Fatburger is coming to town, and the Santa Clarita WorkSource Center is holding a recruitment event Friday at 10 a.m. for job-seekers.

Hiring for part-time positions, the eatery is looking for restaurant people to work in the restaurant and serve as cooks at the new location expected to open on The Old Road.

“We actually help to recruit on behalf of any interested employer,” said Jessica Jackson, communications specialist with the city of Santa Clarita.

“We connect job-seekers to employers looking to fill available positions,” Jackson said. “Fatburger requested assistance.”

Dive into Fatburger a bit, and you’ll find it’s a fast food chain with some interesting history. For a long time I thought Magic Johnson had a stake in the chain, and he did, until about 2003. That’s when an investor with a checkered history (including a stint in jail for fraud) took over the firm, and now his company, Fog Cutter Capital, is expanding the restaurant by 30 locations in 2011.

Apparently Santa Clarita is on his list.

So what are we to make of this story? Well, essentially what we have here is the City of Santa Clarita (through its no doubt earnest and hardworking people at the Workforce Development Center) functioning as the HR department for a millionaire’s holding company which owns a burger joint with name recognition. I mean, Fog Cutter could do what normal companies do when looking for workers: advertise in newspapers, Craigslist, and Monster.com, but why do that when a local government is willing to advertise and screen applicants for you for free?

Dollars to hamburgers doughnuts Fog Cutter is taking advantage of the City’s enterprise zone program too, which means they get a kickback on taxes for every fry cook they hire.

And for what? What do we the people of Santa Clarita get out of this deal? Part time fry cooks. That’s right. Part time fast food restaurant jobs that probably won’t even offer health insurance or other benefits (thereby offloading such burdens to the state).

I hate to read stories like this because I want Santa Clarita to become a destination for real businesses. I want the City to put its resources towards attracting high quality businesses, so our residents don’t have to hump it over the hill every day. I know it’s hard work, but we’ve done it before (Princess, Spectra Labs, etc).

Fatburger though? These are not the jobs we are looking for.

Alas, this will be spun as a successful outcome of City programs and so don’t be surprised when you see photos of members of the City Council at the Fatburger grand opening, hailing the success of this venture as they cut the ribbon with their giant novelty scissors.

This nerdish tendency only intensified when I moved to the SCV as a lonely 16 year old in the middle of my sophomore year. I had no friends and didn’t know my McBeans from my Castaics, so I spent lots of time in the Hart library and bookstores around town (including Jan Heidt’s old book store, the Walden Books in Granary Square, and the book store in the mall). No bookstore was off limits; I even went to Christian and Mormon bookstores, sometimes on the same day.

Even into my 20s, hanging out at a book store was a great way to kill a few hours. Back then, I considered a visit to the bookstore a successful way to cap off a hot date. What a catch, right ladies?

That all leads me to the warm fuzzies I have in my heart for the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Magic Mountain Parkway. Back in the 90s, I wasn’t plugged into the whole multi-national corporation vs mom ‘ pop bookseller conflict, so, naturally, when B&N opened in September 1995 I was in paperback heaven.

It was the biggest bookstore I’d ever seen! They didn’t grow bookstores like that back on the prairie where I came from, and they sure as hell didn’t offer you tables and chairs and invite you to crack open a stack of books for several hours. This was radical stuff!

Well, 16 years later and the book scene has changed dramatically. Not only can you preview and order books on the computer and have them delivered to your house the next day, but now you can hold an entire library of books inside a device that’s as big as a notepad!

What’s the use of a big bookstore then? I’ll always like them, but they are perhaps a dying breed, just like record stores. Borders is long gone, no one remembers Walden or EB Books so Barnes & Noble is the only real general bookstore in the SCV.

And boy is it changing. I was in there recently and they’ve shuffled just about every book in the store. Current events? Moved, and de-emphasized. The religion section is seemingly expanded, and I couldn’t even find the business books anymore. And worst of all, Barnes & Noble has now become a toy store, devoting at least 1/10th of its floor space to toys. “Smart” toys, but toys nonetheless. That’s in addition to tons of other non-book things, like journals, decorative boxes, trendy man purses, and more.

Barnes & Noble remains a popular hangout in the SCV, but it’s clear they’re adjusting their model because they’re probably not selling as many physical books anymore. So how long until the SCV has no book stores?

