Our protagonist once did some research into the transformation of the British high street, with a particular focus on the role of retail planning on the places where social interaction takes place in a consumer society. Not very original perhaps, but fun and well supported by the mass of interest and serious research by, for instance, the New Economics Foundation.
And so she finds herself bemused but angry, by both the steady and ongoing disappearance of high-street shops (independent might be pushing it) and the fact that people she talks to about it shrug it off with the view that it’s how Finns like it. After all, they say, the market is the market (is the market). It’s for that reason, presumably, that Eira and its environs have higher-than-average numbers of traditional shops (“kivijalka kauppa”, from kivijalka, the stone foundations from which shop windows open out to the street, and “kauppa”=shop) . This one in Töölö, turned into a purveyor of cultural or creative services (not that we can be sure, it doesn’t open up to the pavement to invite us in) feels more “kivijalka” than “kauppa”.
Our protagonist hasn’t got any independently verified data, but she suspects that disposable income around Eira is among the highest in the country. She noticed today that there were shops for the more thrifty households here too, even a couple of smaller super-markets. The word frequently used for small older shops is Blah Blah’s “valinta”, where the last word means “choice”, presumably to signify that the customer in this shop could freely choose (and squeeze and prod) the produce for sale before committing to a purchase. These shops still exist in some parts of Helsinki. Hardly “independent” in the sense that many British readers (and foodies) think of it, they do however, make possible exchanges at a specifically human scale, of goods and money, as well as pleasanteries, local news and gazes.
She hears people around her comment on the sad loss of these shops, but it’s always justified by the “use it or lose it” slogan or by the simple fact that, the market being the market, people just prefer cheap. Er, why then don’t those here in Eira who DO have the choice, flock to them? More on this too and on possible connections between consensus politics, the success of the co-operative movement, and the assumption that what’s good for such and such industry is “good for the country”.
Jees Helsinki Jees 