Moving&shaking

Business boom

Whew! I can barely keep up with the new businesses preparing to open around town. Last week, Krispy Kreme made it official: The popular donut chain is adding itself to the string of eateries along crowded Business Lane. Company representatives told the Architectural Review Board that it wants to include a drive-through, palm trees (so Chico, don’t you think?) and a design city staff found “does not appear to be canned or trademark in nature.”

Since I get much of my business news from wandering around downtown bumming change off of trust fund babies, I’ve also noticed that longtime Chico favorite the Kramore Inn is opening Kramore II, at 121 Broadway, the former home of A Taste of India. Also downtown, Artifax, a store that sells vintage, thrift-store-type and new clothes, is moving around the corner from 152 Third St. to 247 Main St. as of Aug. 1.

Continuing impact

We got a call last week from the local United Parcel Service office. Seems they heard we covered the closure of Mountain Impact, which until June 27 sold military surplus sporting goods all over the world from a warehouse and retail store near the Chico Municipal Airport.

The company was hugely successful, but as the economy changed, and former company leaders were accused in a lawsuit of converting company insurance policies and property to their own use, Mountain Impact ran out of money after 10 years in Chico.

The parent company, C.O.R.P., filed for bankruptcy July 11. First, the company paid off as many local creditors as it could, then-CEO William Meehand told me shortly before the filing.

But there’s some unfinished business: the matter of 300 boxes that UPS tried to deliver to Mountain Impact but could not because, of course, no one was there. So, they’re stuck storing them unless they can find something tangible that’s left of C.O.R.P.

Rectum hell

I was trying to be cutesy on a news item a couple of weeks ago and mentioned in passing how, when a cow is artificially inseminated, someone’s arm is stuck up its rectum. This prompted a couple of letters to me and my editor. One reader wrote, “I would have thought the cow’s vagina might be a better route. Does she suppose that humans are impregnated the same way?”

OK, I’m not that geographically challenged and will take the space now to be more specific: What happens is (and I’ve included a handy diagram from an online Small-Scale Dairy Farming Manual), a semen-filled catheter is inserted into the vagina, while the other hand is up the rectum to guide the catheter through the cervix and into the uterus. It’s a two-hand task, so to speak.