RIP Deblanc
I live on Bayou St. John in Faubourg St. John and our neighborhood is distinct and rich in people and place. Yesterday, I went to friends’ 20th anniversary together and they had a feast spread out to celebrate from rare roast beef to oyster shooters, with all of the neighborhood there to wish them well.
And I learned that DeBlanc’s Pharmacy is closing – one of the holdouts from the era of the big three – Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS – it was anachronistic and charming, with waits that were sometimes unbearable and service that was always personable. It’s becoming a Starbucks. Please stop. We have Fairgrinds, we have CC’s, we have PJ’s, (all homegrown) we need a Starbucks like we need Winn Dixie going up across from Rouse’s (also homegrown) like we need nothing. Nothing at all.
This fact made me so sad even though I was standing in the midst of all the wonderful people who color my neighborhood and make it what it is. Deblanc’s morphs into Starbucks.
I was driving down Magazine Street the other day and saw they had razed several small boutiques to put in a Walgreens. It sickened me.
A few nights ago, I was sitting at a table eating with friends and we were speaking about radicalism, about viewing whites as the oppressor and one said, “I’m sorry but it’s not whites who are the oppressors here – WE ARE ALL OPPRESSED by the great corporate machine of greed.”
When I lived in San Francisco, there were subversives who torched the new Walgreens that was trying to go up in the Haight Ashbury area, not once but twice, trying to keep it out. No radicalism here in New Orleans, just sad whimpers of regret as the oppressor discovers us and pushes out our small businesses that made our lives richer.