Lab Rats for the Trickle Down Theory.

I think Bend is becoming the lab rat of the trickle down theory.

There's always been a bit of disconnect between what I see in the West Hills of Bend, and what I see in my store. The kinds of customers I see and how much they are willing to spend versus the kinds of customers my neighbor stores in downtown Bend are obviously trying to attract.

I believe that the vast majority of my customers are solidly middle class, or young enough that they haven't really settled into an income range. If any of them are wealthy, they manage to hide it well. And if the people buying games and books from me are wealthy, it doesn't seem to matter because they seem to buy moderate amounts at any rate.

I had an obviously wealthy guy in the store on Friday, who had a son in the bike race, who was talking about buying a second home in Bend. He left without buying anything. On the other hand, he mentioned he was staying at the Oxford, and obviously he was eating while he was here and so on. So some of that money may trickle down, right?

Or when Linda and I went to visit Pronghorn and weren't allowed in by a young guy with a clipboard. That young guy was getting a moderate wage, no doubt.

But I'm kind of seeing downtown and parts of the West Hills as islands of wealth, surrounded by sagebrush and juniper. Oasis's amongst the hardscrabble regular folk.

What isn't clear is how these can co-exist, and maintain any cohesion. There's a middle connecting part missing; or shrinking, and the gulf seems to be getting wider. We may get away with it from a influx of middle class retires, but these folk aren't known for their spending. We may get away with it from the health, government, and school type incomes. Though these are shrinking.

Our hope, I suppose, is that we'll get viable high tech jobs. But we're in for the fight of our lives to get those people to move here, when absolutely every other municipality is wanting the same people. Obviously it's harder with the higher cost of living, the lower wages, the lack of flights to big cities, the lack of a (real) four year college, the lack of an interstate. The overall isolation and skewed demographics.

I wish we could have saved a more diverse mix of stores downtown; instead of mostly jewelry, art galleries, high end clothing, and fine dining. I wish we could have saved a bit of the funk.
One of the cool things that happened during the revival of downtown in the late 80's and early 90's was what a strange brew it was. That has been filtered out, little by little.

Well, maybe I'm being provincial by using my own store as a gauge, but I've mentioned before, I don't see that 'rich' people spend any more than average middle class people. In fact, to me it seems like they actually spend less. I have to take it on faith they they are really splurging in the art galleries and jewelry stores and restaurants.