Here it is:


If you hang around the Old Port much, you’ve seen the BUY LOCAL stickers and signs and t-shirts, and probably heard the apparently endless ways BUY!ing LOCAL!ly bolsters the community. Yeah, keep income local and support our downtowns, stick it to the big box stores!

And it’s true. It’s all true! But let’s cut the pretense that we’re always (or, y’know, ever) so noble and community-centered. I’ll tell you a dirty little secret:

You should buy locally for your own selfish reasons.

When you buy locally, you develop a relationship with the business. (Not like that, you perv.) Respect yourself: support businesses that respect you and cater to your tastes, whether you’re shopping for shoes, movies, music, or just a cappuccino.

Mass-market retailers don’t have the luxury of tailoring themselves to a niche market. Their resources and research are too unwieldy to maneuver around local idiosyncrasies. This is bad news.

That’s a little-discussed (and deeply disgusting) effect of Big Box Business: the whittling away of individual tastes and serendipitous discoveries. Yeah, they’ll sell you the same food and pants and books and movies that you’ve already heard of, and that everyone else has already heard of --- sometimes at a discount! They can afford to: they’ve got a truckload of ‘em out back, loaded up to sell you you and everyone else. And that’s all they’ve got; everywhere you go, it’s the same bland pap.

Locally operated businesses have personalities and quirks. They’re downright peculiar, just like you and me! (Mostly you.) The owners and staff spice the inventory with their own tastes (and, sometimes, obsessions), so they can recommend all kinds of offbeat things --- bands and movies and shoes and coffees and beers and whatever --- new stuff! Stuff you might like! Stuff you’ll never discover if you do all your errands at TGIBlockTopicBucks™.

I think it's good, Elsa, and I don't have any real criticism of it. One suggestion: I think your conclusion -- the last sentence, mostly -- could be punchier.

I don't like the phrasing of "...movies that you’ve already heard of." I'd change "heard of" to "desiring," or "lusting after," or something stronger. Having heard of something doesn't necessarily mean I want to buy it.

And in the penultimate sentence of the penultimate paragraph, there's an extra "you."

But hey, it's good! It's hard to make a point in 350 words.

Good catch, mudpuppie! And thanks for the suggestions to replace "heard of." I was unconsciously striving for a more casual tone, and it resulted in slightly sloppy writing and a touch of unwitting condescension.

Thanks! I'm a little freaked, trying to crank this out along with everything else I need to get done before bedtime tonight... which is, um, right now.

I'm too tired and have had 1 too many glasses of wine to be a useful editor, but I really like it - I especially like the sly setup, where the reader's all like "WHa'? She doesn't like buy local?" and then they're all like "Wo-HO! She pulled a fast one on us!"

One thing you might want to look at is the apparent dichotomy between local businesses that "cater to your taste" and megachains that, well, also cater to your taste. I think the really amazing thing about unique businesses is that they expose you to things you didn't know were to your taste until you tried them - rather than delivering the same old, watered-down, innocuous-but-deadening options that fit mass-market scale. I think you could remove any confusion about this by changing "cater to your taste" to something like "surprise you with the unusual" or whatever wordsmithing makes sense.

Miko said, inarticulately.

But, well done, especially on short notice!

More wine, please!

Thanks! It's sent! It's out of my hands!

Kind of exhilarating, kind of sickening. All this over a 300 word essay.

That was fun. Thanks, mudpuppie and Miko!

Miko said, inarticulately.

There's a first time for everything, I suppose...