DRIVING around the hood I play a guessing game which is, economically speaking, morbid. I call it, “Pin the Tail on the Failing Business.”
A couple of months ago I had money on a bead shop figuring, in a bad economy, beads are one of life’s little luxuries folks will do without. But I seriously underestimated the commitment to beading in the San Fernando Valley.
As it turns out it was the men’s formal wear shop that took the bullet, quickly followed by the bird seed store, the unpainted furniture place and about a dozen others. But that bead shop taught me a lesson – just maybe it’s life’s little pleasures that will get us through these amazingly tense and irritating times.
That would explain the sudden explosion of frozen yogurt shops. I finally cracked and went in for a taste expecting to have the run of the place, Monday night at 9? Ghost town, right?
Wrong. I walked into a wall of human lickers, pre-pubescent KISS wannabees lapping up the Country Vanilla and Pecan Praline swirls, the Mango Tangos, Cheesecakes and ladling cookie crumb and sprinkle toppings onto an extra large Kahlua Supreme.
If the Great Depression of the 1930s made Hollywood, today’s recession is making frozen yogurt a second Sutter’s Mill. Instead of panning for gold we’re licking our blues away. Everybody, let’s sing! “Brother Can You Spare a Scoop?”
Life’s little pleasures are recession-proof because they’re cheap. Even a family trip for frozen yogurt at three bucks an ounce is chump change after the 25 year spending bender we’ve been on. As you may have read recently in this very newspaper, California has lost 800 car dealerships in the past 16 months. But we’ve added 15,000 yogurt stands in the San Fernando Valley alone. At least it seems that way.