What me live off corp?

{For those who never had access to Mad comics (which may be the whole of this island) the title to this blog will probably make no sense, and even for those who did it still may make little sense, but I won't worry with that now.}

I recently saw a good documentary on the BBC about a British guy and his girlfriend who attempted to drive the length and breath of America without using a single corporate owned business, only mom and pop type stores, and I think the implication was that it's really hard to be an American and not support large corporations at every turn. I wont try to argue with that, although I will add that it ain't any easier over here, and for me it's actually been phenomenally harder to live 'offcorp', so hard in fact that I really haven't been trying much over the past three years to live by mom and pops alone. I'm living offwheels (no car) so I'm limited to where I can walk, and so the hour long round trip walk to the local cooperative grocery store got old quick, and you could fit about twenty of Liverpool's only cooperative, the Windmill, into the Weaver Street Coop back in Carrboro, North Carolina where I easily lived a corporation free life, well, except for the one I worked for, Whole Foods, which ain't all that big as far as Corps go (probably smaller than Waitross), and the chief operating officer, John Mackey, is a tree-hugging libertarian vegan which for a CEO is about as boho as it gets, and so between it and Weaver Street (which had a beatific bakery and cafe inside) I never had to set foot in anywhere like Walmart or Tescos where I've been buying most of my groceries since it's about the only real grocery store within easy walking distance of where I live.

What I also miss having in walking distance is a nice locally grown coffee house. In Carrboro I not only had the cafe in Weaver Street but there were at least three other homegrown coffee houses that were within striking distance, and the total number of independent cafes in the greater Carrboro/Chapel-Hill area must've outnumbered the number of Starbucks by at least ten to one, whereas here in Liverpool there are three or four types of corporate coffee houses (the most prolific of which is Costa Coffee which I don't even think exists in America) that seem to control the movement of the majority of coffee in this city. They, as well as the momandpop cafes, also close by five, but that's another story.

Back where I used to live I didn't have to really put any effort or thought into not shopping at chain stores, there were just so many good alternatives, but here I find myself shopping at chains ninty percent of the time. And part of it has to do with the fact that I live in midurbia, a narrow strip of land that runs between the urban core of the city and the surrounding belt of proper suburbs which in England consist almost entirely of semi-detached three and four bedders. If I lived in the city center then I would have easy access to a lot more in the way of noncorporate businesses, but even in the heart of this city there are some things that I just can't seem to find. For instance, I was amazed when I moved here to find that Blockbuster Video still ran a virtual monopoly on video rentals and appeared to have no real competition, corporate or otherwise. In North Carolina in the late ninites a whole slew of new video rental joints opened up and there were always the momandpop ones, some better than others. In Carrboro the home grown video store, Visart, was probably the best one I've ever come across, and it contained just about every movie that you'd ever pay to see and even the ones that noone probably ever would, and just the Spanish film section of the store would have dwarfed the entire foreign section in most Blockbusters. I know this is the age of LoveFilms.com and payperview, and I know that if I really wanted to I could get all my movies for free through file sharing sites, but I miss my Visart even if most of its selection is in VHS.

I could probably go on and on about how easy I had it in the liberal bastion of Carrboro, but what the documentary and this blog have inspired me to do is to try to see how long I can go using only momandpop stores no matter where I am stationed, and so far I have to admit I haven't been able to stay away from Tesco and their value products for more than a few days at most. I guess I'll either just have to live with being a hypocrite for a while longer, or rationalize it by telling myself that even by shopping at Tescos I can still support local family farmers and organic agriculture and other small ethical or ecocentric companies that sale their products through retail giants and Co-ops alike .

Bold Street and the SOLO (South of Liverpool One) District

Liverpool has, for all the time that I have known it, been within the throes of gentrification (and descallification) after spending decades in the throes of slowing crumbling into ruin and disrepute, but within all this death and commercialization there are a few pockets of bohemiphilia. There is a splattering of places in the city center concentrated along Bold Street, a dash of it in the student enclaves of Smithdown in the shadow of the great Super Asda, and lastly there is Lark Lane, an outpost of quirk in the calm of midurbia. While the bar has not been set very high and the lack of full body track wear can make one appear quixotic in these parts, there is a certain basement level of bohemitude within the netherregions of this kosmos of tanning salons, offies, kebab shops, pound stores and two for one fish and chip specials. The city center now boosts every major commercial chain known to civilized man, and has recently had the largest shopping mall in all of Europa graciously bequeathed to it (some may say crammed down its throat) by the autocratic powers that be. This new development completely obliterated the alternative shopping paradise known as Quiggins. . Most of the Quigginites managed to jump ship and have recamped further to the south and nearer to the heart of what is one of Liverpool’s most independent shopping regions, Bold Street. Now it’s true the northern end is being slowly consumed by corporate coffee stores, but stroll a few blocks up from Café Costabucks, and you’ll leave most of that behind you. At its extreme southern tip you’ll find its heart of hearts, the left wing propaganda shop and book store, News From Nowhere where you can breath freely and enjoy a good bit of anarcho-socialist reading before making your way across the street to the local free trade/indigenous goods store, the Liverpool World Shop. One street over is the Foundation for the Art and Creative Technology, the FACT, a multi sensory mind trip of a theatre which runs blockbusters along side more artsyfartsy cinema and exhibits artistic work in the areas of film, video and anything else that incorporates sophisticated media equipment. You can also get loaded up on caffeine, pastries, booze or pop corn depending on what floor you’re on. One street east of Bold you’ll stumble across the building that has become home to the evicted Quiggins folks. Its pseudo gaudy décor owes itself to the Barcelona Spanish restaurant that used to occupy the ground floor of this space. Most of what Quiggins was is still here, and if you’re looking for goth wear, tarot cards or just an antique pipe to smoke then it’s all on display here. Beyond Bold Street and within the old warehouse region there is a growing number of bottom up businesses and galleries gaining ground on the edge of gentrification central. There you’ll find the Mello Mello coffee house and all around funky hanging out lounge type area with equally funky type beautiful folk serving fair-trade coffee and other tasty beverages. There’s a living market every Sunday and the first time I showed up there were an assortment of local artists, photographers, clothes designers and ice cream makers. Next door and all around are concrete floor and exposed rebar style art spaces that are worth a few moments of your life. The place isn’t overflowing with warm bodies, but after trudging through the mindless mass of consumers on the high street or the new shopping complex it’s not so bad to have a whole gallery to yourself.