A couple of days ago, I went back to our town's downtown area, where we used to have our gallery and shop.
My Mission?
To return some items we used to have on consignment at the Red Dragonfly to another downtown merchant who has a small shop across the street from our old location. She was just opening up for the first time since March when the stay-at-home edict went into effect, so I could finally drop off her goodies.
Parking lot at the edge of the downtown core... usually FILLED to overflowing
It was a strange and slightly nostalgic experience.
So many stores in our downtown area remain closed; quite a few have closed for good.
It was a bright and sunny day in late spring, and normally the area would be filled with people, and not a parking place in sight.
This spring, not so much...
Normally, it's bumper to bumper here...
It seemed like pretty much the only cars were parked outside food establishments where people can still pick up take-out food.
In fact, most restaurants now have police cones in several parking spaces to make sure there is always available parking for pickup food.
Doesn't really seem like it's necessary, these days.
Our old street. We used to have the ground floor space in corner of the taller building at right
Our old street looked pretty deserted. A couple of cars were parked in front of the pizza place, to pick up food.
I went into my friend's store to drop off her consignment goods, taking in the strangely "dead" energy, as I walked down the street. It really had that post-apocalyptic feeling of a world in which 90% of the world's people have gone.
It made me feel very grateful that we no longer have a business, for we would surely have not been able to survive this setback.
Washington Street, where most of the "overflow" parking happens: Deserted
We talked for a while, shooting the breeze about "old times," and pretty much agreeing that Normal was not something we should expect, ever again.
Then I said my goodbyes and drove away, seeing nothing but more deserted streets.
In Other News
There's about three weeks left on the power-down of our old Steem account. For a while, I had hoped that both platforms might be reasonable venues with different flavors, but it's pretty clear the future of Red Dragonfly will be mostly here on Hive.
I'd like to revive this blog a bit, and perhaps be part of building a "non-crypto, non-technology" community here.
At least it might be fun. The days of thinking this blog could actually help us pay our debts is long gone.
Hope everyone is doing well, and thanks for reading!
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