CarrollBlog

Maybe I'm a Luddite, a troglodyte, or some other kind of -ite, but be that as it may, I have a real problem with renovations. I rarely can get used to places, favorite stores and restaurants in particular, that have been renovated, re-done, refurbished, rearranged, retrofitted, whatever. The familiar, favorite restaurant that closes for a few months and then reopens all bright and new, but is never the same again. Not the ambience, not the food, none of what you once liked about it. You go there less and less until one day it falls completely off the map of your life. Or the funky little sidestreet bookstore where you spent countless contented hours roaming through the stacks, half browsing, half daydreaming, and where you discovered interesting obscure writers whose words sometimes made your life bigger. But one time I went to visit and the door to the store was locked, the windows were covered on the inside by white painters' sheets, and a sign was taped up saying closed for renovations. My heart sunk because I knew that whenever the place opened again, the ghosts, the singularity, and the eccentric appeal it once had would be gone. They would be replaced by fresh paint, rearranged aisles, bigger windows, refinished floors, and a new electronic cash register that had all the soul of a beige robot.