Storefronts around my office are closing. The Italian restaurant that hosted local opera singers has been closed for a couple of years, and I still lament that we can no longer suggest it to friends as the perfect spot to clinch a young romance. The funky furniture shop nearby closed not long after. A fabulous consignment and second-hand store closed, one of the best places to pick up a purse or jeans, feel invigorated and new, yet have spent mere dollars, not a whole paycheck.
Most recently, the Greek restaurant with a cheesy laminated photograph menu, a hand-painted garish, bacchanalian mural, a small stage for live music, occasional belly dancing, and decent if not great food, gave way to a Chase bank. A new multi-use building (apartments on top of shops) has one third of the ground floor retail space devoted to a business banking bank (I had to read up on what this meant – that instead of being a place where mere individuals hold their accounts, they want business owners to open accounts for their businesses. But what businesses? In the my work neighborhood, many of the businesses are out of business. They’ve been replaced by banks.
Hmmmmmmmm. Circular reasoning, I remember from a decades-past philosophy class, results in, well, circles.
I get why Starbucks didn’t take over the Greek restaurant space – there’s a Starbucks right across the street from it. But another coffee chain could have (and often does). And don’t get me started on the irony of a Greek restaurant financially failing and being taken over by the largest US bank (based on assets). But I thought no one had any money, which is why the retailers were suffering. If banking is a recession-proof business, even as personal and business bank accounts are dwindling, whose money is taking up the high-rent square retail footage?
It’s almost impossible to stroll and window shop these days. I do not want to linger in a bank lobby. There are no tchotchkes to touch, no clothes to try on, no treasures to exclaim over with a girlfriend. I went into the former-Greek-now-Chase establishment yesterday to check it out. And make a quick deposit. It’s cavernous, with way too much empty space. Empty, open space hung in the very spot where the belly dancer’s hips once swayed, mesmerizing my husband, making me consider for a millisecond what would happen if I wrapped my waist in jangly, jingly chains and baubles, donned a bejeweled bikini top, and had the guts to shake and shimmy my gypsy self. The mural’s busty Greek wench and her serenading lover, baskets of olives and grapes, have given way to walls that glisten an impossible and seamless cold, silver white.
The staff, who once offered spanakopita and dolmades, tangy tzatziki and warm soft pita bread, skewers of roasted lamb, beef and chicken, and richly herbed slow baked tomato sauce, Retsina and dubious Greek beer, now asked if I wanted the balance on my account. No. I want garlicky Greek fries topped with feta, to dip in olive oil, leaving my fingers warm and greasy and salty, perfect for licking.
I must have caught the bank at a slow moment, or maybe a slow day. I was greeted and welcomed by bank-happy tellers wearing bank teller smiles and bank teller sweaters. Not a single hip swayed, arms never drifted up to shimmy.
It was a pleasant encounter, but never once have I wondered if I should wear a bank pin with my name on it, never once thought I could captivate my man if only I had the nerve to jiggle like the bank clerk.
We’re losing something here, with the proliferation of banks where once there were places to shop and stroll, try on all kinds of fantasies of who we might be on our lunch break, what we might dare when we went out with lovers and had something sensual and evocative shimmied right under our noses. I do not need another small white paper receipt documenting the incremental ups and downs of my personal economy. I’m a better person with an inexpensive second-hand treasure and a reminder of bacchanalian pleasure.