A bit too laid back

Posted by Mark Chapman on July 11th, 2010 at 3:37 am

“Another Sat­ur­day night and I ain’t got nobody; I got some money ’cause I just got paid…”

— Sam Cooke

Ah, the Sat­ur­day night blues. Those lyrics, as writ­ten and sung by the late, great Sam Cooke, expressed a young man’s frus­tra­tion at not being able to hook up with a woman in his lat­est town of residence.

Sat­ur­day night, July 10, I sat and lis­tened to sev­eral peo­ple express their frus­tra­tion about not being able to hook up with open stores at the monthly Sat­ur­day Night Live on Dearborn.

Other than restau­rants, only five or six stores were open along West Dear­born Street for the event adver­tised as an oppor­tu­nity to enjoy shop­ping, music and dinner.

As Meat­loaf famously sang, “Don’t be sad, ’cause two out of three ain’t bad.”

Except, in this case, many of the folks — mid­dle age and up — were there for the shop­ping, or at least brows­ing. Some were from out of state, Some from out of town, And all were out of luck.

This wasn’t a grouch­fest I was hear­ing. It was indi­vid­ual cou­ples and groups at ran­dom. Start­ing about 5:30 p.m., I did my best fly-on-the-wall rou­tine — OK, a really big fly — as I sat and sipped a cof­fee out­side Vil­lage Gifts and Gallery/Roasters, which was open, but always is open nights. I watched the occa­sional cou­ple stroll past, most mum­bling some­thing about noth­ing being open. A lone folk singer plucked his gui­tar and cov­ered songs from inside the cof­fee shop, where a table full of vis­i­tors sat and enjoyed the music. Each time he fin­ished a song, some thready sounds of music wafted up the street from the west end, so I decided to check it out.

The sounds became more full the closer I got to Cafe de la Bay, which had live music in the front court­yard and sev­eral din­ers at the tables. I plopped down on one of the new art benches across the street and lis­tened while watch­ing, well, not much except for blue sky and closed stores. The Arts Alliance of Lemon Bay was open. So was Girlie­man Chic, and the jew­elry store next to Cafe de la Bay.  That was it for the block.

More peo­ple wan­der­ing by. More grumbling.

More peo­ple who, most likely, won’t be back, and who will tell their friends.

Oh, there were a few other stores open, but, frankly, it was hard to tell. Few made any effort to attract passersby.

When SNL on Dear­born started, it was fes­tive. Oh, it was a strug­gle to get the mer­chants to buy into it event then, but more did, and many laid out trays of snacks, handed out punch or wine, and offered incen­tives to get peo­ple into their shops, where they would, as time per­mit­ted, engage in the best PR in the world — friendly ban­ter. Out­side, a musi­cian or band would enter­tain the strollers — not the same-old, same old that you hear in every bar in Engle­wood every week, but dif­fer­ent acts, with dif­fer­ent types of music.

At one early event, a coun­try singer who was friends with one of the mer­chants agreed to swing into town on his tour bus and per­form for a few hours. The singer, who was get­ting air play on coun­try radio sta­tions, stood in front of Dia­mond Dol­phin Jewelers/Jitters Cof­fee Shop and began to play his gui­tar and sing. Word soon spread, and, before long, there were lit­er­ally hun­dreds of peo­ple on West Dear­born Street, and the singer had climbed to the top of the hard­ware store out­side stair­case so every­one could see.

SNL was an event back then. But things change. The last two months have been pathetic, and I mean that in the nicest pos­si­ble way, which, obvi­ously, isn’t all that nice.

There was hope that the late-breaking news of face-painters on the street would fire up the locals and get some foot traf­fic going. To a point, it worked. But even there, six painters were announced, and three showed up. And, instead of spread­ing them out along the street, they were clus­tered under a canopy at West Dear­born and Elm, away from the stores.

There were peo­ple on the street for din­ner. Cafe de la Bay, Com­padres, La Stanza, Englewood’s on Dear­born — all did a nice busi­ness. Roast­ers served up cof­fee, and Vino Loco was gear­ing up to present its musi­cal enter­tain­ment a bit later.

But Sat­ur­day Night Live seems to have become Sat­ur­day Night on Life Sup­port. To con­tinue adver­tis­ing an event that isn’t an event — invit­ing peo­ple in and greet­ing them with locked doors — is doing more harm than good.

Per­haps SNL needs to be a sea­sonal event. Maybe it has sim­ply grown stale and needs an infu­sion of energy and buy-in from the merchants.

What­ever, the Dear­born Street com­mu­nity needs to look long and hard at whether it wants to con­tinue bring­ing peo­ple to the street and send­ing them home unhappy.

You can comment on this story below.

If you want to link to this post from your site, use this trackback link.

2 responses to “A bit too laid back”

1. Corie

   7 / 12 / 2010
   10:14 am

   I know the the mer­chants will be able to cre­ate a fes­tive and happy shop­ping expe­ri­ence again once peak sea­son and snow­birds return.
2. Old Fart

   7 / 13 / 2010
   3:01 am

   But aren’t these the same mer­chants that are always com­plain­ing that they are starv­ing?
   The Engle­wood CRA is doing it’s best to bring life to this town dur­ing the “ghost town” months, you’d think the mer­chants would want to “cash in” on that?

Leave a reply:

You must be logged in to post a comment.