A concept I like: shop small and local for the holidays (and otherwise)

Shop small has big impact in San Francisco

http://www.sfexaminer.com/shop-small-big-impact-san-francisco/

I enjoy online shopping once in a while, but I like cities and small towns and want to keep them going. At the least it helps the tax base, but also helps bring the community together.

My last home town had, back then, a population of about 26,000. Really good music store, the best kitchen store I've ever been in (and they gave cooking lessons), multiple antique stores - some of them interesting, most affordable, a great candy store (ask Roberta, I sent her some a long time ago), two fantastic non chain book stores, a superior lumber yard and building supply place with a magazine corner re home repair that had a fireplace going in the center of the magazine corner for much of the year (it's chilly there). Oh, the lumber yard had a snack and breakfast bar too. Independent jewelry stores. A certain beloved art gallery and design studio (ours). Good small restaurants.

I haven't been there lately but still sort of follow the place and people. These kind of folks need their towns and cities to do at least some local shopping.

Next town up, was one of the greatest grocery stores ever, Wildberries Marketplace, and I'm a grocery store maven, thus a swell judge. Also, both towns had excellent Co-op groceries, beating the one in Albuquerque by far, no contest.

Ok, enough by me, though I've skipped a lot - that article above is a good one, I say.