Many years ago I got a credit card at a semi-posh department store in Seattle which I probably never used except when Bon Marché had a good sale. It was a good staid old stablishment in Seattle and kind of cool. Then Bon Marché got gobbled up by Macy's and everything started coming in from China and my stodgy old credit card was swallowed up by Visa via JP Morgan Chase -- and the billing pattern changed to less than the normal 30 day cycle so that I as a dumb customer could be suckered into late payments and penalty fees. I cancelled the damn card, I thought, years and years ago. Once in a while they would beg me to come back but I thought I was free of the bastards.
Damnation! I just got a bill from Chase Manhattan indicating that I owed absolutely ZERO but it sure looked to me that my little old credit card, which I had ground up a century ago into dust, was fully active and ready to totally screw me economically.
How do I kill the damned thing that refuses to die like a decent sort of entity? It's like a God damned corporation which never dies.
Will it truly be necessary for me to drive a stake through Jamie Dimon's black little heart? What happens if his toxic blood splashes on me? Will I be utterly befouled and doomed to eternal damnation through the desecration of Jamie Dimon's toxic, noxious, malignant blood upon my pure and innocent body?
Just for old time's sake, part of the Bon Marché obituary:
The Bon Marché, whose name means "the good deal" or "the good market", was the name chosen for a department store launched in Seattle, Washington, United States, in 1890 by Edward Nordhoff. The name was influenced by Le Bon Marché, the noted Parisian retailer. In 1929, The Bon Marché was acquired by Hahn Department Stores and reorganized as Allied Stores, a few years later. A solid middle-range store, The Bon served largely working-class Seattle well; branches were added in several Northwestern cities. Among them were Spokane, Tacoma, Yakima, Kennewick, Longview, Walla Walla, Olympia, and Bellingham, Washington, Missoula, Montana, and Boise, Idaho. Commonly known to customers as The Bon, the company dropped the Marché from their name in the late 1970s before returning it in the mid-1980s.
The Bon was known for their catchy jingles, such as the following to the tune of "The Banana Boat Song": "Day-o, One Day Sale, One day only at The Bon Marché! Save 20, 30, 40 percent (example savings)! Saturday only at the Bon Marche. Prices are down in every department! Saturday only at the Bon Marche!..." This jingle continued after the name was changed to Bon Macy's, with the appropriate changes.
Earlier, in the 1960s, The Bon also used some cuts from PAMS' Series 23 jingle package, "Ani-Magic".
Allied Stores was merged into Federated Department Stores in 1989. As part of its national rebranding program, Federated changed the name to Bon-Macy's in 2003. On March 6, 2005, the Bon-Macy's name was eliminated, with the stores renamed as the Macy's Northwest division of Federated. On February 6, 2008, the Macy's Northwest division was merged with the Macy's West division, based in San Francisco.
As of April 2011, Strategic Marks, LLC has obtained 'The Bon Marche' trademark and plans on re-introducing the famous department store name as part of a virtual mall, along with other nostalgic stores such as The Broadway, Joseph Magnin, Robinson's, Filene's, Abraham & Straus and many others. The goal is to bring back the great department stores of the 20th century, with the hopes of re-opening the actual brick and mortar stores throughout the US.