Commerce is Neccessary, But Art Is Fun: Part II

Let's try this again.

In lieu of a column from Sunday, JUly 27, 2008, here are some photos I've taken recently.

http://flickr.com/photos/8559750@N03/sets/72157606474158807/show/

Hope yu like them. See you Monday, Aug. 4

A Great Place, Vultures Notwithstanding

This column appeared on Sunday, July 20, 2008

Spending time in West Caln is not something I have made a point of in the near three decades I have lived in Chester County, but given the events of earlier this month it might be something I’ll be putting on my free time agenda more often.

On July 10, the county commissioners ponied up almost $1 million to give to West Caln and the Natural Lands Trust so that the township can create a township park out of an area known locally as the Barren Hills.

It sounds like it’ll be a winner.

The Barren Hills make up a ridge that looks out over the farms that dot the still-rural landscape of West Caln. Township Manager Gary Dunlap, who apparently did not get the memo warning against excessive friendliness towards members of the working press, likened the hills to the bucolic Serpentine Barrens outside Oxford.

The 168-acres that will eventually be known as Birch Run Forest is prime woodland that screams for hiking paths, bike trails and places to sit in cool shade.

The park will also be adjacent to other areas of open space nearby that wind up at Chambers Lake and Hibernia Park, two spots on the map that don’t get nearly the attention they deserve when it comes to discussions of where to spend the odd recreational moments you find yourself having after finishing up the grocery shopping.

To get a sense of the place, purely in the interest of journalistic integrity and having nothing to due to the mid-July ennui that has gripped the Chester County Courthouse, I took a drive out to the Barren Hills last week.

To give you and idea of what West Caln is like, imagine a set of rolling hills that are populated by neat suburban ranch houses and occasional Mennonite farms. Picture a place where your new McMansion might not look out of place, but where your neighbors might have a fenced-in pen for their 20 head of cattle. Envision narrow country roads where turkey vultures gnawing their way through a road kill carcass are as common a sight as signs that advertise “Local Honey Sold Here.” See in your mind’s eye a place where old men cutting their lawns wear cowboy hats, without the slightest trace or irony.

Along the way. I remembered the few times I spent in West Caln and marveled at how your history always has a way of catching up to you.

When I first moved to the county in August 1980 from a coal-mining town in western Kentucky, I spent my first night at a house on Sandy Hill, not two miles from the Barren Hills. One of my first stories for the Daily Local News was about the contaminated Superfund site there has since been reclaimed into woodland. And I spent a memorable week house-sitting in the late 1980s at a place in Hibernia, wakened on a Saturday morning by the presence of hundreds of fishermen outside by the Brandywine. (It was Opening Day for trout season.)

West Caln isn’t around the corner, unless you live in Coatesville, of course. You have to drive some to get there. But it’s a trip I can see taking when the mood strikes me to relax. Vultures or no.

A Winter Tale

This column originally appeared on Sunday, July 6, 2008

I haven’t thought about Winter for about four years now.

I’m speaking not of the three months between the December solstice and the March equinox, mind you. That’s winter, with a small “w.” I’m talking about Winter, the one-named fellow who several years ago vowed to visit every Starbucks in the world.

I wrote about Winter at a time when the borough of West Chester was one of the only places on the face of the earth that did not have a Starbuck franchise within its borders. Soi Yamato Nhongprue street, Pattaya, Thailand yes; Church Street, West Chester no. It galled me, frankly, because I could not fathom why a place with the character and cachet of West Chester wouldn’t rank a Starbucks, while a place like Dilworthtown would.

At the time I learned about Winter, I pointed out that Dilworthtown was the least reasonable place to put a Starbucks I could think of, since it was basically at the crossroads of Going Nowhere and Coming Back. I also noted that the Dilworthtown Starbucks isn’t actually in Dilworthtown, but is located instead along the side of Route 202 in one of those suburban strip malls that the good developers of Chester County have determined we need more and more of, just in case we get the urge for some TGI Friday’s grub on the way home from the Applebee’s.

I checked recently on Winter’s journey and found that he’s been to Starbucks locations in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. He’s been to ‘Bucks in 17 foreign countries. He’s been to the Grand Caffeine Outlets in Paoli and Kennett Square and Lionville and West Goshen and, yes, Dilworthtown. I have no idea if he bought the Starbucks’ CDs by Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell when he was there, but I’ll assume for the record that he did and he uses them to assist in his astral yoga meditation veg-out sessions.

But my man Winter’s task has just gotten a little bit easier.

That’s correct. Starbucks last week announced it was going to close down 600 stores and scale back its plans to open new ones. The roasted bean empire is going to throw out those “underperforming” stores across the globe like yesterday’s grounds. From now on, people in New York and San Francisco and Asrafeih, Lebanon may actually have to cross the street to get a cup of that precious $4 latte on their way to their CyberDesk or InterJob or WebTimeClock, or whatever it is they call workplaces these days.

It was, after all, one of Starbuck’s executives in charge of development, the oddly named Launi Skinner, who famously declared that for high-priced java swillers, “Going to the other side of the street can be a barrier.”

According to the new York Times, the people at Starbucks were once so obsessed with finding perfect new locations for their steamed milk machines that they would look at demographics down to the education level in certain neighborhoods, or judge whether the traffic moved better on one side of a street than the other. “Starbucks commercial real estate executives were known for their rigor in selecting locations,” the Times decreed, quoting a Portland, Ore., real estate guy as saying “Now everybody copies them.”

Hopefully that copying did go overboard. Or else there are going to be a lot of vacant Quiznoses across the country.

The news should not come as a surprise, however. Everyone who ever told the joke about the new Starbucks opening in the men’s room of the old Starbucks knew this as going to happen. And despite new modalities in retail trends, old rules still apply. My mother was the best I ever knew at looking at a new business opening somewhere and saying, “Six months, tops.” She knew that you just didn’t open an Asian-Vegan-Fusion restaurant where the truck stop diner used to be.

I’m sure there are those who will be sad to see those Starbucks close. But it won’t be me. I’ve stayed away from the ‘Buckaroos on principle for several years now, even the one that now has sat in dead center West Chester since February.

For the record, Winter was there on opening day.