Attack of the chain stores reaches Northern Nevada -- again


October 22, 2002

Two years ago -- on Oct. 17, 2000, for those of you who want to look it up in your Daily Sparks Tribune archives -- I wrote about how 7-Eleven stores were running amok in northwest Reno. To recap: There are three of them in a 1.5-mile line along McCarran Boulevard between Seventh Street and Summit Ridge Drive.

I thought this was ridiculous in an unparalleled way. That is, until I moved to the Las Vegas area. Here, the issue isn't 7-Elevens. It's Panda Express restaurants.

Panda Express, for those of you who aren't aware of this it yet, is a chain that serves decent fast Chinese food. This is all well and good. What is NOT all well and good, but rather flummoxing, is that there are at least FOUR of them within about three blocks down near where I live, in Henderson.

To quote Dave Barry with a little Valley girl thrown in, I am SO not making this up. There is one in a Vons store (which is exactly the same as a Safeway, down to the fonts on the signs and the fact that they take those cretin Safeway Club cards), which is across the street from a mall with a Panda Express in its food court, which is adjacent to a shopping center with a freestanding Panda Express, which is across the street from a casino with a Panda Express inside of it.

Further details: According to the Panda Express Web site, there are a total of eight Panda Express locations in Henderson. And another 24 in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.

What in the HELL does the world need with this much chain Chinese food? A whopping 32 of them in one valley, with, I am sure, more on the way?

Anyway, this is all ridiculous and unnecessary, even though their orange chicken is pretty good.

I took a weekend trip to my hometown of Sparks/Reno last weekend to get away from all the silliness that entails living in the Las Vegas valley (Panda Expresses, traffic, enormous hotels shaped like castles, etc.). And this was all going well until I was motoring down U.S. 395 through the Kietzke/Virginia area, when I looked off the road and saw something that gave me a palpitation.

There's a Panda Express on Kietzke Lane.

"Eeek!" I said, as I swerved and almost ran a Hyundai into a median.

Now, I will be honest: I did no further research into this Panda Express. It may be open, or it may not; all I know was that it was NOT THERE a couple months ago when I was home last, and that it is listed on the Panda Express Web site.

God save the Queen (Martha Stewart).

Anyway, I told my parents about this as I had a lovely dinner with them at one of Reno's best restaurants. As I ranted, they looked at me like I was a dork, not that this is unusual or anything.

I then met my friend and trip companion, Garrett, for dessert at a restaurant where he was having dinner with some friends, and they told me a harrowing tale: Apparently they are building another Panda Express in Sparks.

Oh, the humanity!

Now, before you bring the animals in the house and call Grandma, let me emphasize that I was unable to confirm this. I honestly meant to take a stroll down to Sparks to check this out, but it turns out the meal I had with my parents at one of Reno's finest restaurants gave me one of Reno's most disgusting cases of food poisoning, which made me unbelievably ill for the rest of my Reno trip. (I may write about this at a future date if I can find something funny about it.)

Anyway, consider yourself warned. Now, before I end this column and let you move on to read the Police Blotter, let me say something to appease the boys and girls in the legal department of This Fine Newspaper: I am not saying anything bad about Panda Express, its food, its employees, its ownership, or the fact that its name may give you the impression that they feed people pandas, even though they presumably do not.

All I am saying is that four Panda Expresses (Expressi?) within three blocks is a bit much.

And that if the Panda Expresses work out well in Reno, the 7-Elevens better be afraid of hostile takeovers by folks with orange chicken on their breath.

Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who thinks "Vons" is a silly name for a supermarket, although on second thought, "Safeway" is just as silly. Anyway, Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org. 1