I don’t know if you recall, but about a year and a half ago, the LA Times did a series of well-researched stories on how black tar heroin was making inroads into “Middle America” and the suburbs. Here’s an excerpt:

Immigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of America.

Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar.

Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into cities and small towns across the United States, often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none. In many of those places, authorities report increases in overdoses and deaths.

One of the things that came through he Signal’s story and this video is that parents had no idea heroin was so easily available in the SCV. After all, people move to places like Santa Clarita to get away from those kinds of things which we associate with the inner city or urban areas. I’m guilty too- for a long time I didn’t believe it was a real problem. So how the hell did heroin get into our town to the extent that we have hundreds of overdose cases and 10 deaths?

Let’s step back a bit. First of all, when did it become more profitable for poor Mexican farm boys to cultivate heroin rather than sugar? Billions of people use sugar each day, and millions probably grow it, but how many people use heroin? Were the margins too low on sugar or what? And once these farmers decided it’d be more profitable to produce heroin, how’d they develop the business intelligence to realize that a places like the SCV would become fertile marketplaces for their product? Why not a more dense place like LA, or Chicago or Buffalo? Did they take a look at the competition (other drugs) or the cops and realize it’d be an easy market to conquer?

I guess what I’m saying is that we have to look at this heroin problem as a classic case of supply and demand. Before, there wasn’t too much of a supply in heroin in the SCV, so demand was low or nonexistent. These Mexican farmers decided one day to make heroin instead of sugar, and part of their business plan was to find customers who liked the high they got from the drug. And one day they decided Santa Clarita would be the next market they target. Voila! A marketplace was born.

And now, after creating the demand for their product, the SCV will be just another marketplace for heroin in the eyes of drug producers. They’ll do everything a typical CSUN MBA would do: tally their profits and losses, improve their infrastructure, and get as much margin per unit from their salesforce.

Oh sure, every now and then we’ll read a good tale about our Sheriff’s Deputies busting some 20 something kid who has in his possession a brick or two of heroin. The City will release a blurb about the number of heroin balloons that were seized in Q4. This will make us feel good, but in reality, it will just constrain supply for a little while, and prices of heroin will probably go up in the SCV, enriching dealers even more.

This is basic capitalism and supply and demand. You can’t stop it. Deputies are no match for marketplace forces. We’ll never win this war. All you can try and do is educate people not to get into it in the first place, which is what we’ve started to do.

But that never feels satisfying enough. Especially against a background of increasing and accelerating globalization where normal Americans can never move fast enough or far away enough from the effects of every disruption in the global market, from Greece’s debt ratio to the price of sugar in rural Mexico.

I’ve pinged those who usually know about corporate/government relocations to the SCV and they either said they hadn’t heard about it or didn’t respond. So take this for what it’s worth: a rumor, but I have confidence in my source.

The current IRS office in Van Nuys appears to be a typical IRS service branch, with several services offered to the public. Its current location is at the Van Nuys civic center, familiar to many an SCVer who have had the misfortune of being called for jury duty there.

If this is true, it’s great news from an economic standpoint. Federal jobs tend to be stable jobs, and service branches (like the DMV, or Post Office or a library) generate reliable and steady traffic. Plus, government services tend to cluster, meaning that as the North County region continues to grow, perhaps more federal agencies will look to Santa Clarita. Indeed, the Postal Service has already  invested a lot in the SCV.

But on a more cultural level, having the IRS -the federal government’s tax collection agency- call the SCV its home is also deliciously ironic in that the SCV is a hotbed of anti-tax Tea Party activism where Laffer Curve adherents and Grover Norquist devotees hold yearly anti-tax protests in front of City Hall.

I mean, can you think of a more ironic or awkward arrangement? It’d be like the GOP holding a presidential nominating convention in San Francisco’s Castro District.

SCVtalk has been on the case of the new Apple store, ever since breaking the news back in February. Apple seemed amused by the coverage, so they extended an invite. Jeff had some Carmageddon-avoidance plan that had him out of town, so he put me on the case.

So we’re clear, the only computer I’ve ever had at home, work or school has been a Mac. I’m in the tank for Apple, always have been. My family bought its first Mac, a Mac Plus, the year we moved to Valencia way back when. It’s been a long time coming, and for people like me, this is a big deal.

