Friday, April 08, 2005
The art supply store in the strip mall
Went to Pearl Arts & Crafts store yesterday, bought a couple of sketch pads & charcoal pencils. Am I an artist now? But it's sad to go there. I worked at Pearl for four years full time, which was usually tolerable. I could wear sneakers, jeans & flannel shirts, & carry a cup of coffee around. Then two part-time stints, each about a year, that I enjoyed, rebuilding & running the book dept. The store changed owners a few years ago & now it's neat & organized & dull. Long time employees were fired or quit or grew up, & the personality of the store changed; no more pierced goth girls at the customer service counter, neo- hippies building elaborate holiday displays in the craft area, long-hair rock musicians driving pallet jacks in the warehouse, goateed commerical graphic students explaining air brushes, or spacy fine arts undergrads in the paper & paint sections. In the 90's, young Pearl employees boasted that it was the only store in the strip mall that did not require drug testing - but break time pot smoking was all they did. Customers - including many excellent professional artists & crafters - never knew if the employees would be rude or gregarious, informed or infuriatingly ignorant about products.
Pearl was a buzzin' little oddball community with a spirit existing independently of a management that did nothing to encourage loyalty & pride in the workplace anyway. The store hired people of all ages who for various reasons wouldn't or couldn't be employed under more structured & closely supervised conditions. Pearl was unobtrusively tucked away behind a Red Lobster & between a Toys R Us & a discount carpet outlet on Mall Alley, a wasteland of middle class over-development along Jersey's share of old U.S. Route One. The store was a disaster when I started in 1991; atrociously managed, uncontrolled theft, unbelievable fire & OSHA code violations; some guys in the drafting supply area even watched porn on a monitor set up for promotional videos. But I enjoyed my younger cuckoo bird co-workers. & the store slowly improved without losing its offbeat qualities - a unique blend of India bazaar, boardwalk souvenir shop, & art supply supermarket. It's all gone now.
When I quit for the third time in 2000 over being denied a raise, leaving a large, eclectic book department that reflected my personality, several retail generations of these "kids" had known me as "Bob from Books." A number of them had been at the store all along, from high school through college, providing a continuity to my time there. I'd observed their changing fashions & tastes. I'd watched them form bands, play local bars & clubs, & break up to form new groups. I'd followed their soap operas of doomed in-store adolescent romances, & attended several weddings. Nearly all of them respected me because I was open-minded about what they liked & did while remaining true to my own ideas; I respected each of them as persons. & they were often surprised - at first- when I ordered a special book or print that reflected something they were interested in. It was my quiet way of being a teacher; that & never saying "no" to whatever creative ideas or dreams were shared with me. Pearl was a very good gig some days.
I shot this photo from the parking lot in front of Pearl.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Pearl was a buzzin' little oddball community with a spirit existing independently of a management that did nothing to encourage loyalty & pride in the workplace anyway. The store hired people of all ages who for various reasons wouldn't or couldn't be employed under more structured & closely supervised conditions. Pearl was unobtrusively tucked away behind a Red Lobster & between a Toys R Us & a discount carpet outlet on Mall Alley, a wasteland of middle class over-development along Jersey's share of old U.S. Route One. The store was a disaster when I started in 1991; atrociously managed, uncontrolled theft, unbelievable fire & OSHA code violations; some guys in the drafting supply area even watched porn on a monitor set up for promotional videos. But I enjoyed my younger cuckoo bird co-workers. & the store slowly improved without losing its offbeat qualities - a unique blend of India bazaar, boardwalk souvenir shop, & art supply supermarket. It's all gone now.
When I quit for the third time in 2000 over being denied a raise, leaving a large, eclectic book department that reflected my personality, several retail generations of these "kids" had known me as "Bob from Books." A number of them had been at the store all along, from high school through college, providing a continuity to my time there. I'd observed their changing fashions & tastes. I'd watched them form bands, play local bars & clubs, & break up to form new groups. I'd followed their soap operas of doomed in-store adolescent romances, & attended several weddings. Nearly all of them respected me because I was open-minded about what they liked & did while remaining true to my own ideas; I respected each of them as persons. & they were often surprised - at first- when I ordered a special book or print that reflected something they were interested in. It was my quiet way of being a teacher; that & never saying "no" to whatever creative ideas or dreams were shared with me. Pearl was a very good gig some days.
I shot this photo from the parking lot in front of Pearl.
