A couple of weeks ago, I dropped in on a goodbye party for our local stationery store. The aisles had long been picked bare (pretty much the day after the owners announced that they were shutting down.) People were laughing and drinking and signing the guestbook saying things like "Where am I going to get my daytimer refills now?!?"
Two or three blocks up the street, the framing shop on the corner is shutting down as well. Around the corner from our house, the antique store that used to delight my toddler with the many trinkets in the window (and delighted me with the case of glass eyeballs) is gone. The gelato place I used to take her to on warm days has a "For Sale" sign on its glass door. The run-down but sweet little Cambodian restaurant with the pleasant covered deck out back was replaced by another restaurant. We've also lost a great French restaurant and are in the process of losing a clothing boutique, one which could always be counted on to have really atrocious underwear in the window and really cute skirts on the racks. The gym space where my daughter takes classes is moving a mile away, not far but no longer walking distance.
Perhaps it's churlish — or worse, spoiled-yuppie-ish — to bemoan these developments. Things could be so much worse, and are, in many parts of the country. And businesses come and go even in good times. But it does still make me feel like my neighborhood is slowly moving away from me, and I wonder when things will get to the point where it's simply no longer the place I've loved for nearly 15 years.
Just as long as the bookstore hangs in there...
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