The shop “Beautiful Things"
had been a fixture on Sycamore for as long as anyone could remember, one
of those old fashioned anchors that fixes time in a fast changing neighborhood.
The street actually was not called Sycamore but merely showed a number. Such nondescript numerals however doing no justice to the long
rows of large, stately trees that lined the sidewalk, I decided to change
the name of this story to something more pastoral and homespun.
Sycamore was only one block long,
a winding and steep incline connecting two broader avenues with a
kind of mid-century appeal that made this part of the city feel more like a
village than an urban grid of humorless red brick buildings. Alongside the two-family houses and pre-war apartments, the street housed
just four small “ma & pa” businesses: a bakery, a tiny beauty salon, a shoe repair and the
gift shop; together these comprised a small town fantasy in the midst of a
large, increasingly noisy residential area that slowly had been
taken over by a gang of cheap chain stores and their influx of tacky, useless merchandise- outdated bags of chocolate, fuzzy red Christmas stockings of strange fabric, plastic serving trays with odd holiday motifs. These kinds of schlock bazaars usually were plopped down in busier, more heavily trafficked locations.
Beautiful Things was wedged in
between the shoe repair and pastry shop about halfway up the hill on a quiet street, its hallmark
a display window quite small but nothing less than mesmerizing. It
was impossible to resist gazing into its semi-precious cave of wonders while
out doing the chores and running from one mind numbing errand to
the next. On rich, black velvet jewelry pads carefully placed for optimum
viewing sat marcasite pins that blazed like diamonds, glittering ovals of amber
and polished stones of blue topaz, each sharing the reflected glow of the overhead
track lights with pewter letter openers and miniature Tiffany-style lamps;
semi-precious objects totally unnecessary for survival but succeeding in
prompting all sorts of forgotten longings and desires for small luxuries. The
window itself faced southwest, and when the afternoon sun bounced off the glass
the whole sparkling collage became purely hypnotic.
The interior of the shop was no
larger than fifteen by twenty feet or so, with a kind of closet-office in the
back hidden behind a flowery curtain. Once inside one immediately was bedazzled
by the jewelry boxes- some of them musical with slowly turning ballerinas-
along with a colorful selection of silk scarves and ties, one-of-a-kind tea
pots, ceramic vases, hand-painted dishes and of course piles of rings,
bracelets and chokers, all neatly stacked inside the three-tiered glass case
behind which the proprietors ruled their little kingdom of chotchkas.
The display also included a few obligatory gag gifts such as miniature slot machines and sleek, tiny clocks with sun dials that went all the way up to the year of infinity, but everything was tastefully arranged and carefully selected at the “shows” which the owners Mel and Ruby seemed to be attending at regular intervals.
This all took place of course before smart phones, smart watches, smart toys, smart food, smart shoppers and consequently the smart billionaires of the information super highway who came smartly cashing in on that unending consumer thirst for smartness.
The display also included a few obligatory gag gifts such as miniature slot machines and sleek, tiny clocks with sun dials that went all the way up to the year of infinity, but everything was tastefully arranged and carefully selected at the “shows” which the owners Mel and Ruby seemed to be attending at regular intervals.
This all took place of course before smart phones, smart watches, smart toys, smart food, smart shoppers and consequently the smart billionaires of the information super highway who came smartly cashing in on that unending consumer thirst for smartness.
The upside of once shopping "live" also meant that you actually got to see and smell and touch things, hear the bustle, talk to other people. As a little girl floating through the bedazzling splendor of a lush Christmas stage set on the main floor of Macy's at Herald Square, I was completely entranced; I still see the glittering, festive tinsel, the colored and smooth ornaments, the dark green wreaths with their thick, perfectly tied red ribbons; I recall the happy ping of the elevator bells and the sheer magic of the scene.
The downside of face to face commerce of course was that at times you might not want to interact as you browsed fancifully and took it all in, much less have someone hovering nearby annoyingly to make a sale. Nonetheless, many of us still miss that kind of human contact as we settle in resignedly in front of our little screens on all our Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays.
At Beautiful Things people interacted with each other in a much more intimate setting than Macy's, absence of gorgeous decorations and pinging elevators notwithstanding. I know just what you’re looking for, Ruby would assure you after the better part of an hour spent considering a shiny array of objects, none of which exactly did the trick; You want something smaller, daintier, perhaps with an amethyst in the center, right? They’ll probably have them at the show we’re going to next week- come back then. And she acted very much as if she meant it. She would find this for you.
Ruby worked hard to appear that her mission was truly to satisfy the customer. She did not want to be seen as stoking the embers of your flagging, mindless consumerism in the days when we once went shopping in stores, an activity fueled by a vague yen that often left you succumbing to useless stuff: seven different kinds of bathroom cleaners, a dozen, unique hand creams, a funny hat perhaps that you wound up never wearing. Ruby's object was to appear as sincerely wanting to locate the one special, shiny thing you desired that would totally change your life- or at least this was what she wanted you to believe. Mel looked on now and again while tinkering and repairing chains and brooches and things with his teeny-tiny pliers, smiling benignly in that vague and special, fidgety way of his.
The downside of face to face commerce of course was that at times you might not want to interact as you browsed fancifully and took it all in, much less have someone hovering nearby annoyingly to make a sale. Nonetheless, many of us still miss that kind of human contact as we settle in resignedly in front of our little screens on all our Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays.
At Beautiful Things people interacted with each other in a much more intimate setting than Macy's, absence of gorgeous decorations and pinging elevators notwithstanding. I know just what you’re looking for, Ruby would assure you after the better part of an hour spent considering a shiny array of objects, none of which exactly did the trick; You want something smaller, daintier, perhaps with an amethyst in the center, right? They’ll probably have them at the show we’re going to next week- come back then. And she acted very much as if she meant it. She would find this for you.
Ruby worked hard to appear that her mission was truly to satisfy the customer. She did not want to be seen as stoking the embers of your flagging, mindless consumerism in the days when we once went shopping in stores, an activity fueled by a vague yen that often left you succumbing to useless stuff: seven different kinds of bathroom cleaners, a dozen, unique hand creams, a funny hat perhaps that you wound up never wearing. Ruby's object was to appear as sincerely wanting to locate the one special, shiny thing you desired that would totally change your life- or at least this was what she wanted you to believe. Mel looked on now and again while tinkering and repairing chains and brooches and things with his teeny-tiny pliers, smiling benignly in that vague and special, fidgety way of his.
However Ruby wasn’t always being so really helpful at such moments of extreme shopping indecision, even though she
appeared to be holding out the carrot of finding “exactly the right thing. ” This reverse effect mainly had to do with the insane anxiety hovering just beneath the surface of her silk, paisley neck scarf and a barely concealed impatience. In truth, she was so incredibly proprietary and anxiety-ridden about the placement of objects in the shop she could barely conceal a maniacal sense of
impending doom, for fear that perhaps one of the display “trees” of dangly
earrings just might topple over with the customer’s next sneeze; this
nervousness of manner comprised a kind of existential tick that tended to upset the
whole tight little sense of controlled cordiality she tried so hard to maintain
in the store. . . .
-From "Beautiful Things" (2014), look for Part Two on December 22nd!
