Eileen Hassi of Ritual Roasters has put out the word that American Apparel is attempting to be the first national chain store to open on Valencia Street in the Mission. I don’t think we need to discuss what a bad idea that is, do we?
What we do need to do is mobilize, and the easiest way to start is by popping off an email to the public official in charge. That can sometimes seem intimidating, but it needn’t be. In fact, here’s a sample email you can cut/paste/send that will help do your part. Just change the name, maybe add a sentence in your own words, and you’re done!
From: price_tom@hotmail.com
Subject: Subject: 988 Valencia - Case No. 2008.0720C
Date: January 22, 2009 11:27:27 AM PST
To: pilar.lavalley@sfgov.org
M. Pilar LaValley
Preservation Technical Specialist/Planner
City & County of San Francisco Planning Department
1650 Mission Street, Suite 400
San Francisco, CA 94103
January 22, 2009
Dear Planner LaValley,
My name is Tom Price, I am a resident of San Francisco and live in the Potrero Hill neighborhood. Along with my family, I often visit the Mission, and enjoy the many distinct stores and businesses there. Valencia Street is a uniquely San Francisco institution, a hold out against the cookie cutter chain stores that litter other cities across our country. A place like this needs to be celebrated and protected.
Please register my opposition to the proposed American Apparel store on Valencia Street. There is a place for chain stores, but it is not on Valencia Street. Please also keep me informed of any public meetings, hearings, or comment periods regarding this issue.
Thank you,
Tom Price
Crowdsourcing support of independant retailers, FTW!
There’s a tradition in this young country of ours to overly venerate anything that’s been around long enough to reflect on how long it’s been around. Consider, if you will, the entire VH1 network, which seems to exist solely to remind people about the golden old days of….the 1980s.
Still, there are some insitutions of note, having actually been around for a generation or more, and two of them were on my mind this morning.
The New Yorker, in their current issue, is celebrating the Village Voice, the tempestuous, opionated paper of the meat and mindspace of Greenich Village in Manhattan.
But as I sat reading it this morning, I knew ( thanks to @themediaisdying on Twitter. the new new thing, vs. the arguably dying print form of media ) that Nat Hantoff had been let go from the paper. He’s been their since 1958, surely long enough to be an sort of institution in his own right, especially by American terms.
And in the shower later, I wondered–with so many media outlets falling apart, who will be left? And will, in ten years, some mediocre rag that by dint of luck rather than substance managed to escape the scythe ripping though the printed media outlets theses days, be something that we look as being worthy of the same respect as the hundreds of books quietly slipping beneath the waves now?
An apt metaphor, perhaps; after the Titanic, those lost were mourned, surely, and yet those who survived, however meager their lives before or acts after, were held in some regard, the very act of making it to dry land in dark seas a miracle that implied some divine provience.
After days, weeks of unseasonably dry weather, a bit of rain this morning brought up a snap in the air, a tang of freshness, as we walked down to the car. The drive was short, as always, five minutes down the hill and around back, arguing a little over nothing of consequence.
We all came in, greeted the nanny, waited for the coffee to brew, and I went downstairs, and thought: this will all change. Soon.
In two months time, maybe less, this office will close and we’ll all move. The new one isn’t quite picked out yet,but it doesn’t matter. Six, seven years of intermittent visits to this office, the last two full time, mostly. And for the last year, the ritual of our family coming here together, to meet the on site nanny. Andie working upstairs, me working downstairs, never more than a few minutes from home, never more than a few minutes from the baby. All that will change.
So too the mix of people. Tough decisions are going to have to be made. A hard rain, as they say, gonna fall. I worry that the people around me, as I have for a while now, lack the vision and courage to see what may be and plan for it, both in good times and now in bad. In our little shop, we’re planning accordingly. Reefing the sails. But those around us blather about things that were best decided long ago, when times were fat. They’re fighting over the spoils of a carcass so long the meat is rotting, and will offer no nourishment.
And so this morning I think about how nice this has been, and how I’ve appreciated and even taken if for granted. And know it’s going to end. As Richard always says, the only constant pal is change. And it’s here.
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