A number of Saturdays in the past, my mother and I walked into our native L.A. cheese store, which we go to weekly. This retailer, Say Cheese, in Silver Lake, is owned by Glenn Harrell. Glenn and I’ve been mates for a very long time. His store is the place I get my favourite Cabot cheddar, and Glenn has launched me to an entire host of different cheeses, together with a pink cheddar referred to as Pink Storm and a truffle brie that goes down as my most favourite ever.
Glenn at all times has time for me. Sooner or later, I used to be questioning a couple of cheese in a fantasy ebook I used to be studying, “The Inquisitor’s Story,” and he helped me discover that actual cheese, Époisses, in his store. A pungent cheese for positive, however scrumptious.
There aren’t any scarcity of samples in terms of Glenn. You possibly can depart his retailer stuffed up after making an attempt quite a few cheeses on high of crispy crackers.
So you’ll be able to think about my unhappiness once we walked into his store on this explicit Saturday, and Glenn informed my mother and me that he needed to shut his store by the top of April, as a consequence of a hire enhance. It seems Say Cheese faces a couple of 300% hire enhance that Glenn says he merely can’t pay. Rumor has it that in Say Cheese’s place a baked items and sandwich store will seem.
“I used to be ready for the shoe to drop” is how Glenn defined it to my mother and me. “I knew 4 and half years in the past that the owner was on the lookout for a brand new tenant [who could pay more rent].”
This isn’t the primary time one in all my favourite retailers can have closed due to rising rents. A few years in the past, Jasmine’s Backyard, a flower store in Los Feliz, disappeared. Instead, you guessed it: one other espresso store. My favourite Silver Lake Italian restaurant, Alimento, closed final 12 months, partly as a result of the price of working it grew to become an excessive amount of. I fear that in a few years, all of the locations that make these neighborhoods particular will likely be changed.
Glenn has been an enormous a part of Silver Lake and the proprietor of Say Cheese for 26 years. He’s a former member of Silver Lake’s Neighborhood Council. The store has at all times been a gathering floor, a spot the place strangers begin spontaneous conversations with one another, the place folks join. Throughout my final go to I met a pleasant girl who chatted with me for a very long time in regards to the almost-closing of our native gelateria, Pazzo Gelato. Lots of people know Glenn by identify — our next-door neighbor, for instance. She was shocked once we informed her Say Cheese was closing.
Los Angeles is a metropolis of virtually 4 million folks, most of whom we’ll by no means know. However native, longtime companies like Say Cheese create a neighborhood in the course of this massive metropolis that many people rely on, that make us proud to dwell the place we dwell. And but these defining companies are in danger. As Glenn stated, “I believe that is occurring all around the metropolis of Los Angeles.”
And there’s this downside too: If retailers like Glenn’s preserve closing, why would anybody select to dwell in Silver Lake over another neighborhood? Distinctive companies are one cause property values — and now rents — have elevated in Silver Lake within the first place.
The reality is, it’s the little issues that matter most in a neighborhood. Each neighborhood has a espresso store (or 20). We don’t need chain companies changing the unusual retailers that give neighborhoods their character. When these small companies shut, we lose what Silver Lake (and Los Angeles) actually is.
Ezra Halkett is a 10-year-old who lives within the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles.
