Archive
2023/2024 Merry Christmas/Happy New Year: Santana ABRAXAS, Version 10
Steve Gallanter’s Blog: https://stevegallanter.wordpress.com
is a modest enterprise. I usually send out about 40 or so Facebook copies and another 20 email copies of brain candy with the occasional response from a friend being more than welcome as were the pass alongs which on 2 occasions reconnected me with folks from the past.
In April 2014 I began tweeting and my number of views exploded to about 200 altogether.
Oh joy!
...But wait there’s more…
I am both absurdly proud and humbled by the 1217 visitors this brain candy dispensary has tallied so far in 2023.
When the Christmas 2013 blog was passed along quite a bit it broke into the Top 5 of my Google search.
Most gratifying were several comments along the lines of “Thank you for this acknowledgement of a personal Christmas tradition, as I too have one.”
I responded to all of these comments gladly. I was pleasantly taken aback at the number and intensity of these very private traditions and their importance to their adherents.
One gentleman took the time to send a message about his private tradition of chewing Trident spearmint gum after Christmas dinner as his now gone father had.
The last 10 years have brought thoughts of other Christmases to mind as my memory bank is thankfully still accepting deposits. Indeed, this blog has precipitated thoughts of Christmases past to the extent that a 2023/2024 addition is appropriate.
Keeping the faith is part of Christmas and the promise of a New Year is always uplifting even as the holiday transforms.
Christmas cards have largely been supplanted by a virtual blizzard of social media greetings.
Black Friday’s throng of shoppers have seen their number diminished by Cyber Monday’s ever increasing bandwidth and deliveries.
Indeed, grand-parenting, retirement, disability, estrangement and relocation change Christmas more with every passing year.
Still the Christmas spirit is till in my heart and those of many others…
In that spirit I am sending:
Merry Christmas: Santana ABRAXAS
Merry Christmas/New Year 2023/2024
Christmas is a time when we, even those of us who do not share in the religious meaning of the holiday, each have our own meaning for this day.
Santana’s ABRAXAS LP signifies Christmas for me.
I bought ABRAXAS for my Mom for Christmas 1970. Mom, Peter and I had seen WOODSTOCK and Mom was mightily impressed with Mike Shrieve’s epic drum solo on “Soul Sacrifice”. While Mom always tried a little too hard to like what I liked her enthusiasm was more than sincere.
I saved my .75 a week allowance, pestered Dad for money and raked some leaves to conjure up the $3.49 to buy the LP at Port Chemists.
(I gave Dad innumerable promotional packs of aftershave and Borkum Riff pipe tobacco. My brother Peter got Johnny Lightning 500 while I received several slot cars and Joe Paterno’s FOOTBALL MY WAY from Dad, a Penn. State grad.
It was my first “adult” gift-giving.
In 1970 I was 12. It was to be my last boyhood Christmas.
Turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, (my Mom never, ever served that jellied, canned..uh.. stuff), and visits from neighborhood kids fulfilled every expectation.
Mom was surprised and delighted with ABRAXAS even with its “dirty” cover. It played endlessly on the turntable of the Gallanter household’s Harman-Kardon Turntable, AM-FM Stereo with Recording Cassette Compact Stereo.
(Dad was quick to nudge me as a way of reminding me that he had purchased the stereo and had paid me to rake leaves. On this Christmas I actually found this habit of his endearing).
Christmas 1970 was to be the last Christmas of our family as a unit although neither Mom, Dad, Peter or myself knew so at the time.
1971’s Christmas crystallized the cataclysmic changes, voluntary AND involuntary, familial AND cultural, well-intended AND malicious that would sweep through the lives of Mom, Dad, Peter and myself.
Christmas 1971 couldn’t have all of us in the same room for any length of time. I brought ABRAXAS to our North Shore Unitarian Universalist Congregation’s Jr. High room where I played ABRAXAS through headphones repeatedly to the puzzlement of the folks I willfully disregarded.
Headphones were clamped over my head as the congas of “Oye Como Va” reverberated.
“When Steven doesn’t talk, he really doesn’t talk,” I overheard one girl mention as I re-cued ABRAXAS.
Hostility was assumed to be my motivation, and not one completely inaccurate, but astral projection back to 1970 was the guiding star. It was still my Mom’s LP but she was caught up in her own affairs and didn’t notice it missing. Dad lived in Forest Hills, Queens as the divorce was now final.
