It is physical establishments—storefronts and markets, cafes and restaurants—that makes cities worth inhabiting. Even the places you don't frequent provide tremendous value to you, because they draw other people out, populating the sidewalks. They generate urban life in its fundamental unit, which is: the bustle.
I love that! Jane Jacobs, author of 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities,' said, "By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange." I love strange. I fear the WALL-E-like days with drone-delivered Amazon packages dropping over everybody's tall hedges and gated drives while Main Street is all boarded up.
The whole piece reminds me of a word Roger Martin taught us—or taught me, at least!—back in Chapter 68 of 3 Books which is "multi-homing." Simply remembering that, as consumers, we have the power to resist the "single home" desires of most companies—just use Uber for rides! just use Meta for social! just use Netflix for TV!—and spread our dollars around.
I think of this when I see neighborhood hardware stores go under while we all Amazon packs of nails to ourselves instead of walking down the street.
I'm trying to keep focusing on small business—buying local, supporting my neighbors—and this essay was a nice reminder. I hope you enjoy it. To check out more of Robin's work, including his new book 'Moonbound,' visit his website here or sign up for his email list here.
I’m an ardent booster of my little neighborhood, roughly where Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville mash together, up against the railroad tracks, an old meatpacking district now residential (small single-family, sprawling condo) and industrial (the country’s tastiest jam, sophisticated cardboard box manufacturing machines) and intellectual (mostly biotech, including a mycelium leather lab).
Berkeley Bowl West, arguably the best grocery store in the country, sits along a bucolic greenway.
There are also restaurants, of course, and one in particular has transformed and enlivened the entire neighborhood. Called Good to Eat, it is the brick-and-mortar realization of a pop-up that for many years offered Taiwanese dumplings at a local brewery. The restaurant is approaching its second anniversary; it has become my favorite in the entire Bay Area.
Good to Eat is the vision of Tony Tung and Angie Lin. Chef Tony is the kitchen mastermind, honoring and renewing classic Taiwanese cuisine. Angie is, among many other things, the restaurant’s voice on Instagram, a fountain of energy and invitation. (Her record, in Instagram Stories, of a recent research trip to Taiwan was basically a mini-documentary.)
A sign of great people is that they attract great people, and Good to Eat’s whole team sparkles. It feels most nights like there must be a camera crew perched just out of sight, filming a segment for some children’s TV show, intended to model “careful work” and “cheerful collaboration” for impressionable young minds.
And there is a surprise here. The casual, friendly service and reasonable (for the Bay Area) prices don’t quite prepare you for the food, which exhibits a level of precision and creativity that approaches fine dining. It’s delightful to realize: all those years with the pop-up, slinging dumplings, THIS is what Chef Tony wanted to do. She had a secret plan!
(If I was ordering today, right now, I’d get the eggplant noodle, the golden kimchi — my favorite kimchi I’ve had anywhere — the bok choy, and, yes, the fu-ru fried chicken. But this would imply NOT getting the red-braised pork belly with daikon radish … hmm … )
All together, it is a perfect package: food, space, esprit de corps. Of course, it helps that Kathryn and I have known these folks since their pop-up days, and are always greeted warmly … but visit twice, and you’ll be greeted warmly, too.
Good to Eat offers the tangible argument: enthusiasm and care are not in short supply. They don’t need to be hoarded. They ought to burn bright, spill out onto the sidewalk.
Here’s something important to understand. It is, at this time, approximately impossible to open and operate a restaurant in the Bay Area. The exorbitant cost of every input yields eye-popping menu prices; those prices keep customers away; the whole commercial equation becomes tenuous. There has been a wave of closures, as longstanding favorites throw in the towel.
It’s not just restaurants. Every kind of physical establishment feels, presently, improbable. It’s so much easier to … do something else. Anything else! Yet, it is physical establishments — storefronts and markets, cafes and restaurants — that make cities (like the donut megalopolis of the Bay Area) worth inhabiting. Even the places you don’t frequent provide tremendous value to you, because they draw other people out, populating the sidewalks. They generate urban life in its fundamental unit, which is: the bustle.
In taking on this task — setting out their sandwich board (you know I love a sandwich board) and opening their doors to everyone — people like Tony and Angie provide a profound public service.
It shouldn’t be so difficult! And this is not just a post-pandemic thing. The Bay Area has, for decades, been a daunting place to open your doors. Many of America’s urban hubs share this overheated deformity. It’s breathtaking to visit a country like Japan and find the most tenuous businesses (with the scantest hours) puttering along happily … simply because the rent is so low.
The shortage of useful, flexible space imposes costs — opportunity costs, if you remember econ 101 — borne by all of us, not just the Tonys and Angies of the world. Maybe that’s fair payment for the other gifts these places provide … but I’m skeptical. We don’t know, will never know, what we’re missing, except that it’s a lot.
Anyway, this is all to say: these days, it’s a minor miracle when a great new restaurant opens and stays open, so if you’re in the Bay Area, you should make haste to 65th Street in Emeryville. The patio is lovely, but/and Kathryn and I always sit at the bar. Get the kimchi. Yeah … get the fried chicken, too.
P.S. Shoutout to Michael Werner who responded to this post by sharing a delightful Kurt Vonnegut story from a PBS interview with journalist David Brancaccio about telling his wife he's going out to buy an envelope:
Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?
And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays, or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!