The Anarchist Kmart
A few years ago, before it went bankrupt, Kmart was quite a different place. If you were to walk into one now you’d probably never notice that for years that Kmart was host to the only working example of Anarchy in history. The Anarchist Kmart was a unique creature: a rebel in the national mega-store race, an entity so antonymous that half the store could be destroyed and work would continue unabated. Kmart was more syndicalist commune than legit business. And, I loved it.
Now, let me take you back, way back to February 24th, 2003:
You’re walking into a mega-store, a store that has everything, to find some shampoo. But this isn’t a Wal-Mart, or a new fancy Target, no; this is a Kmart – an Anarchist Kmart. The nonworking automatic door should have been your first tip-off, but, you’ll think: “things break down.” Things do break down.
Once you’ve cleared the second set of doors two images become implanted into your mind: the first being the filth and stains apparent everywhere. The other being a female employee squatting down and giving birth and then resuming her fifteenth unscheduled cigarette break. The child will quickly adapt to its surrounds, and one day, you hope, it may even become group leader. You’re standing in the center of the store now and despite being of average height, you can see every corner. To your left is a Little Caesar’s pizza, a chain you were sure died out in the mid-90s. To your right the electronics section. In front of you the “blue light special” section, where items that aren’t worthy for selling on Kmart’s shelves call home. Behind you is the door, and for a moment, you’ll think about the outside.
Walking down an almost empty isle, you keep looking for some shampoo. Seeing a person wearing a tattered red Kmart jacket, you stop and ask them for assistance. He reaches into an adjacent shelf, pulls out a box of Ivory soap and tosses it at you. Before you even realize what had just happened, he is gone. You place the box of soap on the ground and take a few steps back and then run. You’re running blindly and aimlessly but eventually you stop. You’re in the home and gardening section. The plants that haven’t died from neglect are massive, sprawling creatures that dominate the department as if gods. You hear a rustling in a nearby hedge and another employee sticks his head out.
“Where did you come from?” he asks.
“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” and you truly don’t know and you truly are sorry. You may have never meant these words before in your entire life, but by god, you mean them now. The employee stares into your eyes, as if trying to read your soul. He does not avert his gaze as he lowers his head back into the shrub.
You have found your way into the food section now. You’re flanked by rows of Shasta cola and freezers containing essentials like pizza, milk, and products which do not belong in freezers. Products that do belong in freezers are left out in the open, still wrapped in their shipping plastic and still on their wooden pallets. There is no sign advertising the price, just a poorly written group of squiggles drawn directly on the side of the shipping container preceded by a dollar sign.
Eventually you find an expired bottle of shampoo dating back to before Bush Sr. was president and you head towards the check out lanes. Instead of seeing 12 registers, you find the ruins of a plastic and composite board empire. There, amidst the pile of old machinery and even older Clark bars, stands a lone figure reading from a poorly Xeroxed pamphlet. He preaches: “we don’t need the bosses! The bosses need us!” You would walk up to the guy to try and purchase your 10 year old shampoo, but you know that’d just lead to a lop-sided discussion about how Anarchy existed for a short while in Spain before being taken over by Fascists. Instead of explaining to him how that in itself is one of the fundamental reasons Anarchy can’t work, you walk out and decided to go to the banal neutralism that is a Target.
I miss Anarchist Kmarts, I really do. I loved shopping in a place where I could probably kill someone and seriously get away with it. Current mega-stores lack that certain quality, you know? The possibility of being mugged in between the chips and video game isles adds something extra to the shopping experience. Stumbling upon remnants of the nearly past, like 5 year old magazines or VHS tapes, was like entering Pompeii for the first time.
But the Anarchist Kmart is no more. Since they’ve filed for bankruptcy, each store has undergone a makeover. The stores are structured, spills that have been on the floor since before Kmart even opened have been cleaned, and food products are no longer dumped on the floor on large wooden palettes and left unrefrigerated for the Gods to sort out. A little part of me died when I first stepped into a “new” Kmart and coupled with the Toys-R-us redesign, I’ve been rendered an empty shell of a man.
What was great about Kmart was everything it wasn’t: it wasn’t some perfect shopping experience craftily controlled by focus groups and marketing departments. It wasn’t a benign experience, one that left you wondering what you’d done for the past hour. You were made to feel something, good or bad. It was real. It was imperfect. It was more “punk rock” than any band in the last 30 years. Kmart was, simply, Kmart.
So, raise your glasses in memoriam my friends, or spill some of your favorite beverage on the curb, the dream is over: the Anarchist Kmart is no more.
- Rob O’Reilly
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While not endorsing Anarchy as a viable replacement to government,
Rob O’Reilly does fully endorse alternative political systems in his retail chain stores.
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