At 10 a.m. yesterday, the doors opened and the new Apple Store at the Valencia Town Center was in business. The line snaked around the building, stretching past the Five Guys entrance on the opposite side. I spoke with Michelle Heid of Valencia, who lined up with her son Ty at 9:30. She’s been a Mac user since high school and she was thrilled to finally see Apple set up shop in the SCV. The line moved briskly, and Michelle and Ty made it inside by 10:15 or so.

Each of the first 1,000 customers got a free commemorative black t-shirt, packaged in a crafty sort of box. At 11 a.m. sharp, the queue had emptied and nearly all of the shirts were gone.

It seems that wherever 100 or more people congregate in Santa Clarita, the Chick-Fil-A cow appears, with his handler issuing coupons. It’s not enough that the first wave of customers scored a Valencia Apple Store shirt, but free chicken as well.

The store is striking, as Apple Stores tend to be. It’s a long space with high ceilings and there isn’t a cash register in sight. Employees scan credit cards and email receipts with specially-fitted iPod touch units. If you pay in cash, they’ll make change from cash drawer that’s built into a table. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Not only that, the signs that used to display features and pricing have been replaced by iPads that run a product information app. You see fewer printers and software has all but vanished, limited to about 20 titles. Apple now sells software over the internet, directly through an application in its latest operating systems. The effect of this is striking – the only titles on display were tent-pole titles like Adobe’s Creative Suite and Microsoft Office, since neither is available on Apple’s App Store.

Customer engagement is a big deal here, and at times, it seemed that there were almost as many employees as customers. Of course there’s a Genius bar in the back, where they handle tough questions and repairs. There will be a regular workshops open to the public as well as a camp for kids who want to learn more about working with music & video on the Mac. It’s also the first Apple Store with Apple’s new “Startup” tables, where employees get customers up and running on their new computers, iPhones and iPads.

Speaking of computers, in the past, the centerpiece of the Apple Stores were its most powerful computers – maybe a Mac Pro (their most powerful line) driving two 30-inch monitors, loaded with professional audio and video software. But out of dozens of computers on display, just one is a Mac Pro. Recently, Steve Jobs compared computers to trucks and mobile devices to cars, suggesting that there will always be a market for trucks, but most people will prefer a car. Apple is still very much in the truck business, just not monster trucks.

By chance, I ran into Nathan Miles, the owner of Valencia Mac on his way out of the store. Nathan was in good spirits, holding his head high and proudly sporting a Valencia Mac t-shirt. He’s a big fan of the Apple store – his own shop takes may cues from Apple’s look and feel. He carries many of the same products, save for the iPhone, and he’s a creative professional, as many Apple customers tend to be.

It had to be a nervous day for him, but he’s always expected Apple to come to Santa Clarita. In fact, he expected to see it happen sooner. He’s optimistic that the new store is a blessing in disguise, as the user base of Mac users in the SCV increases. I know from experience that his shop can give a personal touch that’s different from a corporate store. But at the same time, Apple’s stores operate in a way few retailers can match.

In all, it was a big day for the SCV, and bigger still for geeks like myself. Now if we could only get a decent coffee shop…

All photos © Nathan Imhoff

It took Westfield Valencia Town Center two years to attract the store to its newest outdoor space at The Patios. Apple has regularly been at the top of Santa Clarita Valley residents’ wish list when it comes to businesses they want.

Uh-huh.

Before we get all high on ourselves as sophisticated, urban, tasteful technology connosieurs, I’d like to see the study or quasi-scientific poll that shows Apple Store is at the top of what the SCV wanted. Because I remember differently. And what I remember is that the SCV preferred cheese to Apples:

Boom! Nine times as many respondents to the City’s 2010 poll preferred a Cheesecake Factory to an Apple Store.

I’m really bullish on what a successful Apple store means for SCV, and I’d like to think its arrival in the SCV heralds a future in which we’ll have an ArcLight or Landmark Theater and other sophisticated attractions, but let’s be honest here: this is still a place and we are still a people who want a Cheesecake Factory above all else.

