URBN has over the years been both a personal boon and bane. This City of Brotherly Love-originated retailed founded by selling incense, bongs, dope-leaf tee-shorts and ultra-cheap imported bohemian stuff to skint college students has been loved (nearly to death) by growth investors and momo humpers alike. For the reversion-oriented plunger this affection of seeming endless relative outperformance on the way up, coupled with short-covering during risk-off regimes is the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis to one trying to make a buck on the short side. Fortunately, capitulation eventually occurs and patience is rewarded with outsized lumpy returns.
Frustrating as this has been over the years for a skeptic who refuses to buy-in to the growth forever mantra of this slick schlock retailer, today, I hate Urban Outfitter for another, more significant reason. For this morning I went to visit the venerable Chelsea landmark known as the Chelsea Antiques Market where stalls run by passionate niche specialists from antiquarian books to art-deco cut crystal formed a charming maze in the heart of the Kings Road. So one can imagine my disappointment to arrive there morning in search of an overdue wedding gift for a dear friend only to discover that it along with all its old-world charm has been completely and totally obliterated in favor of a gi-normous URBN "Lifestyle" subsidiary Anthropologie store one blindingly bright, filled to the brim with shite. I stood for a moment in horror, thinking of all the cappucino's drunk at a friends Cafe which [formerly] dwelled within before I cried.
This must be the the final nail in the coffin called Chelsea...a now souless vapid pit-of-a-bedroom-community devoid of one of it's few remaining tethers to humanity. RIP Chelsea...and F@#k Y*@ Urban Outfitters
now now don't cry - you know everything must be commodified - it's what the new Capitalism does - but don't worry - you can console yourself with some faux historical piece of crap from RestorationPotteryHardware Barn - or perhaps new ersatz clothing form GapBebeNordMarcus - you must buy or the future will fail...
ReplyDeletewe are not going to fu&%ing repeat ourselves....
consider yourself - encouraged
get over it cas! Punk was over 30 years ago, and the king's road died with it
ReplyDeleteyes the title perhaps should have read "....finally totally and completely dead.
ReplyDeleteKR was always overrated - the moreso nowadays. However help is at hand.
ReplyDeleteAny Saturday, make your way to the Duke of York Square (Sloan Sq end of KR, adjacent to the Saatchi) where you will find the Food Market (Open 10am-4pm). Find the Pieminister stall & identify yourself as CDT to either of the two handsome chaps busy serving for a gratis yummy award winning savoury pie.
Onward !
djaym - thanks. I am already a fan, though must admit that my normal decisiveness fails me when on-the-spot and I have difficulty choosing what recipe to take home. 'Tis a kind offer all the same...tnx!
ReplyDelete-C-
Hear hear, decades of QE have made most of the the people and nearly all the blondes fake, both collar and cuffs, and really not just pretty vacant....
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