Coolidge Corner Break-In Suspect
Recently, this publication and others reported on the rash of shoplifting against our local merchants. Before and during Hurricane Irene, four Brookline merchants were vandalized. Fortunately, the damage was minimal and operations at each store/restaurant were not suspended.
The thing each of these businesses have in common is that they are independent operations; not owned by national chains. The word independent has taken on a different meaning in 2011, perhaps because independence sounds so romantic and patriotic. Movies are considered independent when made outside the Hollywood studio system. So even a movie made by a company owned by Disney or someone like Mark Cuban is still considered independent.
Independent merchants in Coolidge Corner, Washington Square, Brookline Village, on the other hand, are old-school independent. People like us own them; they just own a storefront instead of having a job. In most cases the job they quit to open their storefront paid more. Most of us who have a house and a business consider the home as the place where we live and the business as a dream we built. Often we spend more time at our business than we do at home. Some are fortunate to have family at both.
I’ll refrain from executing a bunch of web searches in order to earn my Google Degree in Criminology for this piece. I don’t know if breaking into a small store or shoplifting is a desperation thing, a pure money thing, a drug thing, a psychological thing, all of the above or just a thing I’ll never understand. I’m sure if we learned the stories of each of these criminals we would undoubtedly have some degree of empathy toward them.
If someone robbed you on the street tomorrow and took your money, which would hurt more, handing over your cash and cards or the watch your grandfather gave to your father that he then gave to you? Money can be replaced in time but the watch represents memories and dreams, things that should be cherished by us as individuals and nourished by society.
Storefronts are a place where the dream that people can still independently make it on their own terms lives on. Sometimes the employees are like family and the dreams are shared. When someone steals from a national chain, it’s just as wrong but it’s different.
When an independent business owner is robbed it is a crime against a dream. Nothing sucks more than that.
R. Harvey Bravman, Publisher
