Thursday, June 11, 2020

Bye Bye Shop

A week or so ago, I closed my shop for good.

There was some unnecessary landlord nonsense that forced my hand, but even without that I couldn't see the path through COVID.  Retail, especially in a small town, is a tenuous prospect on the best of days.  I used to joke that if it was anything but 72 degrees in an excellent economy, every star aligned, sales would likely be shit.  Right now it’s anything but 72 degrees.

These times are so strange.  While the impending demise of my shop has been hard to contemplate, I’ve simultaneously had brilliant online sales.  So while an institution of my life is ending (the shop being a finicky and charming fourth child), I’m also enjoying my new rhythm of making and sewing in my home workshop, cobbled together from the detritus of the shop.  I’m diving into the intricacies of online marketing, I’m refining my virtual store.

I just sat here on my deck in the late spring breeze, breathing in, breathing out.  I lit some sage (I am in Northern California, after all) and I cycled through the moments of high and low that happened in those four walls.  Building it in a week, on the run from a failed business partnership.  All the strings of lights I hung over the years, all the wooden signs painted and tapped into the walls, all the death-defying ladder feats near the skyscraper ceiling.  The garments made standing at my desk., sewing and watching the town go by.  My children roaming through at different ages, in different phases.  The after-hours kisses, the room lit only by fairy lights.  The happy hours, raucous Friday five o’clocks.  The customers: the unexpected kindnesses, the occasional uneasy encounters, the acquaintances that deepened into friendships.  The parades, the street parties, my beautiful town delighting in it’s quirks. Day in, day out, for four years, that was my second home, often my sanctuary.

This is a time of great change.  People are dying, businesses are going under, revolutions of every kind are in bloom.  I’ve had my own personal great change, my own loss, my own revolution - small in global scale but large in my daily life.  Lately, sometimes I feel like I’m falling and sometimes I feel like I’m flying.  Whatever it is, I’m up in the air.  We will land somewhere - I'm so curious to see where.

RIP, shop.  I loved you.