Who are the people in your neighborhood?
Our lives are full of activities and with my daughter being involved in 3 separate extracurricular activities, I sometimes feel like I’m just a daddy taxi service making sure she gets to where she needs to go when she needs to go. Always pressed for time, I look to aggregate my shopping by visiting multi-story shopping centers and hit multiple merchants in one place. I’ve even driven out to big-box malls in the ‘burbs to enjoy occasional discounts. But these usually half-day adventures are ironically time consuming and tiresome.
Then one day, one of my daughter’s aquarium fish died; we decided to replace it. I wasn’t keen on going to a shopping center or drive out to the large PETSMART for a single fish. So I said we should go for a walk in the neighborhood. Turned out to be such a great thing and I wondered why we don’t do it more often.
In our adventure to replace a fish at the neighborhood pet store, we had lunch, walked around with ice cream in hand, got a plush toy and took home some baked goods. All this from the people in our neighborhood, just as exciting as the Sesame Street song had described!
It’s more convenient that we thought. We literally put on our walking shoes and strolled out the front door. Within minutes we rediscovered our beautiful neighborhood: cobblestone sidewalks, brownstones and Victorian architecture, cafes, hot dog vendors, ice cream trucks, produce stands and variety stores galore. The stores were tightly packed, showcasing vibrant commercial activity. It was truly eye candy. Not having to worry about parking was a huge plus!
The merchants were friendly and it is easy to strike up a conversation. Most of the merchants are family run business or self-proprietors. It is a far cry from the impersonal mall experience where many stores are staffed by part-timers who seemed more preoccupied when their shift would end, than explaining the merchandise. It was also a surprise to hear from one the merchants we visited that they were glad to see us since they have noticed us walking by before! Glad to see that our neighborhood merchants also act is neighborhood watch!
Support the locals. We raise money for our daughter’s school through bake sales and other school activities. So why would we not shop and support our local merchants in our own neighborhood? They thrive on return customers and buying from them is convenient and keeps them in business. The neighborhood was truly the reason why we decided to live in the city rather than the suburbs.
My daughter isn’t keen on sitting in the back seat of a car in slow moving traffic anyway and the time it would have taken to get ready, drive out and park, we would have put in thousands of steps already in our neighborhood. In our adventure to replace a fish at the local pet store, we had lunch, walked around with ice cream in hand, got a plush toy and took home some baked goods. All this from the people in our neighborhood, just as exciting as the Sesame Street song had described!