Tonight, A Proud City Celebrates The Great Public Service The Gristedes And Food Emporiums Of Our Community Offer

Wal-Mart finally decides that it can make boatloads of cash elsewhere without all the bullshit:

Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.”

H. Lee Scott Jr., the chief executive of the nation’s largest retailer, said that trying to conduct business in New York was so expensive — and exasperating — that “I don’t think it’s worth the effort.”

Mr. Scott’s remarks, delivered at a meeting with editors and reporters of The New York Times, amounted to a surprising admission of defeat, given the company’s vigorous efforts to crack into urban markets and expand beyond its suburban base in much of the country. In recent years, Wal-Mart has encountered stout resistance to its plans to enter America’s bigger cities, which stand as its last domestic frontier.

Much of the opposition to Wal-Mart in cities like New York is led by unions. Organized labor, fearing that the retailer’s low prices and modest wages will undercut unionized stores, have built anti-Wal-Mart alliances with Democratic members of city councils.

And then there’s this:

Yesterday, labor leaders, upon learning of Wal-Mart’s apparent retreat from New York — or at the very least Manhattan — returned Mr. Scott’s sentiment.

“We don’t care if they’re never here,” said Ed Ott, executive director of the New York City Central Labor Council. “We don’t miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don’t need Wal-Mart.”

We do? Which ones? Oh yeah, the ones where you pay more for a box of cereal than you would for a movie ticket. Or the ones where a gallon of milk costs more than a gallon of gas — in France. Such paragons of public service. Thank god none of them have to worry about competition. I myself enjoy being gouged at the one bodega (doubtless unionized — yeah, right) that’s open in my neighborhood — and I can even somewhat afford to spend more to preserve my lousy small footprint. I’m sure those at the bottom of the economic feeding chain feel even better. There’s a reason the middle class is disappearing in the New York area and it’s only partly because of high housing costs.

Then again, I’m sure Bentonville will get a kick out of seeing the New York Times frame it like this:

. . . Wal-Mart, a cost-minded retailer known for its dowdy merchandise, and New York, a city of excesses known for cutting-edge style, have long had an uneasy relationship.

But really, Wal-Mart shouldn’t feel so bad because they’ve still got scoreboard. And that’s something even Philadelphia defied. New York City — frequently, often — is incredibly full of itself. Manhattan deserves all the Food Emporiums it gets.