Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Goodbye, Main Street Grind ... maybe in another 12 years, your view might have improved. Or not.

The view.


Vistas of the south side of Main Street between Bank and Pearl. Photos were taken in the summer of 2005. Both the used furniture and vacuum repair stores now seem to be out of business. In the fall of 2005, the Schmitt furniture family finally acknowledged interest in selling the moribund Reisz building for redevelopment.

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I learned over the weekend that New Albany’s Main Street Grind coffee shop plans to wind down operations at the beginning of April after 12 years in business.

That’s quite a run, and it’s a shame for it to end. The way you feel when you read an obituary -- that's the way a small business owner reacts to word that a fellow operator is folding up his tent. I look into the mirror, and say to myself: I'm still standing – at least for now ... but tomorrow may be very different.

Although we have mutual friends, I’m not well acquainted with the owners, who’ve always been hospitable and friendly during my infrequent visits.

Especially since moving into downtown in 2003, D and I have eagerly sought a “third place” to pass time near our home, but since our working hours are during the day and Main Street Grind’s hours were geared to lunchtime, it wasn’t possible to go as often as we’d have liked.

Yesterday I was corresponding with a friend and discussing the impending departure of the Main Street Grind, and she wrote:

I've been going to the Grind for 12 long years, and I've watched those buildings across the street from it decay for 12 long years and then some.

I've watched other businesses open in other parts of town, struggle and finally close because of the lack of leadership, vision and management in this city. It's sad, it's disgusting and who the hell do you blame when there are so many people responsible for the mess? City planners? Mayors? Develop New Albany? Building Commissioners?

Is there anybody in there?

Lamentable, but very true, although she omitted a key player: We the people – the residents of New Albany. "We" have just the sort of town "we" want, because if we didn't, would it be like this?

The inescapable conclusion is that "we've met the enemy ... "

You know the rest of Pogo's Axiom.

In the end, leadership is meaningless unless one consents to being led, and vision optional in the absence of a desire to clearly see.

Management? That’s merely an impediment to the profits to be accrued in the preferred vacuum of non-enforcement and apathy.

At the conclusion of the Communist era in Czechoslovakia, the dissident writer and playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president of the country that less than a year before had imprisoned him. Havel's government faced an exceedingly difficult necessity of finding ways to reverse four decades of economic stagnation brought about by the outmoded, state-owned economy, and doing so without societal chaos.

After all that time, the intrinsic absurdities of the command economy were evident, but people were accustomed to them. Suddenly, things had to change.

President Havel offered few concrete ideas as to how the government might retool his country’s uncompetitive economy. Instead, and significantly, he focused on what he perceived was necessary at a more fundamental and human level, something without which the economic reform program would have little chance of succeeding.

Havel theorized that the chief legacy of Communism was a degradation of the core of Czechoslovak society itself, and consequently, before economic rationalization could succeed, a “civil society” would have to be defined and rebuilt from the ground up.

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As events of the past week have amply illustrated, Havel’s analysis applies foursquare to New Albany, and this is why events like the forthcoming neighborhoods forum are so important. Without a firm perimeter established in the places where we live, it is unlikely that citywide redemption can succeed.

Currently there are pockets of worthwhile activism scattered throughout the city, but owing to longstanding patterns of mistrust and a general lack of communication, there is no cooperation between them.

Unfortunately, there is an attitude of persecution and secrecy on the part of many who fear that communication and cooperation might somehow provide succor to the political enemy of this moment or the next – and this is profoundly shortsighted, although understandable in the present context of bile and loathing.

To be truthful, the beneficiaries of non-cooperation aren’t so much political in nature as they are social. Non-cooperation nurtures the same deleterious conditions of incivility and inertia within the same vacuum of unaccountability that we all claim to abhor and seek to terminate.

As my friend noted above, whom do you blame when there are so many to blame?

Vaclav Havel provides the answer: We must remove ourselves from the cycle of blame and get on with the process of building a civil society with a firm foundation that prefaces future progress.

New Albany is profoundly dysfunctional. We’ve all acquiesced in various and sundry ways in permitting the city to become dysfunctional. The only hope of reversing this dysfunction is to join together in a workable coalition that suspends partisan wrangling, concedes the immensity of the task, formulates sustainable strategies, and gets to work.

Money would help, too, but unity is far more important.