(I remember looking at a snapshot of Christmas 1962 in our home at 86 Henry St, Merrick, Long Island. There is a tower of blocks in front of me wearing a devilish grin with my Mom kneeling beside me with a bemused expression. I remember kicking the blocks over. 1962 is my earliest Christmas memory).
For several years I continued to play ABRAXAS at Christmas. Most memorably in 1975 when my Mom returned home from a hospitalization and I wanted to comfort her. ABRAXAS proved to be more curative than the turkey I attempted to cook with tomato soup flavored stuffing).
By 1973 I was not speaking to my Dad, an estrangement that lasted more than 3 years. ABRAXAS’ “Oye Como Va” reminded me of the photo of Mom and Dad celebrating their 1st. anniversary with a grinning Tito Puente, the author of the original “Oye Como Va,” at the Palladium in Manhattan, where my paternal grandfather worked.
ABRAXAS signified Dad as well as Mom and the paternal grandparents who posed with me on their laps but who I have no memories of.
The summers of 1974,1975 and 1976 found me at Rowe Unitarian Universalist Camp and Conference Center. ABRAXAS was in the ‘Radio Rowe’ LP pile for the public address system that broadcast on a loud, sporadic basis throughout the camp. Santana was very popular with my brother and sister campers although they would have been taken aback, to say the least, at the talisman it was to me.
Boston gained me as a resident in 1978. I left ABRAXAS with Mom. I played it upon my early Christmas sojourns to the ancestral home.
In 1981 a group of we Port Washingtonians had a Christmas celebration at the New York, New York discotheque in Manhattan. Mom remarked that the percussion of much disco reminded her of ABRAXAS. The next day I played the now battered LP. Upon hitching back to Boston I purchased a used copy at Looney Tunes Used Records.
1982 brought the realization that college graduation was beyond my capability. At home in Port Washington I put on ABRAXAS to please Mom before disappointing her.
By 1984 my Dad had passed. Yes, “Oye Como Va” reminded me that once upon a time Dad and Mom were deeply in love and Peter and I were fortunate to be the offspring of their union. I have no recollection of my grandparents on either side but ABRAXAS is a talisman of their lives causing mine.
10 years pass. ABRAXAS PLAYS annually on my Panasonic Plus Cassette-to-Cassette AM/FM with Auto Reverse boom box.
1995 found my brother Peter and I at odds to the extent that I spent Christmas in Boston brooding ambivalently although I did send presents to Peter, his wife Aida and Mom.
I consoled myself with ABRAXAS “Hope You’re Feeling Better”s theme of ambivalence powered by congas and Carlos Santana’s wah-wah guitar pyrotechnics.
2022’s first week has made “Hope You’re Feeling Better” a talisman of COVID even more than “Oye Como Va.”
“Is that you
Your eyes slowly fading?
Is that you
Your mind full of tears?
Is that you
Searching for a good time?
Is that you
Waiting for all these years?
Is that you?
Look across the ocean
And I hope you’re feeling better.”
https://youtu.be/P_vJBz2_LtE
The clever wordplay of shifting from the declarative voice to the interrogative voice is the kind of lyrical daring do that seems to have vanished, along with the presence of rock music in general.
But make no mistake; “Hope You’re Feeling better” is perhaps Greg Rolie’s finest vocals on ABRAXAS. The questing baritone being cut off by the fiery pyrotechnics of Carole Santana’s wah-wah wailing is a metaphor that is far more descriptive than any printed lyric can give voice to.
ABRAXAS is definitely the gift that keeps on giving.
The repeated playing of “Hope You’re Feeling Better” is an uplift in much the same way as “Oye Como Va.”
…Indeed, the ambivalent holiday of 1995 seeped to mind…
Being well into my 30’s in 1995 I had made my own Christmas tradition of surprising someone that I liked with a gift that spoke to an affection that had not been fully expressed. Being single, childless and employed in an industry that throws folks together and throws them away with equal speed I had learned that small blessings are sometimes the only blessings one can receive but that can be a good thing.
…I was sitting on the living room floor of 24 Haviland St, Apt. 28 at about 9 P.M. 2 days before Christmas wrapping up 2 gifts while ABRAXAS played through the open door of my bedroom. My roommate was out of the country for the holidays so I felt little compunction about playing my music a tad louder than I might have otherwise.
I was wrapping 2 gifts for a former co-worker. Patricia was a beautiful woman who had tended bar at the same venue as I. Although it had been a brief and occasional job for her the chit-chat of the time when I was an afternoon employee at that venue had crossed over to more chit-chat when we briefly worked the same bar.
