Keeping up with the jonses
Yesterday in Wichita I woke up to meet Richard from the Wichita Band Company on his way to work at 8:30. He offered to pick me up so I could have my baritone sax worked on at the store. He drives a tan Continental extremely slowly with one hand and drank coffee with the other. When we arrived at the store, a few minutes before it opened, I made a phone call and waited for the repair guys to arrive. I tried some more saxophones and made some more phone calls while the baritone was being repaired and eventually bought a nice Selmer alto from 1942 that seemed just right. The salespeople at the store are focused and straightforward.
I went to find food at around 11am and found it to be extremely cold and windy outside and I wanted to have a jacket on, which I did not have. I went into a place called the Spice Merchant to warm up and see if they were serving lunch as it says on the sign. They don’t serve lunch for the last 2.5 years. Walking into the store under a loft with tables and chairs on it, and a staircase with a wait to be seated sign I was expecting lunch. Apparently these things are left over from the many years that they did serve lunch.
Though they sell high-end coffee makers and beans, the place looks like a salvation army to me. The store is an enormous warehouse of mugs and coffee makers and spoons, salsas and olive oils. The merchandise was displayed on metal pantry shelves arranged head-high into aisles. It was only slightly updated from the commercial bakery, auto parts store or printer it once was. The only light came from a few fluorescent bulbs high above our heads and yet they sell the same merchandise to which Starbucks (there are none in Wichita) or Williams Sonoma (obviously, none in Wichita) devotes salaries upon salaries of lighting design. There are hardly any lights in the store. The Spice Merchant is in the same one-floor white brick building as a home furnishings store called Abode, which is a local pottery barn send-up with wood floors accent lighting and natural suede ottomans. I imagined the two owners arguing over their obviously opposing philosophies of retail, but quickly the owner of Abode (Bernie, late 30s and fat like Jeff Garlin) came in and asked something about the mail and assured me that it’s all good.
In the corner of the Spice Merchant was an old woman doing laundry who offered me a cup of coffee and started talking to me. She suggested I talk to the owner about something or other (I was not stealing, though I wasn’t sure if I should pay for the coffee). Bob the owner eventually found me and talked for a really long time about the arts organizations in Wichita and their summer theatre programs. The Wichita Symphony is quite active, and depending on whom you ask (ask Bob), is excellent. He also supports public radio. Bob Boewe has been in business for many decades in the gourmet trade, always on Douglas St. in Wichita and doesn’t look like a guy in charge of a gourmet’s basement. I asked if they sold postcards and Bob looked around for a while and determined that they didn’t have any among the racks of greeting cards that I can’t imagine anyone noticing. So we grabbed more coffee and went out the back door to his waiting Toyota Previa and drove down the street to a digital imaging company that specializes in aircraft photography and which sells postcards. I got a full tour of the prints on the wall of beech and Lear and Cessna airplanes. The Wichita photographer Paul Bowen apparently has a converted B25 with a photographer’s nook in the nose and tail instead of gun turrets. He is famous for getting shots of small jets coming up through the clouds with strikingly long vortices behind them.
Back at the Wichita Band Company I finished up getting my saxes fixed by Jesse, who is a typically amusing and aloof saxophone repairman. His work is astonishing so far (notes upon notes) and he never let me finish a sentence without pausing reflectively, meaning awkwardly, like I’m mother superior and I was telling him that I had always wanted to kiss him like this, and saying “oh,” before looking away and abandoning the whole conversation. I paid for my new alto and wrassled a few free boxes of reeds (“oh my this floor is cold, but your beard is so cozy, you!”) out of Richard’s formidable left hand grip (he’s a born French horn player, always said so) and he drove me back to the hotel. He agreed with the idea that Kansans are screwing themselves out of a future by supporting the generally republican economic principles in place today that include farm subsidies and tax benefits to those making more money than anyone in Kansas.
I went to find food at around 11am and found it to be extremely cold and windy outside and I wanted to have a jacket on, which I did not have. I went into a place called the Spice Merchant to warm up and see if they were serving lunch as it says on the sign. They don’t serve lunch for the last 2.5 years. Walking into the store under a loft with tables and chairs on it, and a staircase with a wait to be seated sign I was expecting lunch. Apparently these things are left over from the many years that they did serve lunch.
Though they sell high-end coffee makers and beans, the place looks like a salvation army to me. The store is an enormous warehouse of mugs and coffee makers and spoons, salsas and olive oils. The merchandise was displayed on metal pantry shelves arranged head-high into aisles. It was only slightly updated from the commercial bakery, auto parts store or printer it once was. The only light came from a few fluorescent bulbs high above our heads and yet they sell the same merchandise to which Starbucks (there are none in Wichita) or Williams Sonoma (obviously, none in Wichita) devotes salaries upon salaries of lighting design. There are hardly any lights in the store. The Spice Merchant is in the same one-floor white brick building as a home furnishings store called Abode, which is a local pottery barn send-up with wood floors accent lighting and natural suede ottomans. I imagined the two owners arguing over their obviously opposing philosophies of retail, but quickly the owner of Abode (Bernie, late 30s and fat like Jeff Garlin) came in and asked something about the mail and assured me that it’s all good.
In the corner of the Spice Merchant was an old woman doing laundry who offered me a cup of coffee and started talking to me. She suggested I talk to the owner about something or other (I was not stealing, though I wasn’t sure if I should pay for the coffee). Bob the owner eventually found me and talked for a really long time about the arts organizations in Wichita and their summer theatre programs. The Wichita Symphony is quite active, and depending on whom you ask (ask Bob), is excellent. He also supports public radio. Bob Boewe has been in business for many decades in the gourmet trade, always on Douglas St. in Wichita and doesn’t look like a guy in charge of a gourmet’s basement. I asked if they sold postcards and Bob looked around for a while and determined that they didn’t have any among the racks of greeting cards that I can’t imagine anyone noticing. So we grabbed more coffee and went out the back door to his waiting Toyota Previa and drove down the street to a digital imaging company that specializes in aircraft photography and which sells postcards. I got a full tour of the prints on the wall of beech and Lear and Cessna airplanes. The Wichita photographer Paul Bowen apparently has a converted B25 with a photographer’s nook in the nose and tail instead of gun turrets. He is famous for getting shots of small jets coming up through the clouds with strikingly long vortices behind them.
Back at the Wichita Band Company I finished up getting my saxes fixed by Jesse, who is a typically amusing and aloof saxophone repairman. His work is astonishing so far (notes upon notes) and he never let me finish a sentence without pausing reflectively, meaning awkwardly, like I’m mother superior and I was telling him that I had always wanted to kiss him like this, and saying “oh,” before looking away and abandoning the whole conversation. I paid for my new alto and wrassled a few free boxes of reeds (“oh my this floor is cold, but your beard is so cozy, you!”) out of Richard’s formidable left hand grip (he’s a born French horn player, always said so) and he drove me back to the hotel. He agreed with the idea that Kansans are screwing themselves out of a future by supporting the generally republican economic principles in place today that include farm subsidies and tax benefits to those making more money than anyone in Kansas.
posted by Michael Flanagan at 2:28 PM
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