My Favorite Stores are CLOSED!

SteemIt is giving out some extremely difficult challenges for #the100daysofsteem project.

The first challenge was to write about my favorite local store.

I've had numerous favorite stores throughout the years. The selection included a variety of craft stores, drug stores, gift shops, furniture stores, hardware stores, collectible stores and even an occasional clothing store.

Perhaps my favorite local store of all times was a used bookstore called "Experienced Books." This store was lovingly pieced together by a man who really loved books. He had thousands of titles. I believe that he had read every book in the store. I brought in quite a few obscur titles to trade. Most he had read. The few he had not went immediately next to his favorite chair for a quick read.

The problem I had in writing up the piece was that all of my favorite stores have one thing in common.

They are all closed.

The doors of all my favorite stores have been shuttered and the stores are no longer in business.

Some stores were "rolled up" into larger chains. Some stores failed to transition between generations. Some stores collasped after political conflicts or market disruptions.

Regardless of the cause, the privately owned mom and pop shops that used to be the bedrock of local towns have all closed. Sadly, few new stores are taking their place.

Political and economic forces have aligned in ways that make the retail market too treacherous for small businesses.

After witnessing the collapse of so many small stores, I decided I had to do something. I created the Community Color family of web sites to highlight local businesses in the Western US.

I started the project in 1999. The oldest directory is for Missoula, Mt. I was not able to make enough money from web development to pay to heat a house. Seriously, I was scared I would freeze to death; so I retreated to Salt Lake City.

I made portals for a variety of towns including Park City, Grand Junction and Moab simply to discover that small business is hurting everywhere.

The combined forces of big finance and big government is systematically destroying the framework of small business.

Around 80% of the stores that I listed in the directories in the early 2000s have shuttered their doors.

I am really happy to see SteemIt use one of its challenges to talk about local stores.

I suspect that COVID19 will force even more shops to close shops. One thing I would love to to is create lists of local shops that were closed forever by the pandemic. If you know of such a shop, please drop a comment below.

Anyway, since all of my favorite store are closed, I drove around desperately to find a new favorite local store. I discovered the ruins of load station by the railways instead.