How impressive. After extensive research, you, and the brain trust of your reporting and editorial staffs, have isolated the problem with downtown Northampton! (Sept. 21 editorial, “The only ‘crisis’ downtown is an identity one”)

It turns out that it’s me — and my Artisan Gallery!

The editorial reads, “The only ‘crisis’ downtown is having is an identity one. It’s a boomer trying to reach millennials — and struggling. It’s the Establishment dressed up as the counterculture — but catering to the wealthy who used to be the counterculture. It’s the Joe Biden of downtown.”

Wow! You must have been so proud of that Biden sentence. How could something so incredibly witty not be true? So with that snarky, mocking, insulting piece of Trumpian bombast (loud, insulting and made up), you declare that Northampton would be better off if I just went away.

Not just me, of course, but all of us who took a chance and set up shop when Northampton was in a serious retail downturn. We started with an idea and not much else, and it was not a given we would succeed. But we managed to get through the regular economic downturns and became a part of building the downtown that you loved — the one that drew new residents and tourists alike.

We supported the town, its events and its local newspaper. But now we are guilty of overstaying our usefulness. With all the retail changes and challenges, you’ve decided that the only hope for downtown is for us to move on. Brilliant. But, in your wit and wisdom, you’ve chosen not only to insult and mock me, but you’ve thrown in our customers, too: the “wealthy” teachers, social workers, city employees, Gazette employees, moms, students, visitors on day trips and regular town residents.

And all of us in our counterculture costumes, destroying the fabric of downtown. Well, I’m listening and will certainly will be gone at some point. I will then anxiously watch for the revitalization that comes with our closure. Even then, I will never understand why you chose to publicly pit one generation against another.

Patty Arbour

Northampton

The writer owns Artisan Gallery in Northampton.