In addition to being May Day, a holiday not celebrated much in America, today is Buy Indie Day. The idea of Buy Indie Day is simple: go out and support your local independent business; not just bookstores, but also record stores, gift shops, bike shops, comic shops, restaurants and coffee shops.
As a reader of this blog, you’ve no doubt heard all the rhetoric of “buy local” that you’ll ever care to hear. Yes, it keeps more money in the local economy. Yes, it supports the tax base. But what I’d like to focus on today, Buy Indie Day, is the idea of uniqueness. To me, this is what the buy local movement is all about. Vroman’s is a Pasadena institution (We were founded four years after the Rose Bowl). People associate us with this area and with this city, and that, I think, is worth preserving.
When I was seventeen, I drove all around the country with my family, visiting distant relatives, researching colleges, and seeing sites like the Grand Canyon. What sticks out the most to me about that trip, though, are the little places that are unique to their locales. The restaurants we ate in, like The Rendezvous in Memphis (best ribs in the world). The coffee shops, like the weird, quirky one my cousin took me to in San Francisco. The book stores and record shops (things I didn’t really have access to growing up in a small town in Upstate New York). It was during that trip that I realized that I wanted to live in a city, and it was those businesses that convinced me of that fact. But even looking back on my youth, the things I associate with home are Cosmos Pizza, Dinosaur Barbecue, the Carrier Dome, Happy Endings coffee shop (no longer in existence), Soundgarden Records, etc.
The sad thing is, such an experience might not be available to my kids. I heard this segment of Marketplace yesterday afternoon, and I thought it was appropriate for Buy Indie Day. It features Jeff Tweedy, of the rock band Wilco, talking about Woody Guthrie and what Woody would notice about the country today. This quote jumped out at me:
“The fact that everywhere he went looked a little bit more alike than it did when he was traveling around the country. I notice that even from the twenty years that I’ve been on the road. There are places that used to feel like you were in a unique place in the world and a place that was different from the last place you were and it doesn’t feel as much like that these days.”
I don’t want to preach. I know that you won’t frequent these stores if they don’t provide value to you, and that’s fine. But take today to look around you, at the place you live. Why do you live there? What makes it special? What do you remember most about the place you grew up? What would you hate to lose about the place you live? Feel free to leave your favorites in the comments.
(On a semi-related note: Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. Head down to your local comics shop to pick up some free comics. I recommed Comics Factory, which also happens to be an indie store.)
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
In order to attend the Festival of Books, I ended up stopping in Santa Barbara. I knew I wanted to go to a little local deli, and I found a great place. Metropulos. The sandwich I had there was one of the highlights of my trip. I can go to a chain store anywhere. But it’s the local places that are unique to where you are at that very moment. I’m kind of a foodie so local restaurants stick out to me, but it’s the same whether you like food, music, unique gifts, art, etc. To me, one of the wonders of traveling is discovering new things. How do you discover anything new if you go to the same store you can go to in your hometown?
I had a very good Buy Indie Day. I bought two books from the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, a Kate Ellis and a Louise Ure crime novel. Then, I took my husband out to dinner to one of our local restaurants, Cucina Tagliani. It’s our favorite Italian restaurant – great service, great ambience, and wonderful Italian food. And, I’m a frequent diner. We don’t even go elsewhere for Italina food. Why go to a chain, when the local restaurant has it all?
Buy Indie!
Lesa
http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Every summer, we used to stay in a caravan overlooking 3 beaches. We’d sunbathe and read behind our wind trap; walk for miles, alone; spy on couples; climb rocks; swim in the rain; play cards while eating Cadbury’s chocolate, carefully counting out one piece for each round. There was no such thing as predators, no such thing as a schedule. Even as I write this, I can feel my breath begin to fill with peace.
Have you read “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid” by Bill Bryson? It’s all about growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, and amid the almost never-ending sea of side-splitting anecdotes, he laments the loss of many things that made his town unique. Worth reading. And I still dream about the sandwiches at the New Pioneer Co-op in Iowa City (I can’t believe you and Edan didn’t eat there). I haven’t found anything to compare, not in Boston, not in New York, not in Los Angeles. Only in Iowa City…
Back in the late 90s I was a touring singer/songwriter. I would finance my tours by playing at Borders Books and Music cafes; unbelievably they actually paid unknown artists like myself up to $100 for playing to people reading magazines or computer books while sipping their lattes, whereas the cool independent coffeehouses where people actually came to hear my music paid nothing. It was the heyday of Borders, with new stores springing up almost weekly in malls around the country. These malls (from New Mexico to Ohio) almost always contained ToysRUs, Petsmart, and similar stores. I would drive into a new town at around 4:00 in the afternoon with my preprinted Google maps and after a while it became like a “Groundhog Day” surrealism, as if I were entering the same town day after day.
In the early 1980s I was lead singer in a Top 40 cover band. Remember the song “Funky Town”? My favorite line was, “What town is this?” Prescient, that.
I sometimes make a conscious effort not to buy from major chains – especially for restaurants. While major chains provide a vast array of products local stores can win over customers. There are about 4 or so hardware stores in Pasadena / Altadena where I’ll shop. I can get in and out quickly and get personal attention easily.