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At 12:17 PM 1/27/04, erin stojan wrote:
Bob's point about Ruminator is well-taken. The Ruminator subject is getting almost as much attention as the stadium proposal, which is ridiculous...
Nothing ridiculous about it; it's an example of sweetheart-dealing that the average schmuck can actually affect.
So what is the standard by which we will judge these things (other than, of course, my own fairly black and white standard)? Pamela had a few good points.
Erin had a few of her own:
Ruminator has proven that it is a good neighbor to St. Paul,
If that's supposed to be the standard, then you can hardly find better candidates for government support than the people who ran the pet shop on Snelling at Minnehaha for many years. Wonderful neighbors - great with tips on how to take care of your pets, without regard to your politics (are you listening, David Unowsky?), virtually veterinarians in their own right. But they couldn't stay in business with a "Pets Food Warehouse" down the street, so out of business they went. Did the city queue up to bail them out? They had not spent the requisite time licking the jam from between Jay Benanav's toes, so - sorry, charlie.
In fact, you can hardly find a shop that doesn't strive to be good neighbors, from the local coffee shop (like Ginkgo, owned by relentless DFLer Kathy Sundberg, who's benefitted greatly from Benanav's favor) to Dan Perkins (WONDERFUL neighbor, former owner of St. Paul Firearms - who unfortunately ran afoul the neighborhood PC Gestapo, AKA District 11), to even the dreaded WalMart and Target, which pump a lot of discretionary money into the community. All of them strive to provide their communities something they need, and to be good neighbors.
Being a good neighbor isn't even unique, much less a qualification for city largesse.
the amount that it's asking for is petty compared to those given to other businesses,
Depends on the kind of business you're running, doesn't it? As I said in a posting yesterday, $150,000 could help incubate a LOT of small businesses in Saint Paul. I know of one woman - an afro-American single mother, as it happsn - who started a cleaning company. Another I know runs a craft wholesaling company out of a garage. Want more examples? I know several. Think any one of them couldn't have benefitted from a $5,000 loan? Each of these businesses employs people - Saint Paul people, nonetheless, not transient college kids - would benefit this city in the long run much more than Unowsky's floundering bookstore.
This is *exactly* the kind of business that the city should be lending support to.
This is exactly wrong! If the neighbors love the place so much, why is it sucking pond water after 35 years in business?
If it's a neighborhood business, that's one thing - but Ruminator has national pretensions. Those pretensions have basically sunk the store.
I think Erik asserted yesterday that the city's financial support of Bound to be Read, just down the street, served as a similar example to the Ruminator situation.
Yes - a city subsidy that should never have been.
Actually, Bound to be Read is a Hubbard Broadcasting property
Check your facts on that. I think it's owned by a Hubbard, but not part of HBI.
In contrast, Ruminator is truly an independent bookstore, not owned (or beholden) to any of the corporate news media conglomerates.
No. It's even worse - it's beholden to a political party.
We need more stores like Ruminator in St. Paul.
And with Ruminator out of the way, we might be more. More, healthier, viable stores.
Sentiment has no place in this discussion.
Mitch Berg Da Midway!
Shot In The Dark
The thing REALLY putting St. Paul on the map
http://www.mitchberg.com/shotindark/
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