ON THE AVENUES: Thoughts about independence.
A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
It’s simply a fact of life that almost every single working day during each calendar year, independent small businesses walk a high wire without a net.
Engorged corporate franchise teats for suckling? We have none.
Massive federal bailouts, available as soothing stress relief? Not exactly.
But hardly a week passes without various levels of government providing subsidies for the very same multinational monoliths best placed to decapitate the independent business segment, as procured by the same lawyers and lobbyists we cannot afford.
On and on it goes. Out there in the soulless exurb, the sheep working at one monolithic chain give each other gift cards redeemable at another, and the money inexorably hemorrhages out of the community, at least until it reaches terminal gravity at whichever offshore tax havens offering the best terms to the coddled white-bread Mitt Romneys of our era.
But you know what?
Digressions, rants and bitterness aside, I’m generally firm in the belief that most indies wouldn’t have it any other way.
The only true bottom line for me is moral justification. Getting out of bed each morning, safe in the knowledge that whether or not I get it right 100% of the time, I can still go back to sleep with my standards and integrity intact … well, that’s always been enough in my world, and enough for many others, too.
We sink, and we swim. We win and we lose. Often we’re too exhausted to know the difference. Bruised and battered, arrogant and triumphant, and every conceivable emotion falling between these extremes; small business people have felt them all, and the adrenalin rush we cherish when all the cylinders are hitting is enough to overwhelm those pesky, nagging problems – a Band-Aid here, another digit in the crumbling dike there.
And while I’m at it, this independent small business roller coaster ride has very little to do with money, at least in my case. We’ve always rolled most of the scant profits back into the business in an ongoing effort, admittedly scattershot, to continue improving it.
In personal terms, whenever I’ve had money, I’ve just gone and spent it, and usually had a whale of a time doing so, because I shan’t be taking it with me when I die, anyway. Personal financial gain is barely relevant, and most of the best things aren’t really that expensive, anyway: Books, music, a bicycle and a BLT when the local tomatoes are in season.
The real point in life is to beat both the bad odds and insufferable bastards stacked against you, and to do so as often as you possibly can before crawling back to the table to spin the wheel yet another time. It’s addictive that way.
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Now, belatedly, I come to the topic of La Rosita, which is my all-time favorite local Mexican restaurant, and Israel Landin, the restaurant’s owner and mastermind, who is my all-time favorite local Mexican chef.
I might dispense with the adjective “Mexican,” and still be telling the full truth, although I’ll keep it in place as a modifier for those reading from afar. Note that is given the time to learn Russian, Kenyan or Burmese cuisine, Israel would be just as intuitive and creative a chef.
However, it’s no secret to food-loving New Albanians that the past year or so has been somewhat unkind to the La Rosita location on Pearl Street in downtown, which originated as the restaurant’s flagship before the ill-fated opening of a second location in Louisville. Israel spent virtually all of his time tending to the expansion, which now has contracted, and he’s back in New Albany.
This is a very favorable development, but perhaps as befits the personalized nature of independent small businesses, it does not come without a caveat of sorts: It is challenging to laud the impending revitalization of the La Rosita concept in New Albany without conceding, at least to some degree, the restaurateur’s own complicity in the decline preceding it.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, this reasoning applies to any of us, including me – perhaps ESPECIALLY me – and to any small business, including my own. If we spread ourselves so thin that bottom-line essentials go missing, we’ve only ourselves to blame. At the same time, know that we’d never knowingly or intentionally spread ourselves so thin. We do what we do because we think we’re capable of doing it. When we fail, rest assured that we’re the first to agonize over it … and learn.
We sink, and we swim. We win and we lose. There are no engorged corporate franchise teats to suckle, no massive federal bailouts to snuggle, and somewhere out in the exurb, tax abatements were just awarded to a spanking new Outback in gleaming faux-Australian.
Yes, Israel is back in New Albany, and judging from what I’ve seen in two recent visits to La Rosita on Pearl Street, he’s busting his arse like a man possessed to right a listing vessel. I can appreciate his efforts, because I’m engaged in a similar phase at NABC’s Bank Street Brewhouse, albeit under somewhat different circumstances.
There’s no need to wag that finger. I know how many of you have told me that given the inconsistencies, you wouldn’t give La Rosita another chance. I’m here today to ask you to reconsider – not out of charity, but because Israel has proven to us many times over that when he’s on his game, it’s fantastic. He’s earned a do-over, in my opinion.
Give Chef Israel a bit of time to work on the service – the food’s been pretty good lately, and the physical plant is being scrubbed, repaired and upgraded – and dip a toe back into the water. At its inception, La Rosita was a game-changer, and it can be one again.
