[O]ver the last eight weeks, several hundred people have come to Cherry Valley to see the windows and visit the pop-up boutiques, traveling from Cooperstown, Sharon Springs, Albany, even New York City. It’s premature to suggest that this small number of visitors would be enough to help reverse Cherry Valley’s economic fortunes....
Here's the Light Up Cherry Valley Instagram account. Sample photo:
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25 comments:
Is the plywood still up in Madison?
even New York City.
Special people deserving of special mention.
I painted my window to look like plywood. So far it’s working.
Near where I grew up, Good luck to them. Trekkers should carefully consider it as a primary destination, if you catch my drift...
are these people begging for "mostly peaceful" protests to come to town?
'if we build it, they will come!' (and SMASH it!)
The pig is kinda cool. Not sure what I'd do with a rusty goat...
These are empty storefronts that have been decorated. It's more of an art project and tourism gambit. Don't think of the stuff in the window as merchandise.
Really cute! Our small town-ish downtown does a lot with its storefront windows. It really is cheering.
This did bring to mind, though, during the pandemic when our governor forbade us from driving around the state.
I can see Madison doing this, which would bring people downtown, bringing their spending money with them. I feel optimistic about this summer, more people will have the vaccines by then, more people aching to get out and resume life as normally as possible, less National anger, more people back to work as Covid numbers go down...I hope.
Some should put various photos of Andrew Cuomo in their windows.
Here's Andrew Cuomo doing his 'covid mountain' speech.
Here's Andrew Cuomo passing out his book on 'how he did it'.
Here's Andrew Cuomo yukking it up on TV with his brother while businesses all across his state were shuttered.
Here's Andrew Cuomo receiving his Emmy.
So many options!
Some of our store windows have Governor Dewine cutouts pointing to his eyes, as in “I’m watching you!”
I doubt this will spark their economy or lead to much lasting tourism. The stores behind them are empty, after all.
I got enough "fluffy" and "billowing" with the two feet of snow outside ...
Do pretty windows allow you to socialize with people face to face? No, not with COVID lockdowns.
Parisians long ago mastered the art of shop windows. Simply enchanting.
"These are empty storefronts that have been decorated. It's more of an art project and tourism gambit. Don't think of the stuff in the window as merchandise."
If it's not merchandise then it's not being sold.
So people aren't being employed and profits are not being made.
Cute art projects don't pay the rent or buy food.
But Madison deserves it.
"I can see Madison doing this, which would bring people downtown, bringing their spending money with them."
Downtown is depressing. We'll be fleeing this summer.
less National anger
You left out "being reported".
Why go to downtown Madison and see empty storefronts, or plywood, when you can walk along a lake?
What they really need is plywood murals.
Can anyone say "Broken Window Fallacy" any longer?
looks different without plywood for background
Funny, I saw a similar thing when I was in Virginia City, NV at New Years. (Yes, that Virginia City) The main drag is still populated with silver-strike era buildings, and raised wooden sidewalks, but so many of the storefronts appeared either empty/unused or had elaborate Christmas decorations meant to keep a festive spirit while lacking human activity. Usually you can tell the difference between when a shop is just closed temporarily, and when the business owner has just given up. These days with COVID restrictions it’s tough to tell the difference.
Gilman Terrace, just west of Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore, is a street of row houses from the WW I era. The row houses face a gully with a creek way down deep in it. The greenspace has a bit of flat grassy area at the curb, before dropping off into dense vegetation and bad footing.
In the late 1980s, my wife and I rented a house there, and grew flowers in our 15'x10' back yard and our even smaller front yard. The back yard was previously home to rabbits and our delphiniums were 8' tall. Eventually my wifes ambitious green thumb outgrew our planting spaces, and she decided we'd renovate an abandoned flower bed across the street in the public greenspace, identifiable only by the rotted wood partially bordering it.
One of our neighbors who grew up on the street told us it had been a flower bed for decades, from WW II onward, but fell into disrepair when the old ladies who maintained it finally died off. With compost from the city leaf mulching center, moved in trash cans in my Honda Civic, and flowers we started under grow lights in our basement, we had a damned impressive flower bed of 12' x 24' next spring. Neighbors thought we were growing pot, of course, with the grow lights. Baltimorons!
Only one neighbor bitched about the new flower bed, on the basis that kids would take the stones bordering it and break his car windows. Ah, Baltimorons! So I bought used rail ties and rebarred them into the dirt to make the edging indestructible. They are still there. And we had neighborhood kids taking prom pics in front of our great gladiolus, our prime pansies, our dandy delphiniums. And the next year there were two more flower beds in the public space on the gully edge, down the block, started by neighbors. Gilman Terrace helped jump start the area's gentrification, and our flower bed helped jump start Gilman Terrace. Or so I like to think. Duff's
We had only one instance of vandalism of the flower beds. A young teen boy walked down the middle of the beds early one spring, kicking at the new growth. I raced down the street and told him he was kicking flowers, not weeds, and to come back in a month with a girl to show her the flowers. My Bawlmer neighbor told me it was probably the first time an adult hadn't yelled at him when he was acting the fool.
I thank God daily still that I don't live in Baltimore any more, and its been 20+ years. But that flower garden was one of the very few highlights of living there.
Plant something. Paint something. Clean something. It can't hurt.
"Is the plywood still up in Madison?"
If Madison isn't careful, it will enter 'shithole city' status, along with the likes of Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, etc.
Tough to climb out of that hole once you're in it.
A massive hit on property values comes with that new reality.
I'd be looking to move out, but that's just me...
This reminds me of the way some 30 or 40 years ago that they painted grandmothers and houseplants and lovely curtains and other pleasant things in what had been the windows of hollowed out buildings in the South Bronx. This was to make them look less horrible to people passing by in the subway. Similarly, people get grants to paint cheerful multicolored folk art murals on building walls in slums -- you never see such murals in good neighborhoods. This Cherry Valley gimmick will remind people of those crude manipulations and will have an effect exactly opposite to what is ostensibly intended.
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