A reader reflects on what it could mean for SCV:

Love that Apple is putting a store in Valencia. As mentioned in your previous thread, it’s bigger news than most observers would imagine. People flock from all over So Cal to go to the Northridge store and I expect similar traffic to this Valencia store. It’s a huge win for SCV that should not only bring in more local business to its retailers, but also contribute to the notion that Valencia/SCV  is “the place to be” for home shoppers.

I concur. I think this will bring a lot of foot traffic to the Patios and that can only be good for Westfield Town Center Valencia (or whatever they’re calling it these days) and good for the City. Just think, a portion of all those high-priced aluminum gadgets will go into the City’s coffers. Score!

But more than that, it does signal SCV can accommodate the higher end retail segment. That’s already been proven by the opening of the Williams Sonoma store (the Apple Store of the food-conscious world). By opening a store in the SCV, Apple is telling  other upper-end retailers that, “Hey, the SCV is untapped and fertile. Go there. You’ll find success.”

I’m going to be out of town on Saturday unfortunately, but I predict some pretty solid crowds for the opening. I hope some of you will take pictures and email them to me from your fancy iDevices.

A little secret: even though I’m a PC guy, I was at opening day of the Apple Store in Glendale way back in May of 2001. I have the T-Shirt to prove it. I treasure it alongside my BeOS T-shirt, a Windows Server t-shirt and other excellent computer memorabilia.

As a total geek, I’m thrilled we’re getting another electronics retailer in the SCV. One less reason to leave the valley, one more way to say “iThinkSCV.”

But as a guy who’s built a career on Windows and as a veteran of the PC/Mac wars since the 1980s, I’m so tempted to do this to the display now in the Patios:

On another subject, does anyone else get a tiny-bit depressed walking around Town Center Drive these days? It used to be the new hotness in town. I remember when they tore up that entire section of the city. Anticipation was high for Town Center drive….it was to be our Third Street Promenade, or Colorado Avenue, a ped-friendly shopping & entertainment nirvana. Remember how cool Edwards & stadium seating was compared to the original Edwards!

And now? It’s just so vacant. Even Coffee Bean has abandoned Town Center for the Patios, which indicates that that’s where the people are. What remains are a few high-end clothiers (from my perspective anyway), chiropractors, a plastic surgeon (whose tasteful Town Center-facing ad shows an attractive woman’s bikinid breasts above the text, “Invest in Your Assets”), a wine bar, a cigar shop, and a few once-was-hot-but-no-longer restaurants (with the exception of Maru).

What happened to Town Center? Is it just the economy that’s got the place down in the dumps? Will it bounce back? Or did it never take off like Newhall Land intended it to? Is SCV -or more specifically Valencia- not compatible with the whole urban shop/live/walk/eat ideal? If the city had shelled out $20m in corporate welfare for a Nordstroms, would that have made Town Center Drive a roaring success? Or does Town Center drive prove that SCV is thoroughly middle class and would prefer to shop at a Ross or Kohl’s before hitting up high-rent shops?

Town Center Drive tells us something about the SCV market, but I’m not sure what it is.

I walked by this old quilt hanging near the bathrooms of the Westfield Valencia Town Center mall on Saturday and, after pausing to reflect, I got a little teary-eyed and nostalgic for the SCV of the mid 90s.

It was a time of more certainty and simplicity as far as local politics were concerned. You had the smart and aggressive cowboys at Newhall Land enjoying the realization of a built-out, high-quality Valencia, a successful mall, and the new people that attracted. On the other hand you had cranky no-growthers and reasonable slow-growthers who would populate the Tell It To the Signal column with rants about NLF. Then you had a young and spunky city with an inspiring, up-from-your-bootstraps tale of self-determination against the will of the nation’s most populous County.

The years were 1992 to 1996 and they were heady days indeed. Everything was truly local, from the hotshot developers at Newhall Land to the new City (located just across the street!) to The Signal. The quilt proudly reflects this, showing off the institutions our community is proud of from local school districts to CalArts, COC, Magic Mountain, the paper, and more.

Those institutions are still here, but you can’t help but feel things have changed for the worse nowadays. Henry Mayo’s company was bought by those sharks in Florida (Lennar) who promptly ran the proud SS Newhall Land aground after the boom years. Then came the confusing BK process (I think I remember blogging about rumors that Arab sheiks were going to acquire a piece of NLF), the divestment of many properties (but not Newhall Ranch) and finally the entrance of Five Points Communities and some Orange County dude named Emile Haddad.

