New Nordstrom: Great, But Where Are The Frango Shakes? -- Visiting The New Nordstrom Isn't Quite What US Members Of The Friends Of Frederick's Club Might Expect.

Editor's note: Bill Kossen needs to go to a mall. The Seattle native is clinically obsessed with downtown Seattle, and even has a collection of shopping bags from stores that have closed over the years, such as Frederick & Nelson, I. Magnin, Klopfensteins and Woolworth.

Four years ago, he wrote a front-page story for this paper about how downtown Seattle was going downhill. Stores were closing, shoppers were fleeing and the future looked grim. "This is not good," the Seattle native thought, recalling the happy days of his youth, when downtown was packed with people.

Last week, he returned downtown to witness the grand opening of the new Nordstrom store. The surging crowds were back on Pine Street, as big as they had ever been. He looked around and thought he was in a time warp.

"I feel like a kid again," he said. "Except for this bald spot on top of my head. By the way, I'm looking for a bag from Rhodes Department Store. Got one?"

I plowed into the new Nordstrom store last Friday like a fullback, slowly moving behind a line of blockers who cleared a small pathway into the store overflowing with people, some of whom were actually shopping.

The size of the crowd was staggering. I remembered seeing pictures of such throngs in that building in old newspaper photos, back when it was the home of Frederick & Nelson, the grandest department store in the Pacific Northwest, billed as the biggest north of San Francisco and west of Minneapolis.

I liked Frederick's. Didn't shop there all that much - it was too expensive - but I sure loved the building. It reeked of class. It reeked of mint Frangos. I even have a few vintage boxes of F&N Frangos in the original shrink-wrap stored in my basement.

In its heyday, Frederick's had little competition from outside downtown. There were no suburban malls, discount stores or online shopping. Everyone came downtown.

Those crowds were all but gone by the time Frederick & Nelson closed its brass doors for good in 1991 at age 101. There were times when you could go there and feel as if it was your own private nine-story department store, there were so few shoppers.

I took my mother there just before it closed so she could see how the mighty had fallen and to have one last lunch in the legendary Tearoom on the ninth floor.

She didn't like what she saw. Said it reminded her of seeing an old friend die. Many said that at the time. Many remembered what it was like during World War II and immediately after, before they started taking their kids to Northgate or Bellevue Square or Southcenter, where parking was free and easy and where you could avoid the rain and being hit up for spare change, or worse.

Store by store, downtown started dying. Some said that if it kept up, our downtown could look like Detroit's, or even worse, Tacoma's.

So it should be great that downtown Seattle has come back in such a big-time way.

But some people complain it's become too glitzy. Instead of blue-collar stores like Ernst Hardware and J.C. Penney, we now have NikeTown and FAO Schwartz. Goodbye Steve's Broiler, hello Planet Hollywood.

Others may complain that it's become too popular and crowded.

And visiting the new Nordstrom isn't quite what us members of the Friends of Frederick's Club might expect.

The new store sure looks great. But it's disorienting. You can't find men's clothes on the main floor anymore. I was told by an employee stationed at the escalator on that crowded first day to head straight to the basement and not even think about going upstairs.

And while the basement still has a restaurant like Frederick's did, it doesn't serve those Frango mint shakes like the old Paul Bunyan Room had. But then, you couldn't get a "Breakfast Panini" at Frederick's.

The shiny new main floor now has been taken over by cosmetics and womens' shoes and hats and stuff. The three floors above that also have mostly women's clothes.

No more furniture. No more carpets or antiques. No more toys. No more hobby shop. In fact, no more top five floors. Those have been sealed off for Nordstrom corporate offices and the fifth-floor Spa Nordstrom. A faux skylight in the ceiling of the fourth floor tries to give the impression you're at the top of the building.

Even the famous elevators, once manned by stylish female operators, are now gone. At least from the north end of the building. A new set of automatic elevators are now tucked into an alcove on the east side of the main floor. Taking center stage are the escalators in the opened-up area in the middle of the store.

Yep, it looks great, but it sure doesn't look like Frederick's.

But you know, that's not all bad. After all, there is one big improvement. There are people in that new-old store again. Not just last Friday, but all this week, too. Lots of them.

Bill Kossen's phone message number is 206-464-2331. His e-mail address is: bkossen@seattletimes.com