Jeweler's goggles

Category: Observations

I am in search of jeweler's goggles. They don't seem to be carried in any big box stores, even though my friend Cat suggested I could probably find them at a Home Depot.

I need these because some of my etching work requires that I do microsurgery on the copper, something I can't do au naturel without harming my eyes permanently. And my eyes are very important to me.

One of the reasons I mention this is that the internet can be a wonderful resource for connecting consumers to retail operations, for connecting seekers to information. But this works best when the consumer wants to order an item right from the retailer. What if I want it now?

I know somebody in Tampa has jeweler's goggles for sale. The future of the internet as a method by which retailers are connected with customers has to include the bricks and mortar to a better degree.

At this moment in time, I have the feeling that the problem is not that small businesses in Tampa that actually do sell this equipment aren't connecting their internet and bricks-and-mortar, but that they don't have any internet presence.

It's a lot to expect a small, maybe one-of-a-kind store to invest in cataloguing their inventory, but it may be the difference between getting business from people like me and not getting business.

This goes right to one of my greater criticisms of Tampa in general. As much as anywhere I've ever spent time, Tampa is a gridded chaos. Places like Florida Avenue are just one long stretch of ugly buildings disconnected from eachother. In this context, the big utopian malls with their sterility and air-conditioning and crappy chain clothing stores that I used to whine about in high school seem more real. Even the more wealthy retail zones like the Bruce B Downs New Tampa strip, manicured nowheres, are incoherent and wasteful.

It seems like raw chance that so many roadside retailers would get business. Nothing is within walking distance of anything else, there is not walking culture in Tampa except in the downtown areas, which aren't so great as far as downtowns go. Retailers must rely on location, eyecatching signage, and then on word of mouth. It doesn't help that this part of the world is built around tourism and that particular culture of looking.

Update: A trip around South Tampa today convinced me that my comment that there is no walking culture in Tampa is off base. But not in a good way. Poverty tends to force those who would otherwise drive to walk- not everyone can afford a car. Bus travel is an alternative, but it doesn't go everywhere.