themselves into the very fabric of America.

I hope to bring to mind cases like the aforementioned Target Triumvirate. These stores began appearing together a few years ago, mostly in new shopping centers.

The speed with which these teams of stores sprouted up around the Valley was incredible and their proximity is uncanny. Others followed on their coattails. Linens and Things, Mimi’s Café, Bed Bath and Beyond and Kohl’s were among the groups that seemed to discover the Valley in that magical period of time.

Trendy places like The Elephant Bar have become prosaic as they try to be exotic.

Many of these similarly-aged stores are in Bakersfield, Visalia, Hanford, Selma, Fresno, Merced, Modesto, Stockton, Sacramento and north to Chico.

And yes, even lowly Turlock has experienced the common stadium theater, Sonic Drive-In, Quizno’s/Panda Express, Target and Borders boom.

Are Valley residents reaching satiety yet? It would seem not.

I think it will take a sameness so profound to turn back this tide that we will see the demise of most anything that makes our communities special. Valley towns were once known for their special products, their community pride, and special events.

We had the Raisin Capital, the Apricot Capital, the Swedish Village, and other charming personalities among us.

Now, even our longstanding rivalries seem absurd. What might a Fresnan say to a Bakersfielder? “Surely our Applebee’s is superior to your Applebee’s. What’s that? They display your high school’s jersey on the wall, too? I thought we were special.”

And that is much of what we have lost: those things that make us special. It is a far cry from progress to raze our history, pave over our agricultural land, and build yet another carbon copy town.