[Lapg] How Dooney’s Café and places like it can improve the world .Jay Walljasper Ode issue: 20

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Local matters 	http://www.odemagazine.com/article.php?aID=4037

Jay Walljasper	
This article appeared in Ode issue: 20	
	
How Dooney’s Café and places like it can improve the world.



 From a distance it doesn’t look like a fair fight. On one side are 
multinational corporations, the World Trade Organization, large 
accumulations of capital, economics professors, management consultants, and 
what is generally considered the long sweep of history. Bravely squaring 
off against them all is Dooney’s Café, a bar and grill near the Bathurst 
subway station in Toronto.

But don’t count Dooney’s out. Its patrons may be few in number, but they 
are fiercely loyal to this neighborhood hang-out. They don’t want 
T.G.I.Friday’s, Burger King or another cutter-cutter corporate-concept 
eatery coming in to replace Dooney’s—no matter how much sense it would make 
on somebody’s balance sheet. This is because Dooney’s is a unique spot that 
expresses the spirit of this lively corner of Toronto. And that’s something 
worth fighting for.

I’ve never been there, but I will stand up and fight for Dooney’s too, 
thanks to Brian Fawcett, a breakfast regular at the place who runs a web 
site (www.dooneyscafe.com) and wrote a book, Local Matters: A Defence of 
Dooney’s Café and other Non-globalized Places, People, and Ideas (New Star 
Books, ISBN 1554200059). He lovingly celebrates the neighbourhood around 
Dooney’s—his neighbourhood—as a place where there are, “enough familiar 
faces to make you understand you’re not doomed to be a stranger in a 
strange land, or a mere consumer target in an entertainment or retail sales 
complex.” I think that description is the highest praise you can bestow 
upon any neighbourhood anywhere.

I will also stand up for Powell Mercantile in Powell, Wyoming. I’ve never 
been there either, but this clothing store has accomplished the impossible, 
according to noted environmental writer Bill McKibben in Orion 
(November/December 2004). It has stayed in business in a town with a 
Wal-Mart store nearby. Wal-Mart has driven countless locally-owned business 
to ruin as it marched across the North American countryside. In Iowa alone, 
a relatively small state, it bankrupted 555 groceries, 298 hardware stores, 
293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women’s clothing 
stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drug stores, and 111 men’s and boy’s clothing 
stores in a ten-year period. The economy and culture of these places has 
changed drastically, now that local shoppers’ money flows out of town 
rather than circulating again and again throughout the community.

Powell’s Mercantile beat the trends because it is owned by the community 
itself; 500 citizens put up money to launch the store because they didn’t 
want to see their Main Street boarded up. Indeed the store’s success has 
started a chain reaction, with other shops opening up in once-empty 
storefronts.  The town of Worland, ninety miles south, is now doing the 
same thing.

What Wal-Mart has done to America, large supermarkets chains like Tesco, 
Asda and Sainsbury’s are now doing to England. Bakeries, newsstands, 
butcher shops, pharmacies, and even garages are closing in record numbers. 
The Ecologist (September 2004) reports that seven out of ten villages no 
longer have a local shop. The consequences are severe. The New Economics 
Foundation reports that small shops create one job for every £50,000 pounds 
in sales while for large grocery chains it is £250,000 pounds. Pollution 
and traffic increase as people now must drive to these big stores on the 
outskirts of town, and social interaction on local High Streets decreases.

Are these trends inevitable? Not according to Alternatives to Economic 
Globalization (Berrett-Koehler, ISBN 1576753034), a recently updated book 
from the International Forum on Globalization. Drawing on the insights of 
activists and strategists from all over the world, the book offers a 
practical program to preserve and strengthen our local institutions in the 
face of gargantuan globalization. The revival of locally-owned economies 
begins with informed citizens, ready to stand up as consumers, workers, 
investors, and activists. That means embracing the Dooney’s Cafés that 
still exist in your community and coming together as neighbors to create 
new initiatives like Powell Mercantile. This is how we forge a new economic 
and social vision for the 21st century.