Patricia was in the midst of several transitions in her life and I was taken aback, although pleased, when she asked me to call her.
Over the course of more than a year these calls became more frequent and more intimate and I found myself listening more than I spoke. Certainly, I was flattered to be trusted but more than that I trusted her with the pure aspects of my heart that had become very distant.
Pure and impure thoughts mingled, as Patricia was a beauty.
I was thinking about how to finesse a meeting with Patricia so as to give her both of her gifts. One was a sardonic look at the recent past while the other was a light unto what was to come.
The phone rang, landlines had only begun too cede their domain to pagers, and it was Patricia.
“…Steve, I am at the bar. I have a present for you. Where do you live?”
“I have 2 presents for you. I live 25 yards away I’ll be there in 5 minutes,” I replied. My heart did a full-gainer. Steeling myself I managed to wind some Scotch tape around my gifts and jetted out the door to the bar.
Patricia was by the pay phone smiling.
I ordered drinks, we took a booth and we spoke briefly of the joy and relief of having finished Christmas shopping.
“What did you get me,” she asked with the slightly turned head that moved my eyes and heart.
I gave her the 1st. package and she ripped off the wrapping with an urgency that was enthralling. Laughing out loud she proclaimed, “I don’t know what I would ever use this for!”
“I know, that’s why I got it for you!”
I slid the other gift over the booth’s table when the owner of the bar came by to shake my hand and wish me a Merry Christmas.
I thanked him and introduced Patricia who also wished him a Merry Christmas.
“You know him?”
“I’ve been coming here since 1979,” I offered while wondering what Patricia might think of my recreational habits.
Patricia unwrapped the second gift and plugged it into a socket. She smiled a closed mouthed gesture of gratitude while nodding slowly in a way that signaled that all was right in the world if for only this moment.
“C’mon open your present.”
I opened Patricia’s package to find a mustard colored turtleneck that would undoubtedly be a good fit underneath a leather jacket for Boston’s winters.
I blinked involuntarily and held her hands briefly.
“Hey, do you think that the Prudential Mall is still open?”
“If there is any night of the year when it would be open late tonight would be that night.”
“Let’s go, we can leave the stuff in my car.”
My mind was pondering whether this meeting was a gesture of sympathy for being estranged from my family, gratitude for being a shoulder to cry on or just because Patricia was a good kid…or something more.
We walked the 200 or so yards to the Prudential Mall and after determining that indeed the stores had closed at 9, walked back to the car and I removed my gift.
We hugged.
Patricia got into her car.
I returned to my apartment…
1997 found Mom in a nursing home for the final phase of her life. I bought her a new Walkman with ABRAXAS poised to play. She was delighted.
1999 found Mom receiving a Discman. The first CD…? Yes, she remembered.
2004 brought the end of Mom’s life. On that Christmas I played ABRAXAS at 2 AM in the living room of 42 North Bayles Ave, Port Washington on my Discman in a private memorial to Mom.
2013 found my now gone friend Steve Boisson offering that he had “never thought of Santana as Christmas music” while offering blues artist Charles Brown as his own eccentric Yuletide troubadour.
2019 found me in brother Peter’s place in Port Washington, N.Y. the night after Christmas patting my protruding tummy and nursing a straight up Jameson.
Peter’s television was displaying a vivacious Latina declaiming the weather.
“That’s Audrey Puentes. Her father is Tito Puentes,” Peter offered.
“Hmmm..,” I said to myself.
My grandmother Marie Jack, biologically my Mom’s stepmom, gifted me a Christmas ornament featuring 2 cardinals in a gilded cage in, I believe 1973. It never occurred to me at the time that I would never see Marie again although the passage of time and circumstances eventually made this reality evident. From 1997 to 2017 I brought the ornament to the ancestral home for the talismanic Christmas tree. In 2017 I neglected to bring it home but Aida was good enough to rescue the birds as they nestled in my rolling case for the Greyhound to Boston.
Much to my sadness the fragile frame of the cage was twisted in transit and my efforts to restore it fell short. However, it is intact, if a little twisted, and resides next to Aunt Goldie’s sock monkey as ABRAXAS plays.
Our decade has brought the passage from this world and from my life of more than several folks; Martha Shaw among them, and places. Looney Tunes records, where I purchased my Santana ABRAXAS CD has been gone since 2012; likewise T.C’s Lounge, with local watering holes and record stores right up there, or down there, with trilobites as fossils.
ABRAXAS keeps record stores and Christmas alive at one and the same time as this mind contemplates Christmas 2022 and the New Year of 2023.
