Directly from the Newton Cultural Alliance…

The Stroll features one-night only sales, music, cold weather goodies, a community sing-a-long, dance, visual art exhibits and sale, dining and more!  Join your friends and neighbors for this exciting evening. Make it a new family tradition!

Ready for the holidays? The Newton Cultural Alliance’s Arts Stroll & Shop is making holiday shopping and spirit easy for you. On Thursday, December 8, enjoy extended retail shopping hours in Newton Centre while you are entertained by NCA performers and artists!

Regular readers of this site will be familiar with our Village Business Profiles series.  In the profiles, we try to forge a connection between Newton residents and local merchants, especially the people behind these great businesses.  Maybe we’ve been too subtle, but the goal of these profiles is to help drive Newton residents to shop locally and to patronize these stores.

As Newton Villages board member Chris Steele noted in his recent post, small and independent businesses in many cities and towns are struggling or closing amid competitive pressure and rising rents.  The village centers of Newton are not immune to this trend.

As we head into Thanksgiving this week, advertisements for “Black Friday” sales are already all over the airways and in the newspapers.   Major retailers are touting obscenely early opening times on Friday morning – some even opening on Thanksgiving evening itself.

How’s this for a radical suggestion for this Friday instead of battling the crowds at some big box store?    Sleep late.   Walk or bike down to your local village center with family, friends, or out of town guests.  Explore your local merchants, and see the range of unique and special holiday gifts you can get without even leaving the city limits.  While you’re at it, why not stick around for lunch, coffee or a drink at one of the great restaurants and cafés in your village?

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Daddy’s Junky Music officially closed its doors this past Wednesday, shutting the door on one of the last truly local chains of guitar and musical instrument stores in the region. In talking about why this small regional chain failed, Fred Bramante (the chain’s founder) noted competition from online retailers as the prime reason. By buying online, customers saved paying sales tax (ironic perhaps as Daddy’s first store was just over the line in NH in a specific bid to draw Massachusetts customers for tax savings). While Daddy’s is more of a Boston institution, local Newton merchants like the Boston Running Company, Big Sky Bakery & Café, and New England Mobile Book Fair have either closed or are seeking to transfer to new ownership.

Yes, the economy is certainly somewhat to blame, but not entirely. And, since the UPS truck still drops off boxes from Amazon and Zappos throughout our city, what does it say about the commitment to our communities if we lose the merchants and stores that we love? How do we justify allowing the businesses that we wax nostalgic about to disappear?

Local merchants provide goods and services that we need and that are specifically tailored to the local market. In many cases they provide the essential foundation upon which the community itself builds. How many of us recall and treasure the bookstore, coffee house, diner, hobby shop, or even a record store that featured prominently in our lives?

Local merchants are active participants in the community themselves. They are as tied to the community as we are to them. It is much harder for them to pull up stakes and move to a different town than it is for a chain store. Since their success or failure is so tightly wound with that of the community, they are often exactly the ones most willing to invest in that community, through sponsoring local events and helping to fund things like local streetscape improvements.

Yes, the internet is convenient and cheap, but the community loses if that is the only place we shop.

So there are a few things we can do about this. Some of them involve changing regulations to try to either make things easier for merchants or to make it harder for chain stores to come into our village centers. However, this also seems to ignore the basic market reality of the situation.

Local merchants are only successful if people buy their food, services, and goods. Local stores are worth a second (or even a first) look. When you need a lightbulb, try stopping by Swartz or Waban Hardware. Need a book? Try browsing Newtonville Bookstore. The coffee and baked goods at l’Aroma are at least as good as Starbucks, and they have better teas.

Or better yet, try spending a weekend afternoon walking through Newtonville, Newton Highlands, Nonantum, West Newton, or Newton Centre and sampling the stores along the way. In between an excellent lunch and a few fine cups of coffee, I think it very likely you’ll find some new favorite haunts, and maybe even make some new friends along the way. And, you’ll enjoy yourself and help to maintain the village life that makes our city great.

I love the hustle and imagination the folks at L’Aroma Café are showing here.  We got the word because we’re on their mailing list, but we’re assuming they don’t mind if we let other folks know about an opportunity for the kids to get dressed up one day early….

vinodivino 899 Walnut Street Newton Highlands, MA 02461  vinodivino.com

Raphael Keller-Go, a Brookline resident, opened vinodivino in 2004.   vinodivino is a real wine shop with 10 employees offering 100+ wines under $20, and without the” blah blah blah”.  [Read more →]

Inna’s Kitchen 19 Pelham Street Newton Centre (617) 244-5345 blog.innaskitchen.com

Inna Khitrik of Auburndale (pictured with son Alex) opened Inna’s Kitchen just a few weeks ago in May 2011. Inna’s Kitchen is a deli, café, and bakery offering Jewish cuisine from around the world. Specialties include falafel, knishes, borscht, corned beef, and many gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegetarian options. They make everything we can from scratch using quality ingredients, including curing their own meat for corned beef and pastrami. A primary focus is making prepared food that is easy to take home and keep in the refrigerator or freezer, especially soups.
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