Adios, Sarasota small businesses

Despite all the hoopla about the improving economy, Sarasota is in the midst of yet another round of small business closures, and we’re losing several spots that have defined this city for years, if not decades:

• Sarasota Hardware: This local hardware shop has been a fixture on Main Street since 1934, but it’s closing its doors because of the sharp decline in contractor business over the last few years. Kind of amazing it held out for so long against the Home Depots of the world.
• Super Value Nutrition: Right down Main from Sarasota Hardware, this lil vitamin shop isn’t closing for good, just packing up and heading down to the Landings. Still, it’s a huge blow for all those who wish Sarasota’s downtown could be more walkable and liveable. Where else in the downtown core can you grab commissary items on the go?
• Media on Main: The combination computer store/bookstore/café that replaced the much-loved and much-missed Sarasota News & Books has been dark for ages, leaving one of downtown’s prettiest spots (right on the corner of Main and Palm) vacant. A shame.
• The Golden Apple Dinner Theatre: This for-profit dinner theater had been entertaining Sarasota audiences in the heart of downtown (right off of Main — notice a trend?) for four decades, but the theater was evicted last month. The venue had been struggling to get by for years, but to see an eviction notice posted outside is crushing.
• Circle Books: You know how much I love bookstores, particularly independent ones that carry unique titles, the kinds of places where you can always hear a friendly recommendation from behind the counter. So I was beyond bummed to find out that St. Armands’ Circle Books has shut its doors. It was a beacon of intelligent life in an otherwise drab outdoor shopping mall, and it will be missed. Besides just slinging books, Circle worked with organizations like Forum Truth to bring in sharp authors for lectures and book-signings. Sarasota’s intellectual life just got a little duller.

So it goes, I guess. Let’s just hope that some smart entrepreneurs take up the challenge and fill these voids. Sarasota is losing a huge chunk of its history and its character, and we should do everything we can to keep our city from turning into one giant, bland strip mall.

Sarasota News Leader now publishing full issues — sign up to get them!

The Sarasota News Leader —  a new, online-only local news outlet I blogged about back in June — recently hit another milestone, when it unveiled its first full e-edition — a long compendium of important stories about what’s happening in Sarasota County.

You can read the publication on all your tablet devices, or you can flip through the pages online. You can even download a full PDF version of each issue. All for free. Just head to sarasotanewsleader.com and sign up, and they’ll send you the new issue first thing every Friday morning.

This week’s issue is full of good stuff: Cooper Levey-Baker on the county’s move to reexamine its Noise Ordinance, Rachel Brown Hackney on proposed charter schools not meeting state curriculum standards and Stan Zimmerman on deleted emails down at City Hall. Sign up, and don’t miss another issue.

Thursday Yoga with Gary Halperin

Seasoned M.C. readers know the name Gary Halperin: He’s the certified professional-level Kripalu Yoga teacher whose classes have helped me develop mental clarity, emotional satisfaction, and psychological calm (um, right — tell that to my cats when they’re meowing at 6:15 in the morning!). Gary recently emailed me to tell me about a new special he’s running for yoga beginners — starting Sept. 6, and if you mention this blog, there’s a free class in it for you! (read below)

The class will teach standard yoga postures, emphasizing body awareness and safety. Have you been intimidated by yoga before? Thought about joining a class but just couldn’t pull the trigger? Then Gary’s the man for you.

The lessons kick off at 6:45 p.m. this Thurs., Sept. 6, and continue 6:45-7:45 p.m. each Thursday in September. The classes are held at The Radiance Center, 2868 Ringling Blvd., in the Gold Tree Plaza. The four-class session is $40, and be sure to mention my blog to Gary. That shout-out will get you one free class on top of the beginner series — you just have to mention this blog when you register. Not a bad deal at all!

Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman challenges corporate media at WSLR

The day after covering Mitt Romney’s official acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination in Tampa, independent radio stalwart Amy Goodman and her co-author, Denis Moynihan, drove south to Sarasota, to pay a visit to WSLR 96.5 LPFM and to promote their new book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope.

For many years, Goodman has hosted Democracy Now!, a radio program dedicated to covering social and economic justice movements. The program is broadcast all around the country by independent radio stations; WSLR plays it at 2 p.m. each weekday.

Goodman spoke at WSLR for more than an hour to a crowd that numbered well over 100. She talked about her recent work covering the Republican National Convention — focusing on her efforts to question oil billionaire David Koch and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and criticizing the mainstream media for not aggressively investigating the intersection of money and politics.

In fact, while Goodman spent plenty of time lambasting America’s corrupt political system and praising progressive grassroots causes, her main target was the media, and, in particular, corporate ownership. The “silenced majority” that gives her book her title are the poor and marginalized in our society, as well as the victims of war worldwide, she said. Goodman blamed the media for shutting out dissenting voices, and broadcasting only those that don’t challenge corporate power.

Talking about national politics, she made a salient point about how progressive causes seemed to relax after the election of Barack Obama, which opened the door for an enormous right-wing backlash, and allowed Democratic leaders to back away from campaign promises they had made. The lesson? Grassroots movements can never give up, and must always be aggressive in demanding change.

Goodman and Moynihan’s Sarasota stop was the first in a 100-city trip to promote the new book. They’ll be in Charlotte, N.C., this week, covering the Democratic National Convention with the same zeal with which they approached the Republican gathering. Give ’em hell, Amy.

When did activism become anarchism?

It’s nothing but sad to see, read, and hear about the millions upon millions of dollars being spent for the RNC, and the DNC,to be fair, to “protect” the cities from so-called “anarchists” — or what some might call activists, or what others might call Americans just doing their duty — registering their public complaint against policies, people, parties. Um, sort of like the tea tax protestors of yore.

Everywhere you read — people who want to peaceably protest are being labelled anarchists. It’s the kind of hyperbole that deranges our nation. Jiminy cricket, when did activism become anarchism?

Went to WSLR last night to hear Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyer’s Guild, and co-host of the weekly civil liberties radio show, “Law and Disorder,” (which airs on WSLR on Sundays at 10 a.m.). I felt pretty uninformed sitting there in the audience and hearing about documented incidences of “snatch squads” — where protest leaders have literally been snatched from the street by hooded (identity concealed) law enforcement officers and stuffed into a van. Heard about a lot of other things too — things I’m still digesting and don’t fully understand and want to research more. But this much is clear to me — our civil rights are eroding and a lot of us — myself included — aren’t doing anything about it.

I really commend WSLR for providing these kinds of lecture events.

Interesting article about the most notable economic protests — and their outcomes in the Christian Science Monitor

New column: Why Dent’s ‘experience’ isn’t the right kind

I’m wading into the supervisor of elections primary this week in my first guest column for The Sarasota News Leader, a new online outfit I blogged about back in June.

They publish a fresh slate of stories and columns each Friday, and I’m happy to report they liked a piece I wrote about Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent enough to include it in this week’s edition. To sign up for SNL updates, just enter your email address in the box on the upper right of the homepage; if you’re more of a Facebook fan, head here and click “Like.”

Here’s a taste of what I wrote about Dent (the link to the full version is below):

Earlier this week, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune editorial board recommended Kathy Dent in the supervisor of election race. The board stressed Dent’s on-the-job experience as its deciding factor.

Dent has experience, yes. But it is an experience fraught with incidents of disingenuousness, a lack of full disclosure and missteps that, viewed collectively, render that experience less than impressive. A brief recap:

In August 2006, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), the company that supplied new voting machines to be used in that fall’s elections, notified Dent’s office of some potential problems for users. ES&S instructed Dent to install new posters in voting halls to insure the public was made aware of the proper protocol to follow to make sure their votes were recorded by the new machines. The posters — which Dent, over nearly three months leading up to the election, never did make public or install — would have advised voters to push “firmly” on the touchscreen. The posters would have emphasized that voters must carefully “hold down” their selected candidate’s box “until it is highlighted” — a delayed process that might take several seconds, the posters warned.

