Some tips for the festive holiday shopping season


November 27, 2001

With Thanksgiving in the rear view mirror and Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza approaching more rapidly than Tad Dunbar going down the Mount Rose Highway on roller-skates, it's time to start your holiday shopping.

And to those of you who started before last Friday, and who are anywhere close to being finished, let me say, with all the love and respect that I can muster: Bite me.

Between now and Dec. 24, the rest of us will frantically try to buy gifts for all of our loved ones. We'll find the stores packed with sales, festive holiday decorations and enormous crowds of people. It isn't easy to deal with -- that's for sure.

Plus, shopping in the Truckee Meadows can provide some extra challenges. Because I have shopped in the Truckee Meadows for many years -- and even worked six holiday seasons at large, scary retail outlets -- I am somewhat of an expert on the subject. Here are some of my Reno-Sparks holiday shopping tips:

1. Have someone else go shopping with you, and make him/her drive. A weird thing happened here: While Reno and Sparks grew substantially in the last decade or so, the number of big, viable malls in the area shrunk from two to 1.5.

A decade or so ago, Park Lane Mall and Meadowood Mall were pretty even. Meadowood had Macy's and J.C. Penney's as anchors; Park Lane had Weinstock's, Sears and even Woolworth's. Then, something funny happened. Sears bolted for Meadowood, Weinstock's ran into financial problems and became a movie theater parking lot, while Woolworth's ran into financial problems and became a home for spiders.

This has left Park Lane a distant second to Meadowood in terms of mall coolness (even though Gottschalk's is a cool store, despite the fact that its name sounds like a really phlegmy cough noise). This has left Meadowood packed during the holidays, which has made the traffic in Meadowood's area of Reno horrendous. All the new strip malls in the Virginia-Kietzke-McCarran area have made the horrendous problem even more horrendous. And I do not even want to THINK how the new Krispy Kreme at McCarran Boulevard and Kietzke Lane will worsen the problem (potential benefit: more law enforcement officials in the area).

Therefore, make a friend drive, and be prepared to give the driver sedatives to calm him or her down from road rage, if you feel the need to approach the Meadowood Mall area. Estimated time to travel from Moana Lane to Del Monte Lane on South Virginia Street on December Saturdays: seven hours.

2. As a matter of fact, don't drive anywhere at all; parachute into your favorite shopping center, and arrange for an air lift when finished shopping. Folks, it isn't worth it, because even if you do manage to navigate traffic and make it into your shopping center of choice, parking is going to be atrocious.

Yes, Meadowood Mall's parking lot and the surrounding area was designed decently (except for that freaky intersection at Smithridge Drive and Meadowood Mall Circle, where nobody knows when to stop or to go, meaning the biggest vehicle wins; there's a Ford Festiva stopped at that intersection that's been there since 1998, and the driver is still waiting for his turn). It's just packed.

Then there's the parking lot at the shopping center at Harvard Way and Plumb Lane, anchored by Costco. The engineers who designed this parking lot should be beaten.

The spaces are barely wide enough to park a canoe, and there are only two exits. Visibility is tough, traffic is going in 19 different directions (or it seems like it is), and Costco shopping carts the size of Buicks take up numerous parking spaces. I know people who have gone into Costco, bought a case of Aspirin, and finished it all by the time they left the parking lot, thanks to the massive headache caused by the traffic nightmare.

Other parking lots around here blow serious chunks, too. The CompUSA lot at Del Monte and South Virginia has creative elevation changes. The lot near Mervyn's at Prater Way and McCarran in Sparks has speed bumps in it that make no sense. And the lot at the Barbie-pink shopping center at South Virginia and Patriot Boulevard in South Reno has weird "do not enter" signs that can lead to brain hemorrhages.

That's all the advice I have room for now. I'll continue spreading the knowledge this week.

Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation Nevadan who likes parking canoes on dry land. His column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org. 1