TruthToTell March 12: ALL ABOUT LOCAL: It Ain’t Just the Warm & Fuzzies-AUDIO Podcast BELOW

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Painting by Tom Slack “Main Street”

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Those of who have lived around or near commercial areas in the core cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis for any length of time have noticed the incursion of chains into many of the spaces once occupied by businesses owned by your neighbor down the street or your fellow church or synagogue or mosque member, or by your brothers and sisters of the local lodges.

Those were the days we knew all of our business owners by their first names and they knew ours, no matter the frequency of our patronage. They just knew us – maybe because they’d known our parents and grandparents, or maybe we were their regulars. Boy, as a 12-year-old kid, I tried slipping a quick hand onto a shelf for a candy bar or a pair of nose plugs in our local drug store and the next thing I knew, the shop owner had me by the ear and never called the cops – he or she called my parents. That was noCVS, I’ll tell you. It was the Grandendale Drug and those guys were the best. (An art gallery now sits in that space.)

These people were like family. They weren’t in the business of faceless merchandising, they were in the business to serve and service their neighboring customers. No more in too many cases. Some of the in-town, neighborhood shopping strips like Hennepin Avenue, or Grand Ave. or Payne Avenue have evolved into a series of suburban mall-like stores with owners somewhere in California or New York and few of those relationships with owners and their pride and their workmanship and their locally based products and service operations have been able to survive under the weight of discounting or affordable merchandise and neighborly service.

Not all of them, mind you, but enough to know that the value of locally-owned and managed businesses, locally made goods or repair shops – and especially the healthier and more sustainable growers with their local fresh foods.

Buying local has become something of a mantra for a growing number of businesses. I don’t know whether that’s happening much in the suburbs, but a there seems to be a resurgence of home-grown businesses around here – and all across a country tired of faceless chains.

Keeping the local tradition alive and expanding it has been the business of the Metropolitan Independent Business Association or MetroIBA – emphasis on “Independent” – for a number of years now, and it, too, has its ups and downs. After all, I know how trying to herd a bunch of entrepreneurs into a single-minded organization can be tough duty. Most couldn’t be bothered because most were trying to survive as the independent types they usually are. But Metro IBA has clearly thrived – under some committed leadership and now, energetic management.

Just this past Wednesday, Stacy Mitchell of the Institute of Local Self Reliance New Rules Project, Author, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses and Chair of the American Independent Business Alliance released her study called “Wal-Mart’s Greenwash” and put another nail in the coffin of chains and discounters for their attempts at heavily promoting sustainability initiatives that are falling substantially short. Said Mitchell: “Wal-Mart’s sustainability campaign has done more to improve the company’s image than to help the environment.”

This is the antithesis of what would happen if most people would buy local – even when it might cost a few extra shekels.

TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI spend an hour with a few of the always interesting characters that comprise the MetroIBA and the concept of localism.