Gentrifier's Lament
Wow. I just signed on to facebook to some terrible news that Hi-Lo, the mid-sized, locally-owned Latino grocery store that is a couple blocks from my house is closing in a few weeks and is being replaced by Whole Foods.
I used to live across the river in a city starting with "C" about 2 blocks from Whole Foods, which I walked past every day on my way home from the bus or train. One of the reasons I moved to this particular neighborhood was the Hi-Lo, or rather it was one of the things I was most excited about when I decided to move to this neighborhood.
But yet, I've found myself shopping there only on rare occassions over the past 16 months that I've lived here. The excuses I generally tell people are that it closes at 7 and is not directly on my way home from work, such that I can never get there except on the weekend. The first question I must ask myself is--why do I still find myself driving to Stop and Shop or other larger supermarket even when I do house grocery shops on the weekend?
But more fundamentally, if I talk so much talk about locally-owned businesses and affordable, culturally-appropriate, healthy food, why are my actions so inconsistent with my espoused values? What does this say about me, and secondly about my kind- the left-leaning do-gooder young white gentrifiers who have moved into this neighborhood with zeal? Is there anything we can do to address this situation and more importantly could we have prevented it?
1 comment:
well, I'm not sure you can speak for all " do-gooder young white gentrifiers" ;-)
quick responses:
1) Seems like you assume the reason Hi-Lo is leaving is that their business isn't profitable enough: if more people shopped there, they wouldn't be closing. That's not necessarily true, though it might be.
2) Do we know why the owner(s) of Hi-Lo are choosing to sell?
some reasons they might move, that come to my mind, incl. the one ppl are focused on:
- not enough customers / not-profitable enough
- Whole Foods really wants to be there and offered them more money until they said yes. (if that's true, the owner's need some self-interest that's more motivating than money to get them to stay - maybe they don't have one??)
- Changes in family life, no kids to take over the business, etc.
- Value of the land Hi-Lo sits on, if they own it, esp. if they're selling the property to Whole Foods
3) Even if the owners say "we're closing because business is down" I wouldn't necessarily trust that answer as wholly complete. People who talk openly about how much they just won "in the lottery" tend to get a lot of folks knocking on their door for money (powerful motivation to conceal a real reason for closing).
4) What does this say about left-leaning do-gooder folks if we don't (go to the trouble to) support local businesses??
- 'we' may actually be supporting them plenty, (I know my housemates shop there), but they're closing for other reasons
- this one doesn't make me happy, but it is logical: the demographics of the neighborhood may have changed enough that a store *as large as* Hi-Lo is no longer "culturally-appropriate" enough to keep going.
- Maybe young white gentrifiers, if we could poll 'em, shop more often at City Feed & Harvest Co-op vs. Hi-Lo.
I'd be willing to bet... umm, a bar of local fair-trade chocolate, that that's true.
5) What can we do to prevent this from happening to other locally owned businesses?
> my suggestion: let's be honest with each other, and gather some data about which factors "trump" which other factors when it comes to making a decision to buy local. We could include "it's local", "low carbon cost", "I know the owner", as well as "location, location, location", "fits my budget", "[i perceive them to have] higher quality products", etc... I bet local businesses would love this kind of info - maybe they'd even do the work to gather it - and it could help them stay in business longer.
It could also come up with powerful specific ways of getting ppl to buy local IF those ways satisfy all the decision-making factors they've got that rank higher than the ethical ones (Hi-Lo carpools every sunday??, I dunno) .
Or we could make 'em feel guilty enough until they rank the ethical factors higher!!
Great post!
Andrew
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