Family needs kept me away from the Valley for more than two months. On the day I returned, familiar Route 9 seemed off, slightly alien.
As I slowed for pedestrian traffic in Northampton center, I saw the paper-covered windows of Ben and Bill’s Chocolate Emporium. I watched a woman stop, then approach the door to read the sign. The shop was closed. She looked as surprised as I felt.
The next day, I walked along Main. J. Rich Clothing for Men was closing. Strada had changed hands and was moving, along with Essentials, into a shared space.
I have never been a mall shopper. I dislike the glitz, the stale air and the sameness of the stores because I grew up at a time when most Main Streets looked like the Northampton I first encountered in 1995, when my daughter visited Smith College.
I have fond memories of another introduction, the day my closest friends and I first window-shopped together. We were 14 and had just graduated from Catholic elementary school, which we celebrated by walking the three miles from our homes to Michigan Avenue, Dearborn’s business district. The street was full of independent stores, mainly owned by women, who did their own buying and who arranged their goods according to their own tastes. Those differences among the little stores made shopping interesting.
Many years later, ready to return to work, I took a retail job with a major chain to tide me over while I sent out resumes. Orders came from headquarters on how to assemble displays, so that store looked like every other in the company. There was no room for employee input.
But Northampton was, and remains, different. The problem is that what makes this city special is threatened.
High rents are blamed, as they are everywhere. A recent article in The New York Times explained how Bleecker Street, once, like Northampton, the home of book shops, sturdy second-hand goods, espresso and folk music, was seduced by luxury merchandisers and chichi purveyors of fad foods. During the rush to scale up the Village, stores catering to movie stars and Wall Street bankers multiplied. As they competed for space, rents rose from $75 per square foot circa 2000 to $300, or from $7,000 per month to $35,000.
Noho, with its rural setting, escaped that sort of rise and will probably continue to do so. Perhaps, the lesson is that no one needs $1,000 spike-heeled pumps. The working moms wearing their babies, the professors in their European comfort shoes, the students, and the women who grow vegetables and make cheese are not headed in that direction.
Nor can those women afford Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik creations, and that’s the rub. As income distribution becomes more uneven, our buying power shrinks. Even a solid education does not guarantee an income.
Personally, I like things that are unique. I am convinced that my morning coffee tastes better in a hand-thrown mug. Before someone snorts expletive-deleted-hippie, remember that our purchases help to pay the salaries of the people who manufacture those goods or of those who roast the beans. The mug, shawl or finger puppet purchased at a local gift shop or art fair keeps money in the community.
But it does more than that. Those purchases support imagination and initiative, lending those useful items a special personality. You know Trevor made this cup and that you bought that plate at the Big Brothers-Big Sisters Christmas Fair. Here’s the mug Meg gave you for your birthday because she knows you want to collect that potter’s work.
I was away for a short time. During those few weeks, Northampton changed. Whether change is good or bad is subjective.
When I first came to New England in 1976, Boston’s Charles Street was full of antique shops as were the country lanes surrounding Acton, Littleton and Westford. The Charles Street antique shops have been replaced with shops whose merchandise supports today’s rents, while the suburbs are full of McMansions and chain stores.
Harvard Square was home to so many book shops that a buyer needed a map to find them all. When I visited the Square in April, it looked blighted, as Bleecker Street seems to be.
I think ahead to Bag Day and wonder what it will be like this year. I wonder if some of the economic sluggishness that followed the Great Recession is only now affecting the community. I wonder if some energetic person will know exactly what Northampton needs and will push the city in a new direction. It could happen.
Susan Wozniak, of Easthampton, is a retired journalist and writing professor who writes a monthly column.