Aw, crud.

So my mom calls me up last night - "Is there anything you want from the little yarn shop here?"

Turns out she's asking, not because they're having a sale - because they're going out of business. Looks like their last few days will be the first few days I'm up there for a visit (but I suspect they'll be largely sold out of stuff).

The building they were in has been sold to a developer (boo, hiss) and like so many of the modestly-sized buildings in the downtown (sorry, I won't call it "Uptown" even though that's what the developers and stakeholders are insisting it be called), it's going to be torn down and (probably) replaced with some god-awful excrescence that some land-developer is using to immortalize himself.

The owner of the shop said in the letter she sent out that it was a hard decision to close - they had looked for other locations but they were either too expensive, too out-of-the-way (they got a lot of foot traffic from the University where they were), or they were next to fast-food places where the food fumes would embed themselves in the yarn.

So, dammit - no more yarn shop in my parents' town. They didn't even get to be open 2 years.

I know a lot of people are disappointed about what's happening in "don't call it Downtown any more." A lot of the older, familiar places are gone, replaced by pricey spots that are clones of ritzy places in Chicago. (Seriously - my brother, who knows whereof he speaks [He works at the University of Chicago] noted that "They're trying to turn it into another Hyde Park!")

While I suppose that's great for the rich kids from the Chicago 'burbs who might be homesick, it's kind of disgusting to a lot of the long-time residents. And I'm sure a lot of the college students (heck, probably some of the faculty and staff for that matter) are priced out of a lot of the downtown things now...the funky cheap pizza places are replaced by an Italian restaurant with cloth tablecloths, the used book store had to move, tenants are being imperiously told that their building is going to be torn down in x months...even when they just finished putting in considerable money to renovating/decorating their space.

(If I were a small businessperson, those stories would make me think twice - or more than twice - about locating there).

And I wonder...if the economic downturn continues, what will happen? What does a $30 a plate restaurant do if it doesn't get enough patrons who can easily afford that?

I really don't want to go visit my folks some day and find that the downtown has tumbleweeds rolling through it because everyone built too big and too expensive too fast.

But it makes me sad, especially looking at the town where I live now. When I first moved down here, the downtown was (I'll be honest) depressing. There were about 20 shuttered storefronts and maybe 6 or 7 places doing business. That balance is slowly reversing - we now have a really nice Italian restaurant (where you can get a decent dinner for $9, and $20 will get you the fanciest dish in the house). We have a quilt shop now. It looks like another antique shop (this one specializing in horse tack, but I hope that's not its exclusive line) sometime soon. And each one of these businesses represents a little victory - a little fight against a general mentality that says, "People only want what they can get cheap at Wal-Mart." Or a mentality that says "Downtowns are dead; everyone goes to the malls these days." Each of the little shops or restaurants I go in down here represents someone's dream, someone's hope. I do try to patronize them when I can - I especially like going in the quilt shop because it's so nice to be able to have a source of supplies SO CLOSE. (I will gladly pay a bit extra for my needles or skeins of floss if it means I don't have to drive to Sherman).

So it makes me sad to see what I perceive as an imperious attitude at the hands of the developers and movers-and-shakers in my parents' town - where there is (apparently) subtle pressure on building owners who haven't sold to sell, and where (as I said) modest one or two story buildings are being replaced by towers that blot out the sky. (I feel rather claustrophobic in the old downtown now; it's taken on a titanic scale that makes you feel small and a bit crushed).

And it's rumored that there's a particular "vision" these folks have, and if your business doesn't fit their "vision," they don't want you. (There was a lot of flap a couple years ago about a certain restaurant coming into town: the developers were at first aghast because it was a chain that was family-friendly - and it was DARING to go into an "upscale" area where they envisioned some kind of fancier place. Yes, they actually said "chain family-style restaurant" with disgust and horror and described the area it was moving into as "upscale." If I were the person in charge of bringing that chain to that town, I'd've said, "Thanks, but no thanks, if that's your attitude." But they came anyway - and they are always busy.

Sometimes, I think the developers in that town forget that the majority of people IN town are people with families. People who can't, or don't want to, go to an exclusive fancy place where children aren't really welcome, on a regular basis)

So anyway. This is another way that people annoy me sometimes.

I will admit - I did mention one yarn I had been contemplating to my mom. No idea if the particular color was there or if there were enough skeins. My mom said she was going down there (first day of the going out of business sale). She said she'd deliver my "condolences" to the owner, and also, if she could get a word with her, ask if there were any hopes of them relocating (It didn't sound like it in the letter, but you never know).

I wonder what's going to go in its place. Another damn bank, to go with the 15 others in the downtown? An Old Navy? (For years, that was the rumor - hoped-for by some college students, met with rolling eyes on the part of the townspeople who know there's already one in the mall). Some kind of place where there's a meter in the front to measure your coolness, and if you're below some pre-set level, you're not allowed in? (I know, that doesn't really exist. But I swan, there are some shops where I FEEL almost like there is that).