Fire is generally bad for business

It’s easy to read about how a stupid fire accidentally burnt up the building that houses the indoor portion of Eastern Market. But looking at this picture of this man coming to grips with the destruction of the business his family has owned for four generations is heartbreaking. As a cheesemonger, I can say with some limited authority that cheese is not necessarily a profitable business. It may be expensive, but unlike say, an expensive shirt, cheese goes bad. The amount of waste is huge, and to see cheese you really have to love it. I had only been to bowers once, and that was before I started selling cheese, and I could see that they were a tight community and they had fun. I’m sure that the same could be said for every business destroyed in the fire. These people put the emphasis on the customer and were truly a part of DC; much more than any monument. The rebuilding has already begun, but let’s at least recognize what’s been lost. For all that to be ruined is really fucked up.

Posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 12:42 am in DC, Deaths, Washinton DC. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.