Dent’s decision to not put up the new posters during the November elections, which included the contentious race between Christine Jennings and Vern Buchanan, was inexplicable. But what followed was even more confounding.

Despite the fallout of 18,000 votes unaccounted for, despite the loud outcry from the public and media searching for any information that might help make sense of what had happened to those missing votes, despite the national spotlight that once again cast a pall over Florida voting practices, Dent’s office was not forthcoming about the ES&S warning letter and the recommended posters. When the existence of both was brought to light some time later by other sources on the Internet, the silence from Dent’s office, in retrospect, was deafening.

Click here to read the piece in full. If you’re a registered Republican, be sure to cast a vote in the Kathy Dent/Jon Thaxton primary that ends next Tuesday. And if you like what I had to say, let the SNL editors know about it.

Book lover paradise in Sarasota

Regular visitors here know I love books (did you notice the Hamlet quotation on my homepage?), but I don’t just love reading them — I also love the process of shopping for them. Few pleasures can match wandering the cramped alleys and navigating the towering stacks of an out-of-the-way independent bookstore with a sprawling collection of reasonably priced tomes.

In Sarasota, the opportunities for quality book shopping have dwindled over the years: We lost Sarasota News & Books (although we eventually got Bookstore 1 in return), Brant’s Books (at least temporarily — they’ve got a new location) and even Barnes & Noble’s big-box competitor, Borders. But two stores have endured through it all, each under the same Main Street roof: A. Parker’s Books and the Book Bazaar.

Parker’s offers a wide variety of rare and antiquarian tomes, and maintains an impressive rare book room, while the Bazaar sells a more conventional selection of used and out-of-print books. No frills here: There’s no café, no baristas, no lattes. Just books. Lots and lots of books.

I love the smart and friendly staff. I love the hushed quiet right on Main. I love the very smell of the place: that musty old-paper scent that only old bookstores have earned.

I heartily recommend visiting both — if you can’t find something you’re interested in, well then shame on you.

Blinded by Sarasota’s LED Signs

I’m fed up with the ridiculous LED signs that are trivializing our environment, degrading the sensibility of our palm-tree-sunshine-lined streets, and obliterating our good sense with their garish obnoxiousness. (Can you tell where I stand on this issue?)

Business that should know better — frequently medical and health-related offices — are throwing these signs up along U.S. 41 and on residential streets near Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Usually overlarge, blindingly bright, and specifically designed to divert drivers’ attention from the road, the light pollution alone from these signs is egregious enough, but they’re ugly to boot.

Sarasota Blues Festival VIP Offering Doesn’t Fit

The Sarasota Blues and Music Festival is irking me with its $75 VIP tickets. VIP? In a parking lot across from Ed Smith Stadium? Whatever! Read my outrage at this week’s Sense and the City column in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

Observer, Herald-Tribune alumnus releases debut novel

Surely you remember the name Roger Drouin. During his stint as the Sarasota Herald-Tribune‘s city hall reporter between 2007 and 2009, Drouin landed countless local stories on the front page of our daily — notching scoop after scoop.

When he left the paper, it was to earn his MFA in the Florida Atlantic University creative writing program. It takes guts to leave a paying writing gig these days (trust me), but Drouin did it, and now he’s making waves with the publication of his first novel, No Other Way. The book tells the story of a bird photographer who finds himself in the middle of a fight to protect a remote forest targeted for natural gas exploration.

The book’s earning positive notices from a variety of readers. You can pick up a copy via Amazon.com in a print or electronic edition, and you can even read the first three chapters for free over at Smashwords.

Quality local books are rare — give this one a go.