A Farewell To Kings

The Kings supermarket chain has had a store in my hometown of West Caldwell, New Jersey for years, but when it announced it was closing, it came as something of a shock. I figured it made sense, as the Kings is an upscale grocery store that appeals to bourgeois suburbanites, and given the bad state of the economy, I figured business must have slowed at the West Caldwell Kings dramatically.

It turns out the store lost its lease, not its customers. Kings obviously didn't want to close its West Caldwell store, but it apparently couldn't keep the lease it had with the development company that ran the shopping center it was located in. Rumor has it - and I'm reporting it as a rumor, because I have no facts to go on - that the shopping center wants a bigger market to replace Kings and add to its square footage the vacant drug store next door. This would be ironic, as the West Caldwell Kings was noticeably bigger than other Kings stores in Essex County, New Jersey. (It had once been a Stop & Shop, a chain that's still around.)

In the meantime, another supermarket in town, the local ShopRite a few blocks away from Kings, is courting Kings customers to apply for a discount card with them. This is kind of amusing, as ShopRite is much more middlebrow than Kings is.

I'll miss Kings, even though we mostly shop at ShopRite. It was expensive, but it had good meat, and a nice café near the bakery department, and it was a sedate, calming place to shop in. The other Kings stores near where I live are too far out of our way.

With the closure of Kings, the cucumber magnolia tree in town that is New Jersey's oldest is now West Caldwell's most significant landmark. :-D

Displeasurable Dressing

One of the weirdest stories to come out of New Jersey is the controversy over Dressing for Pleasure, a sex shop in Montclair. The store, which has sold fetish material and bondage wear for people who like to be, uh, creative in their sexual relations, was in violation of municipal code and forced the owners, a husband and wife (family values?) to stop holding S&M parties in their basement, or "dungeon."

Business sagged, and the husband had a life-threatening illness, and now Dressing for Pleasure is closing altogether.

I, for one, am happy to see it go. I'm very sorry that one of the owners has been very ill, but that doesn't change my opinion of the very idea of fetish stores. They are an embarrassment to the communities in which they are located and they are uncomfortable to even go past. Especially this one, with its kinky window displays.

It's not much of a secret that many people have some sort of sexual quirk, some more outrageous than others. Do I have one? That's none of your business. That's my point. Fetishes are private affairs, and bringing them out into the open with stores like these is vulgar and tasteless. We live in a world where everything private is publicized and everything public is privatized. Putting bondage and S&M culture out in the open is about as senseless as putting Blackwater in charge of military combat.

If one must have fetish stores, it is far better to have them on an inconspicuous street, out of sight and out of mind. The couple who ran Dressing for Pleasure in Montclair had their store on Bloomfield Avenue, the town's main street. Even more unsettling is that this lower-middle class, mostly black neighborhood. The couple involved are white. So, while it may be conveniently out of the way of the posher area of Montclair Center (Montclair's name for its downtown), it's all right to have it in a less affluent, nonwhite area?

Oh yeah, there happen to be a few churches within walking distance of Dressing for Pleasure.

I don't think this couple looked down on the locals. I don't think they're bigots. But putting their store in this particular section of town smacked of insensitivity.

The couple plan to continue to sell their wares online, and they say they will continue to fight for the civil rights of "the bondage community."

The idea of S&M participants forming a "community," like a neighborhood block or a professional guild, seems rather ridiculous.

And as for their rights . . . they can do what they want. They should just keep into themselves.

Please note that I never revealed the names of these people, although they're publicly on record. I've preferred to be consistent in referring to fetishes as private affairs.