Yeah, and fuck Hecht's, too. I'll never shop there now that Hutzler's and Hochschild-Kohn went belly up!

*yawn*

So will Macy's carry Frango mints?

*yawn*

Damn it, quonsar, don't you know that shit's contagious?

*yawn*

Dammit you guys!

This may be a sad, but I'm more concerned about bumvertising.

This same uproar occurred when Macy's took out Rich's in the south. Now, not even two years later, no one seems to notice. Or care.

Well, hell, I'm not going to shop there! (Not that I shopped there before, but now I will not shop there with malice and intent.)

The Macyborg is in the process of assimilating the Robinsons/May chain(s) (that had previously made a defensive merger that ended up dooming the Valley Galleria Mall immortalized by Frank Zappa). Of course, I think Macy's always had a grudge against the May Company, because of the name.

Which reminds me of the locally-owned supermarket chain that started by taking over a couple closed Vons stores and changing one letter in their signs to Jons. (Now they're moving into stores abandoned by Albertsons and Ralphs/Kroger and obviously doing well enough to afford all-new signs)

As I said in the discussion here, I'm amazed that Federated is willing to kill off a successful, popular brand name like this. Field's has far better name recognition in Chicagoland than Macy's. It just smacks of arrogance.

That's what we said in Boston about the Jordan Marsh brand name, too.

They are turning our local Hechts into a Macy's. I am ticked since I liked Hechts the way it was. Guess it's back to Penney's for me.

Bunnyfire, my insane joke of a first post aside, I agree with you about Hechts. It occupied a middle ground in department storery that is almost gone -- now there's this scooped effect with high-end (Macys or Nordstrom) and low-end (JCPenny or [is Montgomery Ward still around?]), but no midrange.

It's like listening to rock and roll music over the past twenty years -- the prevalence of Marshall and plexi-clone amps has scooped the midrange out of rock production, leaving a hollow, pale shadow of greater days. Give me Champs and Bassmen any day.

I digress.

Given that Dayton Hudson retired both the Dayton's (Twin Cities) and Hudson's (Detroit) names and replaced them with Field's using the same arguments, it's more or less karma running over dogma.

Hugh, um, Nordstrom's is high-end, but Field's, Macy's and others are lumped in with Sears and Penney's as "midrange". Low-end is stores like Kohl's and Target, which have been totally kicking ass the last few years compared to any traditional department store.

Ward's is indeed no more (well, there's an online catalog operation using the name now). Most of the former Ward's stores became Wal-Mart and Target locations.