Orange County? For real?

To top it off, Newhall Land moved out of its iconic building on Valencia Blvd and to a new, generic building on the west side of town,  where its destiny lies.

The same is true of Magic Mountain. Controlling ownership has changed a few times since this quilt was made, and each time it was easy to feel as though an important part of our local economy and LA County’s mental map was becoming a little less certain (especially when some were making noise about leveling the park and building homes on it!)

The Signal? Well, it has remained The Signal and nothing’s going to change for that paper so long as its owned by Morris in Georgia.

And finally, the mall itself has changed. It used to be an SCV original article. Who can forget the awesome murals that hung all over the mall? The ones in the old food court were particularly beautiful; I remember staring at them while on my lunch break when I worked at the old Sweet Factory.

Now our Valencia Town Center mall is just another franchised property owned by the Aussie outfit Westfield. The murals are harder to find and are featured less prominently, and the quilt above is still located near the bathrooms. Oh sure they built Town Center Drive and the Patios, and it all looks nice and has some great shopping, but I can’t help but feel it’s lost a bit of its original character.

Maybe I’m just a jaded online shopper who has a romantic view of the SCV of the 90s but I remember when the mall opened and it was a special day. We finally had our own mall. And I, as a teen, liked to cruise it. Perhaps the quilt reminds me of that as much as it reminds me of the SCV back then.

No longer! Behold, I have found the greatest strip mall of them all. A strip mall so culturally and commercially (and spiritually!) diverse that it actually discourages car trips. A strip mall that satisfies your cravings for vice, virtue, utility, sustenance and fun in a way that’s profound and innovative. A strip mall, that while run-down and old and too close to Jake’s Way for comfort, I wish I lived next to.

And after you read about it, I think you’ll want to live near it too.

I’m talking about the unnamed and virtually hidden strip mall on the south side of Soledad just west of Sierra Highway directly across the wash from Jake’s Way and near the “Den of Sin” on the Soledad bike path:

This strip mall has just about everything for the 21st century man (or woman). Millions have been poured into Old Town Newhall and Valencia, but nothing can match this one tiny strip mall deep in the heart of Canyon Country.

On the vice side of things, there is, of course, a liquor store. But that’s not all. There’s also a bar and -get this!- a bar tending school. Like you can actually go to school to learn to be a bartender, and then practice your new trade next door at “The Bar.”

IN. THE. SAME. PLACE.

But that’s not all. For those wanting a more personal touch, this strip mall has a massage parlor near the back. After a long day at bar-tending school, perhaps you want a completely platonic and therapeutic massage performed by certified professionals. If that sounds like you, this strip mall has you covered!

Hungry? Mom Can Cook Thai restaurant is perhaps the best Thai restaurant in the SCV. The foodies can’t stop talking about it. Literally. They won’t shut up. But maybe you want something more American- if so, there’s a Taqueria in this strip mall that says it makes great Mexican AND American food.

You can’t lose!

Of course, these are hard times and not everyone can afford to live as they did in the phat aughts (phaughts?). So if you need some money (perhaps for a massage or bar tending school tuition or dinner at Mom Can Cook), this strip mall offers , yes, a pawn shop! A place you can exchange Grand mama’s priceless heirlooms for a few bucks to spend across the parking lot.

Sadly, we all know that all this vice comes with a price. Namely: deep, abiding, all-consuming guilt. Don’t worry though; this strip mall has you covered. Because wedged between the pawn shop and the liquor store is…you guessed it… an Evangelical Lutheran Church! The Church of Hope (which, by day, is a thrift shop, another rare site in the SCV) is a small congregation but what they lack in facilities they make up for in spirit.

In other words, it’s entirely possible for you to spend your Saturday and Sunday in the confines of this one excellent strip mall. Saturday you hit the massage parlor, then take a course at bartending school followed up by some occupational training at the Bar. By Sunday morning, when you’re feeling like it’s the end of the world, you can go get cleaned up at the barber shop (next to the massage place) and then head to church where all is forgiven. After church, grab a curry dish at Mom can cook, and on the way out of the strip mall, drop your alimony check off at the Post Office, which is also located in the strip mall.

Truly, this strip mall is better than Vegas. The only thing missing is a coffee shop.