GUMP, GUMP, GUMP

The news this week is that Gumps, a famous San Francisco fancy doodad retailer with a storied history that goes back over a century and a half, is threatening that if this holiday season isn't up to its expectations, it will leave the city.

Well, they alread did so. They failed in 1993, Hanover Direct purchased them, and then sold them to a bunch of jivy rapacious investors in 2005. They have barely been a Union Square presence since moving down the block three decades ago. Not a player. Sorry. They failed again in 2018. John Chachas and his kin bought it, closed it temporarily because of covid, and it must be mentioned that three quarters of its business in recent times is catalogue sales anyhow, think Elaine's on again off again boyfriend J. Peterman.
And they're pissed. We aren't boosing their gand.
Or something like that.

Once more, not a player. Has-beens. Pretendeurs.

I haven't been there since Gumps first failure.


Gracious. Doom loop, doom loop, doom loop. And right on cue, here come the out-of-town internet trolls, most of them sour rightwing losers from the Red States and the Rust Belt, to pooh all over the comment sections on social media.

In the illustration above, by Edward Gorey, the balustrade vase was undoubtedly purchased at Gumps before the nineties. It currently graces a fallen-down British mansion out in Napa or Sonoma. An Englishman is shown behind it for scale.


In all honesty, Union Square has been a dump (albeit with snootiness) ever since Niketown occupied the former Dunhill space. Wedgewood left, so did the fountain pen centre, and the Magnins are just a memory. Macy's has been overpriced and underwhelming for decades.
Cable Car Clothiers and the bookstores departed a long time ago.

The main and only reason to go to Union Square is for ice-skating in winter.

Tourist blimps from the American heartland moor there.

There are fast food restaurants.



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