Palo Alto Patagonia

Paid a visit to the Palo Alto Patagonia store Wednesday. I got there about 45 minutes before closing on a dreary, rainy day. The store is on Alma Street which is a pretty busy narrow street (had to wait to open my car door lest an approaching automobile convert my 4-door car to a 3-door car) just off University Avenue which leads into Stanford University. It's a great looking store that stretches pretty deep behind a fairly narrow store front.

It was the second to last day of the Winterfest Sale and I found that they had some gear that had long since sold out on the website like the old version of the MLC bag and some printed t-shirts. They also had a good amount of winter stuff like the Down Vest, Rubicon Puff, and so on. I liked the look and feel of the store and while I didn't come out with anything (still waiting for the new Critical Mass to come in and the Stretch Latitude jacket to go on sale), I did encounter some warm employees and a catalog (for some reason I never got the Heart of Winter catalog in the mail).

The buddy I was with was pretty shocked by Patagonia's prices and we had a good discussion about the environmental causes Patagonia supports and the R & D that goes into the products. He was convinced though that the bottom line was that Patagonia was out to make money and frankly, I couldn't refute that--what business isn't? However, without knowing much about the company, it's easy for people to look at the price tag and just see it as a rip-off.