Bainbridge Island's neighborhood shops are exemplary!~

We're fortunate to have a number of great organizations on Bainbridge Island run by our friends and neighbors who are invested in making our world a better place. One of the finest is YES! Magazine, co-founded by David Korton and Sarah Ruth van Gelder. As they say about themselves, YES! Magazine is "an award-winning, ad-free, nonprofit publication that supports people’s active engagement in building a just and sustainable world. The heart of our work is to spotlight practical possibilities for deep shifts in our society."

A recent YES! article on the effects of public policy on neighborhood businesses discusses what has been lost in most of America in the last century as small businesses have closed and big box stores and malls have taken their place. The article by Staci Mitchell makes the claim that neighborhood business slow the pace of life and encourage people to get to know each other.

She writes, "...spend some time watching people in a neighborhood business district or on a high street. What you see is lots of interaction. Business owners know their customers; people run into neighbors on the sidewalk or while waiting in line at the bakery. This is an environment that slows the pace of life and encourages people to loiter and converse."

I see that every day on Winslow Way, at the Lynwood Center shops and movie theater, Rolling Bay and other areas around the island. It's life as usual on Bainbridge to know a shop's history, the name of the owner and who is waiting on you at the counter--and who is waiting in line behind you. How many towns have a vintage 1930's movie theater where you know the name of the 60+ year-old man who painted the stars on the ceiling when he was a lad; where the movies are introduced with wit and a critical eye by the proprietor standing at the front of the house; where you know that she's showed amazing poise and courage when she introduced a movie about the war in Iraq while her own son was at the same time deployed there.

That's life on Bainbridge island. It's great.