southbeach1500 said
Seems to me you were being pretty truthful and honest in that shopping while tipsy topic that you posted. However, we'll let others read the topic and decide for themselves.
For the record, I do miss the good service one would receive at department stores. A time long past unfortunately...
I hope I am truthful about myself, warts & all. To let people laugh along with me at my human shortcomings & failings, my many comical misadventures. A lot more self-critical than many people are about themselves.
And when this next Christmas season arrives, I will have a lovely gin martini at the Capital Grill as usual, and get tipsy once again. You know I only go there about twice a year? And then launch myself out into the mall, to face the horror of holiday shopping, but with a smile on my face.

And actually I'm very effective. I will have researched everything beforehand, as detailed as a military operation, and I'll blitz the mall in record time.
Actually an RJer here witnessed me do that last Christmas: Sharkspeare, or whatever he calls himself these days. We first had lunch at Neiman Marcus, I think I just had a glass of wine, and then we both left my husband for the mall. He couldn't come along because I was shopping for him.
I knew exactly where I wanted to go, exactly what I wanted to get. And I did.
So this is my successful pattern, and it works very well. And yes, we'll let others decide for themselves, about my approach to these things.
As for missing the grand department stores of the past, or even the speciality ones, like Mark Cross where I got all my leather accessories, or Abercrombie & Fitch for my outdoor gear, before they degenerated into a twink outlet, I must accept that era has past.
That's a time of elegance & class that will never return in my lifetime. Oh, the high prices are still there, and the exclusivity, but not the true elegance I once knew.
Whether that's good or bad I can't say. Perhaps more egalitarian, but what's missing is the human touch we once had. The days of my Father sipping a brandy in an armchair, while he watched me being fitted for my prep school attire by his tailor, are long gone.
And I no longer have the money to make that ever happen again, anyway, even if it were possible in today's world. Perhaps for the mega-rich, but not for me. So it's a world of the past, while I'm stranded here in today's world of malls and big-box stores. Ugly & graceless. Most of the time I just close my eyes and block it out, and try to remember better days.