Summer is here, officially as well as meteorologically. The sun shines hot from a clear sky. We had a dry spring and Lake Champlain is low for this time of year. The garden does well if we keep it watered and the farmers are happily making hay.
We’re anticipating a bonus crop of tourists and this year we have something special to gawk at. Jim Carrey is making a movie in Burlington this summer, using several locations as backdrops for the story. Harrison Ford is supposed to show up in a month or so and start shooting another movie. The Vermont Film Commission and Chamber of Commerce types are all agog, but most of us just go about our business.
I’m happy to welcome our Hollywood friends, but I have some reservations. I’ve run into Mr. Carrey’s movie three times now in my travels around the state. Last week I spent an hour next to the set as I waited for a late-arriving business appointment. It was a warm, sunny day, there was a breeze off the lake, cops directing traffic away from the set were in a jovial mood. A crowd of boys in scout uniforms, probably hired as extras, cooled their heels in the shade of a building. A pair of teenaged girls walked by arguing whether it was or was not Jim Carrey they had just spotted, underemployed types in their 20s lounged and primped nearby, as if they we half-expecting to be discovered by a talent scout and cast in the movie at the last minute.
Behind the yellow police tape, news photographers pointed oversized lenses into the film set. An Amtrak train, the first I’ve ever seen in Burlington, was pulled up on the tracks. Too bad it was only here for the movie and wouldn’t be taking anyone anywhere.
The downtown bars are full of Jim Carrey gossip – where he’s staying, where he’s been hanging out, who he’s picked up and taken home. Yes, we’re all feeling good about our Hollywood traffic here in Burlington. Our civic leaders tell us we’re an up and coming metropolis, the Queen City of Lake Champlain, and Jim Carrey descends from the heavens as if to confirm the benediction with a sprinkling of stardust.
A few blocks from the movie set, construction cranes lowered the last steel beams into place for the new Filene’s department store that’s going in adjacent to the downtown shopping area. Our mayor, even if he was elected on the progressive coalition ticket, is proud to snag such a big retail outlet for downtown. It’s quite a coup, it will provide an anchor which will hold smaller retail stores around it. The mayor had to put together quite an incentive package to pull Filene’s in, but it was worth it to keep downtown thriving.
Of course, we already have stores that sell all the things Filene’s sells, so there’s nothing new for the consumer. And most of those other retail stores are national chains like Eddie Bauer and Banana Republic and Borders Books. I don’t shop in them, but I think the tourists do.
In other retail news, the last downtown grocery store closed a few weeks ago. It was old and small, there wasn’t much parking around it. The prices were higher than the same chain charges out in the suburbs, I guess the economies of scale worked against it. It was, however, the only store to which the old people who live downtown could walk. There’s a free shuttle bus that comes once a week to the old store, to carry senior citizens out to a store in the suburbs. There’s no hardware store downtown anymore, no five and dime since Woolworth’s closed two years ago. It would be nice if the mayor could do something, but he’s only one man. He’s done right by Filene’s and the tourists and the Hollywood people. You can only do so much.
It’s summertime, like I said, unusually hot and dry. The old folks with their two-wheeled carts sit in the sultry sun and wait for the shuttle to take them shopping. I see them there and wonder if the mayor ever walks by. I wonder what he’d say.
Gawking
Summer is here, officially as well as meteorologically. The sun shines hot from a clear sky. We had a dry spring and Lake Champlain is low for this time of year. The garden does well if we keep it watered and the farmers are happily making hay.
We’re anticipating a bonus crop of tourists and this year we have something special to gawk at. Jim Carrey is making a movie in Burlington this summer, using several locations as backdrops for the story. Harrison Ford is supposed to show up in a month or so and start shooting another movie. The Vermont Film Commission and Chamber of Commerce types are all agog, but most of us just go about our business.
I’m happy to welcome our Hollywood friends, but I have some reservations. I’ve run into Mr. Carrey’s movie three times now in my travels around the state. Last week I spent an hour next to the set as I waited for a late-arriving business appointment. It was a warm, sunny day, there was a breeze off the lake, cops directing traffic away from the set were in a jovial mood. A crowd of boys in scout uniforms, probably hired as extras, cooled their heels in the shade of a building. A pair of teenaged girls walked by arguing whether it was or was not Jim Carrey they had just spotted, underemployed types in their 20s lounged and primped nearby, as if they we half-expecting to be discovered by a talent scout and cast in the movie at the last minute.
Behind the yellow police tape, news photographers pointed oversized lenses into the film set. An Amtrak train, the first I’ve ever seen in Burlington, was pulled up on the tracks. Too bad it was only here for the movie and wouldn’t be taking anyone anywhere.
The downtown bars are full of Jim Carrey gossip – where he’s staying, where he’s been hanging out, who he’s picked up and taken home. Yes, we’re all feeling good about our Hollywood traffic here in Burlington. Our civic leaders tell us we’re an up and coming metropolis, the Queen City of Lake Champlain, and Jim Carrey descends from the heavens as if to confirm the benediction with a sprinkling of stardust.
A few blocks from the movie set, construction cranes lowered the last steel beams into place for the new Filene’s department store that’s going in adjacent to the downtown shopping area. Our mayor, even if he was elected on the progressive coalition ticket, is proud to snag such a big retail outlet for downtown. It’s quite a coup, it will provide an anchor which will hold smaller retail stores around it. The mayor had to put together quite an incentive package to pull Filene’s in, but it was worth it to keep downtown thriving.
Of course, we already have stores that sell all the things Filene’s sells, so there’s nothing new for the consumer. And most of those other retail stores are national chains like Eddie Bauer and Banana Republic and Borders Books. I don’t shop in them, but I think the tourists do.
In other retail news, the last downtown grocery store closed a few weeks ago. It was old and small, there wasn’t much parking around it. The prices were higher than the same chain charges out in the suburbs, I guess the economies of scale worked against it. It was, however, the only store to which the old people who live downtown could walk. There’s a free shuttle bus that comes once a week to the old store, to carry senior citizens out to a store in the suburbs. There’s no hardware store downtown anymore, no five and dime since Woolworth’s closed two years ago. It would be nice if the mayor could do something, but he’s only one man. He’s done right by Filene’s and the tourists and the Hollywood people. You can only do so much.
It’s summertime, like I said, unusually hot and dry. The old folks with their two-wheeled carts sit in the sultry sun and wait for the shuttle to take them shopping. I see them there and wonder if the mayor ever walks by. I wonder what he’d say.