To all those folks both present and absent I humbly offer,
“Oye Como Va.”
ABRAXAS signifies Christmas; calling out to heart the folks who have passed, friends who are missed, places that are gone and the phases of the Christmases past, present and future.
ABRAXAS is a talisman as real as a rock, in LP, cassette, CD and YouTube formats that holds in its notes the presents, love, tears and hopes of Christmas every time I so much as touch it.
I am listening to it right now.
“Oye Como Va”
“Hope You’re Feeling Better”
!Merry Christmas!
!Happy New Year!
HAIKU 5*7*5* Basketball: 1977
Manorhaven rocks
During the Summer of Sam
Cut offs and tube socks
SPORTS, NBA: CELTS vs. HEAT all dialog verbatim
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MOVIE: SUKIDA
2005
DIRECTED BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
WRITTEN BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
PRODUCED BY
Hiroshi Ishikawa
CAST
Young Yu: Aoi Miyazaki
Adult Yu: Hiromi Nagasaki
Young Yosuke: Eita Nagayama
Adult Yosuke: Hidetoshi Nishijima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZBJyfKmN5Y
Japanese culture has come to take up more waves of my bandwidth every year of the 21st. century.
My 2001 obsession with Ichiro Suzuki blossomed into the reading of Robert Whiting’s SLUGGING IT OUT IN JAPAN about MLB star Warren Cromartie’s stay with the Yorimuri Giants of the NPB. Mr. Whiting’s YOU GOTTA HAVE WA was a gift from my brother Peter and opened a window into how the game of baseball in Japan could be both so similar and dissimilar to MLB here in the U.S.
Japanese pop music first blipped on my radar screen at the Boston-Boston disco with Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Computer Games,” which became “Firecracker” in its 7″ 45 RPM incarnation.
In 2014 my Hewlett Packard Pavilion 23 computer brought superior sound and vision to its 23″ inch screen thus enabling
…the kawaii antics of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu…
…the motion capture digital dancing of Miss Monochrome/Yurie Horie …
…and the viral phenomena of Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plastic Love.”
Japanese movies followed. The high resolution of my new computer enabled watching movies I had only heard of; Yasujiro Ozu’s LATE SPRING and the epic serial of INFERNAL AFFAIRS among them.
SUKIDA was recommended over the bar by a guest of mine who told me it was her “favorite artsy movie.”
SUKIDA
PLOT SYNOPSIS
Yosuke(Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a high school student who has quit the baseball team, grown out his hair and aspires to be a musician. Yosuke plays the same short instrumental:
“Dear Blue” by Yoko Kanno
on his guitar repeatedly above a river spillway.
Yosuke is joined by Yu(Aoi Miyazaki) a girl from one of his classes. Yu lives with her older sister, who goes unnamed, and her mother, who is not seen.
Yu hums the tune to her sister who is mourning a tragedy. Yu arranges a meeting between Yosuke and her sister. A tragedy ensues.
17 years later Yosuke and Yu meet again under completely different AND very similar circumstances…events unfold.
SUKIDA
opens abruptly with nary a hint of back story or expository dialog. This conceptual sleight-of- hand braced this viewer for an accelerated pace. This expectation was immediately and slowly defied by the appearance of the visual motifs that run through both halves of this movie.
SUKIDA
is muted. The sound is quiet, as opposed to the digital din that has become the new normal of the 21st. century. Yet, sound is prominent and skillfully used as the sparse murmuring of Yu and Yosuke as Yosuke plays guitar is at the same volume as the cascading water and the crickets of the grass.
SUKIDA
uses subtitles via YouTube’s ‘Settings’. Ordinarily this viewer prefers even the most inexpert dubbing to subtitles as subtitles move the eye to the bottom of the screen; thus focusing on dialog rather than visual information. Additionally, this brain’s literary bandwidth and the visual bandwidth are far from the same.
However, on this occasion the subtitles work as the sparse and often monosyllabic voices of Yu and Yosuke provide the murmurs of meaning and the written words are merely minimal clues.
SUKIDA
manipulates the viewer’s musical expectations. Yosuke’s guitar is heard before his figure, let alone face, is viewed. This lends a certain voyeuristic aura to the goings on yet the sight of the guitar always lets you know that the sound is coming from a specific source and is not merely a soundtrack strategy.
