Misty McDaniel, Salisbury, N.C.
♦ Eric Phillips, owner of Salisbury’s premier empty space bike shop “Skinny Wheels”, recently urged Downtown Salisbury Inc. to host “Closed Streets”, an idea based on events in large cities elsewhere in the USA. You know like Minneapolis, Boulder, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and other noted outposts for the counterculture fringe. The concept of Closed Streets relies on closing off city streets so people can enjoy the open space. In an interview with the Post, Phillips said, “The idea is to transform a street, any street, into an open space where people can do what they’re doing now.”
DSI held the Closed Streets event July 4th from 4 to 8 PM, and the vendors who showed up to serve throngs of people lost their shirts, because of a virtual no-show. Phillips blames “organizers” decision to have the event on July 4th” for the failure of the turnout.
Undeterred by the failure that other people made of ‘his’ idea, Mr. Phillips hopes that future “Closed Streets” events could be held on Sunday afternoons, when downtown merchants would not be impacted. On July 4th, the street closure resulted in a disappointing loss of business for the few restaurants, junktique dealers, and wiggeries who expected at least some minimal July 4th business, were it not for the street closures.
Phillips even hopes for a similar event to be held in different neighborhoods, cities or towns. “You could do one in Salisbury, one in China Grove, one in Faith,” Phillips said.
Just wonderful. I’m sure the merchants and elected officials in China Grove and Faith will be just about as eager as the downtown merchants in Salisbury who lost business on Friday afternoon. I see that Mr. Phillips lives in Mocksville. So it seems a better ‘fit’ that he should take his brilliant street closure ideas to Mocksville. Please spare China Grove and Faith officials the waste of time it would take for them to vote “NO” to one of those business-killing street closures.
