Have faith, Shawn.
Continue to put up with Jim and your own sense of the city.
We learn from one another.
Jim is irrational, because one is always irrational in one's ideals.
Lakewood is his ideal.
The creative city is real, too, though maybe not a compelling experience for you at this time.
Jim is for real, and he is 'real' creative, too.
Sometimes we can share our ideals, that is say, our ego-filled joy of Lakewood that builds the brand that becomes the real. But sometimes we encounter through the espousing of our ideals - i.e. Lakewood Kool Aid - attitudes of doubt.
Feel free to doubt. But don't withdraw from the engagement with the ideal and the real on the LO Deck.
For the reality of our being together in the city persists as a psychological one, bumping high ideals with attitudes that dis and doubt. So continue to put up. It's not a lost cause to confront irrational ideals or to challenge a big mana filled personality, drunk on Lakewood Koolaid.
I wish I had some now, in fact, which is why I am posting. Lakewood always appears heavenly and well suited to creative living, when I experience the crowds, traffic and expenses of the gentrified and immigrant soaked east coast where I am right now.
I am struck by the crowding and traffic all along the coastal cities. The prices for condos are insanely high - over $300K in these New England cities. It's only a matter of time before more and more people will discover Lakewood. The indie, ethnic restaurant news continues to speak to quality of life enhancements suitable to creative taste buds.
I toured New Hampshire and visited Portsmouth, an upscale trendy city with a vibrant downtown with galleries, high end gifts shops, offices, Flat Bread stone oven organic Pizza. The city presented all the upscale yuppie goodies and eco-friendly green retail platforms, though I did not see a bookstore. There was hustle and bustle of holiday shopping people crave. Parking was blocks was away.
I tried a nitrite free pepperoni pizza. In reflecting on the pizza, Vincent Ferrini, Gloucester's poet laureate said to me "It's amateurish."
NYC is expected to grow by another million. It's mostly immigrants, and the built environment is carved up into smaller pieces. Eventually, over the next decade, it's inevitable that a fresh water city as Lakewood will be discovered and infusions of speculative capital offer new promises of riches. But it's never enough to deliver the kind of tax savings people desire.
When I spoke to Gloucester's City Council President Destino, I learned there is no money for government purposes there either, despite the incredible run up in property values, the knockdowns and Mansions, the condo conversions. So the challenges are similar: the roads are worse than those of Lakewood. In Gloucester there is the rebuilding of infrastructure, debate over the privatizing of street sweeping, ebbing and flowing of interest in a City Manager form of government, the selling off a public school to replenish the general fund, the cost for sewers and infrastructure improvements, a condo developer who can't make a deal happen at the price point needed to sell units.
I have to say there's never enough money to go around for purposes of the government, for the infrastructure, for the deals that promise quality of life, even in the places that seem to be growing their economies.
But the retail shopping paradigm as Jim often states does seem to changing, and the The Economist has two articles that bear on his perspective and your issues.
Creativity and fragmentation are two aspects of the model retail market.
The pragmatic challenge (where do I buy pants in Lakewood?) is one we are not likely satisfied, though have have seem sweat pants for a buck at Dollar Tree on Sloane. I have an L.L. Bean catalog in front of me right now, and that seems like a convenient solution.
The Economist:
"Local officials also have to realise that downtowns have changed for ever. Clothing and hardware stores will never return to the town centre. Rather, says Mr Loescher, restaurants and bars, government offices and even private houses should be given a place near Main Street."
Source:
http://www.economist.com/world/na/Print ... id=8450132
Lakewood's town center is O.K., not great, but not boarded up either.
In another article postmodern fragmentation has an impact on the retail market, too.
"This fragmentation has changed the way businesses operate. Joe Staton, the head of the Knowledge Centre at JWT, an advertising agency, argues that selling people things “has become more difficult than it has ever beenâ€Â. Craig Mawdsley, at Abbott Mead Vickers, another advertising agency, argues that the old stores used to offer “edited choiceâ€Â; now companies scramble to provide customers with almost unlimited choice, as well as the technology to create their own products.
The businesses that have suffered most are thoseâ€â€such as department storesâ€â€that clung too long to the idea of a mass market, of a one-stop store such as Britain's Marks & Spencer. Those that have prospered embrace fragmentation and cater to the niche. Mark Lee, a management consultant, argues that the “new huge empires are based around one nicheâ€Â. Zara, a Spanish clothing group, for instance, appeals to the breathless fashionista: the speed of turnover of its styles would chime with the pomos' penchant for permanent revolution. Accessorize, a British chain, caters to women who want fashionable scarves, jewellery and the like but do not have a lot of money. Dolce & Gabbana is for people with lots of money and loud taste. American Apparel sells expensive T-shirts to people who care that they are produced by happy, well-treated workers: its niche is moral as well as economic."
Source:
http://www.economist.com/world/PrinterF ... id=8401159
So these are larger global realities that inform the culture of shopping.
Lakewood's foothold in the creative economy is a reality with considerable potential.
I hope this post provides perspective on Lakewood: ideal and real.
Kenneth Warren