SUKIDA
projects a grayish monochromatic palette. The dirt, grass and sky are almost one in color in both image and motif. The tumbling clouds above the heads of Yu and Yosuke call to mind nothing so much as the cumulus choreography of Francis Ford Coppola’s RUMBLEFISH
SUKIDA
has a certain sly sensuality. An uplifted jaw, and a middy dress billowing in the wind prepare one for the almost intimate actions of the adult phase of the saga.
SUKIDA
has a narrative taking off from unlikely coincidences that become inevitabilities. This is more pronounced in the 2nd. half of the movie when Yu and Yosuke reconnect. This is foreshadowed by Yu saying “Let me hear it when it is finished,” and the gentle shock of Yosuke’s 1st. initiating dialog.
The railroad station scene in the reconnection of the 1/2 half of the film is in real time and the 2 minute sequence feels much longer. As unlikely as the reconnection is it feels right as the theme of predestination has now grown in the viewer’s mind. Not to be overly pretentious but this tale has a strongly deterministic bent.
SUKIDA
changes its visual palette when Yu and Yosuke reconnect some 17 years after their meeting. The shades of pinkish highlighting the 2 incidents bonding the adult Yu and Yosuke are much richer than the previous cinematography. Yes, ‘less truly is more’ as these departures from the preceding minimalism shock the eye and lead the viewer into the actions of Yu and Yosuke as adults.
Kudos to Hiromi Nagasaki as the adult Yu and Hitoshi Nishijima as the adult Yosuke for using very much the same gestures; Yu’s fidgeting hands and Yosuke’s downward glances, as in the adolescent 1st. 1/ of the movie. This physicality gives the story a credibility that it otherwise would not have.
SUKIDA
becomes marginally more colorful in the 2nd. 1/2 as the splash of pinkish flesh in both of the criminalistic scenes foreshadow the intensity of the of the latter stages of the story.
Indeed, the teen yearning of the beginning becomes the adult desire as both Yu and Yosuke are now employed on the fringe of the “big plate” of the music industry.
Yu has an undefined administrative job in the music industry as Yosuke to struggles to get his 17 year old song recorded when Yu happens into the recording studio of Yosuke’s company and plays while Yosuke watches Yu in the CCTV monitor.
This meeting sets the stage for the doppelganger events of the 2nd. half of our saga.
Gentle readers, the ending will not be revealed.
SUKIDA
…Static in action, yet leaping 17 years…
…quiet and musical, cruel and romantic…
SUKIDA
unites contradictions to the enhancement of all themes and the diminishment of none.
Yes, A.R. this might be my favorite “artsy movie”.
SUKIDA and the theme can be heard on the links above and on my Facebook page.
SPORTS: Steven Gallanter: Superstar
Tetherball
Box ball
Kickball
Punchball
Self-hitting baseball
Wiffle ball
Stickball
Softball
Pitching baseball
Nerf baseball
Tennis racquet baseball
Driveway basketball
Nerf basketball
Horse basketball
Around-the-world-basketball
Touch football on concrete/blacktop
Touch football on grass
Flag football
Backyard tackle football
Indoor tackle football
Indoor Olympics
Soccer
Indoor soccer
Tennis
Handball
Chinese handball
Bicycle races
Foot races
Badminton
Volleyball
Sneaker hockey
Street hockey
Floor hockey
Golf
Croquet
Paddle ball
Wrestling
Slap boxing
Boxing
—————————————————————————————————————
All of the above were played prior to my turning 13 and without the benefit of adult blessing or supervision.
STEVEN GALLANTER: BARTENDER RESUME’
Steven Gallanter
15 Edgerly Rd, Apt. 8
Boston, MA 02115
617-835-2373
stevegallanter@yahoo.com
BARTENDER
Summary of Qualifications
BEVERAGE SKILLS
-Remixologist
-Unsupervised bartender with access to premise
-Uncork wine and champagne with appropriate protocol
-Formulate drink specials
-Tend bar for African, Brazilian, EDM, Eurohaus, Greek, International, Latin, alternative lifestyle, rock, swing, Broadway, Country & Western, disco, karaoke, house, hip-hop, oldies, reggae, R & B, classical and Top 40
FOOD SERVICE SKILLS
-serve pan-Asian cuisine
-Arm and tray service at bar and tables
-Plating and garnishing
-Inform guests of specials
-Food service with appropriate protocol
GUEST SERVICE SKILLS
-Guest list privileges and table reservations
-Provide guest with personal care items
-Suggest dining, tourism and entertainment options
-Assist challenged guests
PROMOTIONAL AND MARKETING SKILLS
-Collect contact information for promotional purposes
-Obtain complimentary bar supplies from salespeople
-Decorate premises for seasonal events
-Distribute promotional material to authorized outlets
PLANT, EQUIPMENT AND LEGAL SKILLS
-Troubleshooting of soda, refrigeration and HVAC systems
-Diagnosed need for water filtration system for soda and ice systems
-Reconfigured storage to conform to requirements
-Photographed grounds to successfully appeal violations to Boston Board of Inspectional Services
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
-Aloha, Micros, PosiTouch 6.36 POS systems
CERTIFICATION
-CPR, First Aid and Emergency Oxygen, American Safety & Health Institute, 2015
CERTIFICATION
MA Dept. of Fire Services, Crowd Manager Training, 2018
COMMUNITY
Boston Board of Elections, Warden and Clerk,
2002-2008, 2010-2024
BAR EXPERIENCE
P.F. CHANG’S
Bar/server
2022-current
MACHINE
2010-2020
DURGIN-PARK
2012
NEWS BOSTON
2008-2009
RED FEZ
2007
EUROPA
2001-2006
FENWAY/ARAMARK
2002
RITZ-CARLTON, ARLINGTON ST.
