Friday, June 01, 2007
Love, Rachel.
The store was first opened by J.R. Robinson around 1987 in a single mobile home. It was then sold to Jim & Sue Lindow, who eventually defaulted on it. The store was closed for several years until D.C. Day reopened it as the Quik Pik. He expanded it to double-wide and now leases it to his son and daughter-in-law, David and Burnadine Day. After D.C.'s death in July 1997, his widow Fay Day managed the store.
In 2006 the Quik Pik was sold to an investor from California, who managed to ruin the small but steady business within a few months. It was closed in the winter of 2006/2007, along with the adjacent trailer park. The nearest gas is now 60 miles south, in Ash Springs, or 110 miles north, in Tonopah.
A Short History of Rachel, Nevada: Businesses
I was actually rather sad to read this bit of news. When Hoade and I visited Rachel back in 2005 (the write- up was done in 2006), we actually shopped at the Quik Pik store (got some ice cream) and talked with Fay Day who was managing the store at the time.
And now—it's closed. Probably for good.
How bad do you have to manage a store with a complete monopolistic lock over an entire region and have it fail?
Reading the entire history of Rachel left me feeling melancholy. Here's a small town in the middle of nowhere that's slowly dying and on its way to being a small somewhat amusing footnote in American pop history.
Clue-by-four on track nine …
I have one final comment about the whole LiveJournal blowup: has no one at Six Apart read Cluetrain Manifesto? I thought this was supposed to be baked into online businesses' DNA or something …
