The New York Times took a look at niche stores in NYC back in November, profiling stores that only sells pencils, rubber stamps, antique cash registers, and vintage video games. What struck me from the pictures is how small these spaces are – enough room for stock, a couple of customers, and the proprietor. You see spaces like these pop up in development pitches all the time, a set of micro store fronts or a ‘food mall’ or a ‘craft market’, but there always seems to be trouble filling them consistently. One of my favorites was a small storefront Grillo’s Pickles ran in Inman Square, Cambridge for a couple of years.
In These Times spends some time discussing the slow but inexorable rate of rural hospital closures with a focus on Appalachia. Coming from Maine, the issue there was less acute – most of the closures were related to advanced treatment centers and maternity services. As parts of the country become more divorced from convenient medical care, how does this impact work injury treatment? Thinking about the remote construction teams I’ve worked with, some hours from a hospital, the first aid kit wasn’t better stocked or the team trained in emergency medicine. At what distance from a hospital should you start training your team in wilderness first aid?
They’ve been around for a long time, but just in case you’re looking for a leather-free steel/comp toe muck boot check out Bog’s line of slip on boots. Currently all of the lace up versions have leather ever since the Turf Stomper line was discontinued a few years ago.
I’m not sure where I saw the question (perhaps in the Lost Art comments?), but someone was looking for a metric tape measure and was linked to FastCap’s ProCarpenter line. I’ve got to admire the specificity involved in having a tape measure line with six different tape types.
Music Video of the Week: Raconteurs – Somedays (I Don’t Feel Like Trying). Released last month and filmed at House on the Rock, the product of a one collector/builders signature vision. Totally worth a visit, you may also remember it from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
TYPD 