Now I must write a short note for the upcoming NewsLetter. The first in possibly a year! It concerns the closure of Choice – Gourmet Foods, the not-so-tiny TINY BUSINESS opened by Charles Vannort. I saw him before going to camp, about three weeks ago. He knows that neither the location of his store nor the opening date worked in his favor. But he is adamant: rent increases made it impossible for him to make a profit, besides the many unfulfilled promises of his landlord.

I was just reading a general economic article about corporations which, when facing inflation, chose to surf it comfortably rather than be adventurous. In other words, they jack up their prices beyond reason, taking advantage of the comparative economic power they have over their clients, in order to guarantee and often balloon their margins of profit. So much for the spirit of enterprise supposed to inspire business elites!

Let me try!

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It is before covid that TINYisPOWERFUL sought out TINY Businesses which would join the cohort and participate in our activities. At one point, we counted 34. When covid hit, we had already opened a space, the COMMUNITY LAB. We had chosen Reynolds Avenue, in a very challenged area of North Charleston, to expand our territory and create as rich an exchange with the TINY Businesses there, as we had established with those in the Charleston MLK district. The pandemic pretty much wiped the collaborative/community part of the work out of our activities.

Something else the pandemic did very expectedly was to break the back of too many of our members. It also triggered a tough wave of inflation, which acted as the final blow to the smallest among us, and their capacity to resist and survive, find a successor, get over a medical episode or adapt to today’s unjust economic model…

After Rose Florist, Island Breeze, Uncle Leon, the Chronicle, Poke San, the Community Owned Credit Union, and others, were pushed into the margins, still now …

… the latest victim we must regretfully announce is

CHOICE GOURMET – MARKET AND DELI –

Ever since Charles Vannort opened his business, a few blocks from Park Circle, I would visit his shop regularly, check him out, make a note of his successes and his complaints. Before opening he was already concerned with his dependency on the landlord. A corporate landlord at that! Indeed, from the very beginning, he was promised a rapid construction, a compatible neighbor, in this brand new mini-mall, close to a CVS store.

Of course there were delays, long delays, which are so detrimental to good business planning. After opening, many problem arose, mostly concerning an essential piece: temperature control! Air conditioning, awnings, no shade for sidewalk extension during covid …

Then, as for any burgeoning TINY BUSINESS, without ever enough traffic, came the question of paying the rent. Unfortunately, at the end, it is the rent which did Charles in. Not exactly the rent though. I should say: the attitude of the landlord vis-a-vis his struggling tenant. The landlord would not budge when Charles would plea for concessions. It was a corporate landlord, don’t forget! Of course he would not measure the heart Charles was putting into the work. He would expect a check, regardless of circumstances. He had, in reality, separated the source of his wealth from the actors of its production.

In that, Charles Vannort’s landlord was just following the general model of the time. He was riding the inflation wave to his advantage, regardless of its human consequences. Profit before people is the name of the corporate game.

* * *

Last Thursday, around six in the evening, I was in my studio. The phone rang. Immediately I recognized the voice of the caller. It was Sammie. Sammie of Fresh Cuts Barber. We had not talked for maybe eight months. He wanted to share that he was going to France for a week! His friendly gesture, his joy became my joy. We are friends, surely.

On the TINYisPOWERFUL postcard we printed for him before covid, as we did for all our participants, Sammie’s own words are:

“My legacy is an art without an eraser!”

Eraser – Eraser? Here, we don’t erase – we celebrate!