So, who among us wishes to abandon his or her laboriously crafted straw man first, and get on with the task of reconstituting New Albany’s lost civility?

Did I just hear another pin drop?

8 comments:

edward parish said...

The Entenmann's in my opinion missed an ideal opt for a night time hang out as a coffee shop,instead they went for the downtown lunch crowd. They have a great location in a neat and well kept building. Hopefully someone else will pick up the dropped ball and take it to the goal line from here.
Best of luck George and family!

Ann said...

Ceece, both Ermin's and MSG used to have longer hours, but the traffic just wasn't there to justify staying open late, opening early and being open on Saturday nights.

The New Albanian said...

Ceece, to expand on that, there's also a vicious circle when it comes to expectations and your chosen market.

So many food and drink businesses begin by trying to offend no one, and in the process they provide nothing distinctive. When it comes to economy of scale, this plan loses to McDonald's every day of the week. A case can be made that this sort of attitude underestimates the marketplace.

La Rosita is illustrating a far better understanding of the marketplace right now (than, for example, Ermin's).

By not imitating most of the local Mexican-esteries, Israel has carved out a niche in a very short period of time and in the process done what New Albanians assume from birth can't be done -- attract Louisvillians to New Albany.

Will he be able to sustain it? We don't know. I like his chances better for him having consciously set out to be different -- and being damned good at what he does. Those are winning strategies for small business, and yet people continue to open their doors by trying to do what everyone else does.

Even in a Wal-Mart world, creativity and vision still count hugely for small business.

jon faith said...

As I have posted previously, I lived across the street from the Grind when it opened, trembling with faddish angst, I was overjoyed that this burg could fashion its own Twice-Told cafe, alas neither the owners nor its clientale met the challenge, but both tried. It should be noted that family had a partner, initially, a nice fellow named Steve who worked the evenings. Alas he left after a short while and that put a strain on the organization, if that term is applicable to essentailly a husband and wife, and, afterwards, their daughter. They employed various friends and associates over the year with the lunch crowd, but the evening atmosphere was utltimately sacrifieced, IMHO, for reasons of their interests.
Thursday evenings were for quite vibrant at the Grind for many years, attracting overflowing crowds of youth: rife with poetry, posturing and clove-smoke. There was also a writing circle in attendance, of which I, myself, participated for several months. Then the kids left for unknown reasons.
It appears titmely that as I digest Dostoevsky's The Possessed a citation of Havel should appear with respect to that downtown corridor. I question whether it isn't the case that the civil society present isn't in the downtown isn't simply the wrong society for what others imagine as a fecund future for New Albany.

jon faith said...

Hoplessly cryptic since birth, even to myself, my only intention was a response to Roger's somewhat sharp call to arms. I only wished to add that as far as I know, Main Street Grind didn't close because of a lack of vision nor a failure to reach what they considered their niche (I hadn't read Roger's post to ceese before submitting my own), in fact, they enjoyed an enormous reception from the downtown profressional lunch crowd. That said, what steps and towards whom, are required for Roger's Year Zero? I will be the first to agree with my friend that it is essentially a juggling of interests (personal, financial and civic -- likely in that order) that determine the creative technique of the small business and the consequent benefits for a revitalized downtown. A downtown, I might add, that appears comfortable with a Southside and a number of proletarian watering holes, places that I don't frequent but alas understand the "creativity and vision" that afford such fixture.

The New Albanian said...

Okay, I'll amend: A tacky used furniture store/vacuum repair shop on one corner, and a tacky new furniture store on the other.

KT, you've been hypersensitive about this since day one. What gives?

The New Albanian said...

For the record, the Grind is closing not because it was unable to "scratch out a living," but because the owners were ready to pull the plug on something that was a part-time business interest in the first place (his primary business is industrial and located in Louisville).

KT, if I didn't believe that better things are possible and CAN be achieved by New Albanians, I'd be more inclined to ignore this lowest-common-denominator argument you're advancing.

There are examples of businesses in this city that have been able to succeed by setting the bar higher. With vision and planning, this model can be extended to other parts of the city. We need not settle for "scratching out a living."

That's vaguely reminiscent of the New Albany Syndrome at its most underachieving -- not that you're espousing such, just going to an odd length to justify something marginal at best.

The New Albanian said...

KT, I'm in 100% agreement with your residential point.