2001
-71.058880
2021 CHANGE: 10 Signs of Aging
1) One is 441 years of age in dog years.
2) Thelma Allera’s passing on December 16, 2020 , my aunt who is my Mom’s first cousin, means that all of my older relatives are no longer of this world.
3) “Steve knows all of that old time music. Was Eminem a thing right away?”
4) One remembers when security were bouncers and servers were waiters/waitresses.
5) One’s higher tolerance for pain is something of a compensation for decreased mobility.
6) Some things change, some don’t. 42 years and 3 months of ovo-lacto veggieism!
7) One’s after work ritual is not recreational substance use or romantic mishaps but the filing down of foot calluses.
8) One’s pride in being able to perform manual labor is both morally justifiable and useful on a practical level.
9) One’s lips do not move when one is talking to oneself.
10) “A man has gotta know his limitations.”
HAIKU 5*7*5* Fruit flies and baseball.
Red Sox hit pop flies
A sign of Opening Day
Sugar brings fruit flies
Baseball and fruit flies both have the lifespan of the equinox.
COVID-19 Stella Uno Malo Retail “Showrooming.”
Mall-walking at the Prudential Mall has become integral to my life in the last 13 months.
“Showrooming” was a phrase featured in my 7/28/2017 blog that described and defined as using brick and mortar stores for trying on clothes and handling hard goods prior to an online purchase at a lower cost.
“Showrooming” was a phrase often bandied about in the aisles of the now locally extinct Best Buy stores; now both the Landmark Center and Mass. and Newbury are now closed.
Mall-walking nowadays at the Prudential Center offers precious little eye candy or opportunities for “showrooming.”
At the high end Godiva Chocolatiers is gone as is the omnipresent Loft.
More surprising is the shuttered Microsoft slot. One would think the onslaught of e-commerce being quickened by COVID-19 that there would be a “showrooming” effect…but no.
Will the “showrooming” aspect of brick and mortar retail rebound?
Yes, but just a tad.
Materialism, oft times referred to as “retail therapy” is the essence of shopping.
Folks like having something in their hands. Shopping releases a flood of endorphins as potent as jock rush or sex.
E-commerce can never replace the intense gratification of physical purchase.
However, the “new normal” of e-commerce/delivery/pick-up has become the “normal new.”
Folks entering pubescence now have never known a world in which an in-person purchase of a tangible asset is the norm.
“Showrooming” will return as a way for retailers, especially clothing stores to cement the buying habits of a clientele already predisposed to purchase a specific good.
“Showrooming” as a practice enabled by COVID-19 protocols will be so ubiquitous as to make the word “showrooming” extinct.
The “new normal.”
Indeed.
COVID-19 Stella Uno: Gratitude
COVID-19 has brought a variety of challenges almost unimaginable 2 years ago. Sadly, “the new normal’ is not just a cliche’ but an all too accurate description of all too many lives.
Gratitude is needed and necessary. Not solely for the morally justifiable impulse of energizing daily life but to rise above the very real challenges of our very long today.
COVID-10 testing, as performed at the Boston Medical Center at 801 Mass. Ave. through the rear entrance, has revealed this blogger to be negative.
Not all are as fortunate.
Furthermore, my lease runs though April 2022 so I have the security of knowing where I will be living for the foreseeable future.
Not all are as fortunate.
Gratitude.
Steve Gallanter's Blog 