There’s a guy answering the phone at the Target store in Mira Mesa. He’s been calling around to lots of local stores to try and pinpoint the whereabouts of the hottest commodity in town: fans.
He said I was the fifth person in an hour to call asking whether they had any fans in stock. He also estimated that he’s been asked about fans or air conditioners by at least five shoppers every hour.
The Longs Drugs store manager in downtown San Diego said his store just received a special delivery of 12 dozen fans. He said his warehouse has been out of stock for two weeks and that he’s had to go through a secondary source to get the prized items.
“We’ve lost so many sales in fans in the last few weeks it’s ridiculous,” he said.
Home Depot stores in town are completely out of fans and air conditioners, according to an operator at the Home Depot in Otay Mesa. My colleague said he went to his local store yesterday and they had a sign up saying “Don’t even ask!”
According to online weather forecasts, there’s little on no sign that San Diego’s sticky humidity will be breaking any time soon. According to Weather.com, humidity is currently 76 percent in America’s Finest City, and according to Wunderground.com, the weather’s staying the same through Tuesday.
Out there on the Internet, a few steamy souls are getting desperate. Check out this ad recently posted on the local Craigslist.org site.
One of our reporters has been calling around to the local Wal-Mart stores. The National City store apparently has “lots” of fans, the Chula Vista store doesn’t have any (indeed, the operator hung up on us). The Murphy Canyon store has “a handful” of fans. They were out for three weeks, apparently, but just got some more in. In College Grove, they only have little fans and in La Mesa, they only have box fans.
According to a Los Angeles Times, 39 percent of residences in San Diego County have air conditioning. That’s compared with 61 percent in Orange County and 48 percent in L.A. County.