Anyone who has talked to me at the store knows how I feel about street closures. It's a big subject, that I've given a great deal of thought to. I've tried, over the years, to quantify how much I think these events cost me (about 1/3rd sales) and how much they supposedly help me. (Have never been able to prove to my own satisfaction that these events ever bring in customers.) It's also a bit of a sacred cow, and deserves a post that takes all the costs and benefits into account.

I'm not ready for that.

Suffice it to say, IF you are going to have downtown events and IF you going to close streets, the Winter Fest is going about it the right way.

I think having such events in Fall and Winter and Spring is preferable to doing it in the summer. I think holding these events down near the public core and closing only a couple of non-essential streets, is the way to do it.

I will say this much, as a warning to a much longer post sometime in the future; I hate, hate, hate that they close the downtown streets during the summer, on the busiest weekends of the year. It is counter-productive and harmful to my business.

So, yeah, if you are going to entice my customers away, take all the parking spaces that are normally there for my regulars, create an atmosphere that downtown is for 'free' and then invite a bunch of outside vendors (who don't pay rent all year long) to compete with me -- please do it during the slow months, where conceivably, it might actually do some good.

That's all I'll say for now.