I’ve started taking Maggie on long walks. We’ve watched enough Cesar Milan and read enough articles that we know a well-behaved dog is a tired dog. One day I’m certain I’ll take her on a walk that might actually achieve this.

On our trek, I see ladies pushing strollers, lots of cyclists, kids on skateboards, and plenty of other dog walkers. We’re a very doggy/kiddie neighborhood. There’s some traffic, but the only heavy traffic is at rush hour.

This is a core neighborhood called Allandale. It was one of the first “northern” neighborhoods built in Austin. “Dazed and Confused” was filmed here — and it still has that period flavor to it. We’re not going to wow anyone with our fabulous bungalow Mission-style homes. These are late-50s, early 60s tract houses.

We even have our very own “dead” mall: Northcross Mall. Northcross is home to one of two ice skating rinks in town and it also has a Guitar Center, a place The Dude knows all too well, and a number of other businesses. There have been attempts to renovate the property over the years, but none that was exceptionally successful. However, there have been lots of small, neighborhood-centric locally-owned businesses opening over the last few years around Northcross. They’ve done well here.

The owner of Northcross Mall has made a deal with Wal-Mart to put in a 24-hour, 220,000 square foot Wal-Mart Superstore. This is, to put it mildly, cluster fuckage for Allandale and about six other surrounding neighborhoods on a pretty epic level.

Wal-Marts are not designed to be neighborhood businesses. They use a regional marketing approach. They build cheap. They employ cheap. They keep hours that are not conducive to a neighborhood — this is part of the reason why they started out on the edges of towns and on the feeders to highways.

Needless to say, the neighborhoods were not approached when Wal-Mart decided to build here. There are a few people who don’t dread this new Wal-Mart, but I’m pretty sure they don’t realize what’s really going in.

This is a SUPER Store. It’s ridiculously huge. It will be the second largest store in the Travis County — second only to the enormous IKEA store that just opened.

Wal-Mart has “performed” a Traffic Impact Assessment. According to their TIA, there will be an up-tic in traffic to the tune of roughly 7,805 trips. When this analysis was reviewed against actual increases in traffic for three other Wal-Mart super centers here in Austin, it was discovered that the actual traffic at those locations were 28,227/15,109/22,754 trips. Given the size of this store, the increases in trips could be as high as 50,000.

Not to mention that this store will be open 24/7. This will dump vast amounts of traffic through seven quiet residential neighborhoods in the dead of night. And when the traffic gets bad on the main arteries, people will start cutting through the side streets.

What Wal-Mart is in the process of doing is “in-filling.” They’ve built and destroyed as much as they can in the suburbs and the small towns in America. The only place they have to go is into core neighborhoods like ours. They’re developing new marketing, trying to — I bullshit you not — upscale Wal-Mart. Yes, the rock-bottom, bottom-feeders of the Walton family are trying to “upgrade” their image. I guess they’ve got no where to go but up.

The neighborhood associations have banded together to try and stop the project. Or at least get Wal-Mart to make concessions to the livability of our part of town. I have very little hope that this will succeed. When Wal-Mart tried to build over the Edwards Aquifer, the city stopped them. But we’re a middle-class neighborhood. Let’s face it, no one gives a crap about us in this country anymore.

So, I’ll keep walking Maggie, and writing letters to the paper about this, and whatever else I can do to express how bad I think this store will be for our little patch of the world. And when the inevitable comes, I won’t give one thin dime to those rapacious ass monkeys at Wal-Mart.

Viva la revolution