The Death Of The Local Shopkeeper

I visited a local shopkeeper this morning. It's a a fruit and veg place called Justin's in Blanchardstown village on the west side of Dublin. A fairly run down place on the mainstreet, been there for years.

It's a favourite with the minorities and some locals in the Blanchardstown area but today it was empty. The shop stocks a lot of obscure foods that can't be purchased readily elsewhere. Local restaurants buy from them too.

In this way they've carved a little niche in the face of stiff competition from big corporate food stores that are everywhere these days.

But people like you and me have chosen the convenience of the supermarket in preference to the small local shopkeeper. In this pursuit of convenience you could say that we are the authors of our own demise.

Blanchardstown village dates back to 1250 when the Blanchard Family were awarded their estate by the governing British. You can find out a little more about it on askaboutireland.ie.

The surrounding forest lands of the time were once inhabited by wolves and wild boar. The local gentry used them for hunting at the time, but things are different now.

Like many historic townlands on the outskirts of Dublin, it fell foul to the so called progress of urban development which began in the 1960's.

Now, many of the world's big technology companies have taken up shop here. The landscape which was at one time dense forest, has now become dense with commercial buildings.

Maybe that has all come about because I've chosen to own a Mac and and an iPhone.

Makes you think…

Urban Development & Cultural Decay

Historically significant towns like Blanchardstown and Fingals have been subject to the decay brought about by the modern way of life I feel. It's like we're killing ourselves from the inside out.

Local councils seem not to take into account the importance of maintaining the integrity of these disappearing townlands.

They seem ok with bulldozing what's been built by generations of local people for the sake of corporations.

Well, would you blame them?

After all, a boost to local tax income and jobs for the dependant and mentally castrated public will look good on their CV.

I accept that things must move on and people as they are need jobs. However, our progress over the last 100 years in this area has been to me a regression. It is a destruction of something important to our culture.

In my view therefore we've gone backwards.

Anyway, as I was saying, there's a bloke that sits behind the counter in Justin's. Although he couldn't be any more than his early 50's to me, he looks older. He looks out of place in this time of the highly polished retail experience.

The place was empty when I arrived. I was the only customer. Meanwhile the cars were sitting in heavy traffic all along the main street heading for the local shopping center built around 1996.

The dual carriageway was also jammers with cars. In fact, I hadn't seen the traffic that bad on the dualer for a very long time.

My wife tells me it's because all the retailers in the shopping center are holding Black Friday deals over the weekend.

Some Light Conversation With The Local Shopkeeper

The local shopkeeper and I had a little small talk. He told me he was on the road at 6 am this morning to do a pick up in Wicklow then drove back to open up the shop.

He told me how he watched the winter sun rise above the Wicklow hills just before 7am and how beautiful he thought it was.

I've witnessed scenes like that occasionally on the road to South County Dublin. The sun is quite spectacular as it rises, especially when there are little or no clouds in the sky.

As he spoke I couldn't help but feel that this kind of place and this kind of experience are in decline.

Who's going to run this place when he's gone? Who will keep this run down place going or indeed think it worthwhile enough to maintain? I thought.

It really is a run down place.

The paint is peeling off the front sign. The front yard is cluttered. The small car park is rough and the general condition of the place doesn't seem very appealing.

I can understand why perhaps many local people favour the prettiness and convenience of the supermarkets.

However that said, the benefit of short conversation with the local shopkeeper is becoming increasingly absent in our modern life.

Are We Losing Out?

People and businesses and the ideas that birth them come and go. The survival of those ideas are dependant on whether the rest of us resonate with them enough to keep them going.

That's what a business is, an idea.

And that idea constantly changes. The people in the business change. The stock on the shelves changes, even the buildings that house the business change, sometimes completely.

Behind all of that is the idea. If that idea falls out of favour with the general buying public then it dies.

When people stop noticing it, stop putting energy into it then it disappears.

Right now in our society the masses are putting their energy into ideas that promise an simpler life. Ironically, in the pursuit of that simpler life, those ideas actually keep us from it.

In the process, the most valuable things like the small passing conversation with the local shopkeeper, are lost.

Supermarkets are purely transactional places with no time for conversation about the sunrise.

It's a pity, but maybe there's a benefit somewhere. Although sometimes it's hard to see it.

I think humanity is on the cusp of a massive correction. What we see at a local societal level is a sure sign of that for me.

We are passing by small scale local businesses. We prefer to sit in traffic with other drivers to avail of Black Friday discounts than visit a local store.

What About Work?

What I originally intended to discuss here in Sunday Letters today was the relationship of my buying experience to work.

But I went off on a tangent it seems. No matter.

However, I do want to highlight something before I wrap this up. There is a relationship in this decline of small local shops to the nature of how we work.

In the same way that we flood through the front doors of global corporates to spend our wages, we flood through their back doors to earn those wages.

Few of us want to start a small local enterprise. We seem to be conditioned to think we need others to give us a job.

Our entire society in built on the premise that we must go through the assembly line of education and employment all the way to retirement, and in the process we fulfill our duty.

All our lives we live with this idea of worthiness connected to the job we do.

The unfortunate fact is that the majority of us have been completely sold on this idea of bigger is better and we act it out almost unconsciously.

At the expense of the local shopkeeper and ourselves.

You could say we're like the farmer in the story of the golden goose, and like the farmer, we won't know what we've got until it's gone.

Maybe there's a way back, or maybe we have some learning to do before we figure it out?