THE SOUTH END ABHORS A VACUUM
If you haven’t heard the rumor by now, you either haven’t left the trailer in a month or you live too close to the city limits of metropolitan Stanwoodopolis. Tyee Store is going to re-open. New life in an old bottle, as we homebrewers like to say. Now, I know some folks will be disappointed the WalMart surveys for South End viability came up short and they decided not to place their next Super Store down here. They know what they’re doing, obviously, and just as obviously, we don’t.
And there will be folks just as disappointed another Mom and Pop One Stop Shop isn’t stepping into the alcohol and nicotine vacuum that’s practically a gravitational Black Hole pulling beer and cigarettes into its ugly maw. Elger Bay Store thinks the missing merchandise is just youthful shoplifters — little do they guess the defunct and empty Tyee Store is a virtual Hoover of a neutron star, growing denser every month, warping time and space and the very geography of the South End.
We all had our wishlist for the Tyee Store replacement. Jack Gunter’s History of the World Part 16 Art Gallery, not contented with franchises in Port Angeles and half of Stanwoodopolis’ vacant storefronts, saw an opportunity next door for territorial expansion. Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Boutique thought about a South Satellite, but got the recessionary shakes and wisely opted out. WindyRear Realty imagined a gold mine for awhile, but they’d recently closed Rocky Point and if money couldn’t be made up in the high rent district, what were the odds mobile home sales down here would pan out?
In the end Risk Entrepreneurism won out. As it always does on the Roll-the-Dice South End. Two Toke Tom had been prepped and ready for his grand entry into high finance. He has the inventory, he has customers — meaning patients — and he has the big green neon sign : SOUTH END GREENWORKS. Let’s just say Tyee Store has moved beyond cigarettes and booze, gateway drugs now. It’s now officially the Medical Marijuana Dispensary for the island. Two Toke says the Grand Opening is still a closely guarded secret, but check your grapevine. Happy Daze are here again!
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