“It demonstrates an elemental truth, that every breath you take has two possible endings. And that’s another thing. There’s a joke locked away here, a note of cruel slapstick that you are willing to appreciate even if it makes you feel a little guilty. Maybe the victim’s a chump, a sort of silent-movie dupe, classically unlucky. He had it coming in a sense, for letting himself get caught on camera. Because once the tape starts rolling it can only end one way. This is what the context requires.” —Don DeLillo, Underworld
The Ukrop's stores committed the sin of being square, unhip and dry. The Ukrops were, in DeLillo’s words and in the view of the outliers, chumps who deserved it.
The negativists cackle in the comments and posting trails of the city newspaper and throughout the blogosphere, giggling and glad that Ukrop's has announced its end.
Their delight is taken because the stores didn’t sell booze and weren’t open on Sunday. Or that the family campaigned against Howard Stern. Or that they were wealthy. Somehow, this gave offense to a number of Richmonders who saw the white-steepled “Let’s All Go to Our House of Worship This Week” sign and the general niceness of the employees as distracting artifacts, too slow and atavistic for our brusque, distracted and colorless times.
Yet they’ll pile into their jalopy and light out for West End groceries where photographs of old Richmond scenes adorn the walls.
Do these people see those pictures? Do they know what’s been lost? Do they care?
It is useless, when presented with such blunt, uncompromising views, to address the philanthropy of the family or their incalculable contributions to the community. The Ukrop's stores also provided jobs. Jobs, by the way, that these days are in short supply. The stores were among the first to adapt to buying from regional suppliers. But in the end, the numbers just didn’t add up.
And so a wretched year for local business tumbles down. Circuit City, LandAmerica and now, Ukrop's. This is an ominous and final note, like the most profound low tone of the Byrd Theatre’s Wurlitzer pulled out full.
We’ve seen Richmond businesses lumbering to their extinction since the early 1990s — retailers, banks and brokerage houses that proved unlucky in their business planning or were absorbed by big outside corporations.
Best Products, Miller & Rhoads, Thalhimers, Reynolds Aluminum, Heilig-Meyers, S&K Brands, Crestar, Central Fidelity Bank, Wheat First Securities — all gone.
The FFV cookie factory and the CFB office tower rise dormant and dark over the city, accusatory in their silence and emptiness (and both owned by Washingtonian Doug Jemal).
In July, when the rumblings of a Ukrop’s sale began, I wrote my observations on the possible passing of a city icon.
Things come into being and they pass away. There are some who think Ukrop’s has always existed (only since 1937) and those who believed the brand wouldn’t ever wither. No, it lasted a lifetime.
From what was said yesterday, we know that their kitchens will still function, selling prepared foods to Giant and, they hope, others. Thus, in some way, perhaps this will instead be a death and transfiguration.
But snow is coming, they say.
