The buzz that was—and New Year’s promises.

Come on, people. You’re not supporting your local stores. I know because so many of the shops everyone was buzzing about last year have closed.  Florentine Ceramics on First Street: gone. Angsana and Mary’s on Main: gone. Morton's wonderful gourmet market in Lakewood Ranch: gone. And Annabelle’s in both Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch: history (although the reason may not be customer non-support).

 It’s the middle of January and not too late for a life-enhancing New Year’s resolution. Remake yourself into a shopping locavore. Help our local economy, keep people in jobs and revel in the excitement generated by trend-savvy shop owners who bring you products you’d have to fly to much larger cities to find, or otherwise buy over the Internet sight unseen (with hefty shipping charges). 

For me, the biggest surprise was the closing of the brand new (three-month-old) Chasen Reed and Toulouse’s Wine Cellar at San Marco Plaza.  I schlepped up there with a friend last week to find they had totally vanished.  Both stores were empty. Nada.We’d missed a December 12^th posting on the Bradenton Herald’s Web site, reporting that the stores’ co-owners, Pam Kantor and  Toulouse Kellam, were “selling off their merchandise at drastic reductions, including 50 percent off on wine and ‘make an offer’ on some furnishings and other items.” Quoting Kantor, the article said, "We put our whole life savings into this, every dime, and we've lost everything.”

The article continued, “Kantor acknowledged that her home decor business had slowed along with Florida's housing slump, but she said San Marco developer Lion's Gate Development impeded her ability to enhance her surging wine business.”  We spoke by phone to Gary Moyer of Lion’s Gate, who said that the stores’ use clause was restricted to home furnishings, and that the owners knew from the outset they would not be permitted to sell wine or open a bar in their space. This wasn’t about wine, Moyer told me. “They said in the article [in the Bradenton Herald] they were affected by the housing market. They were undercapitalized and unable to ride out the downturn,” Moyer said.  Kantor and Kellam could not be reached for comment.

But store closings weren’t the exclusive purview of moms and pops in 2007. The new Bombay Company artistically jutting out from the front of Sarasota Square Mall was a victim of corporate bankruptcy. Ethan Allen shuttered its doors on the South Trail, and phoenix-like, a new Drexel Heritage emerged this week in its place. Coincidentally, the new Bacon’s Furniture, also on the South Trail, had been a Drexel Heritage store until last summer. Retailing is all about change.

Bombay Company was not exempt from the housing slump.

Last week my shopping pal and I bemoaned the demise of Crème, the wonderfully European beauty product and spa treatment boutique now vacant in the Rosemary District, the one we had always intended to patronize but never made time to visit. Next, we saw a for-lease sign in Sarasota Olive Oil Company’s window. OMG, we hadn’t been back there in a while, either. We vowed henceforth to support the stores we love, ergo the trek to San Marco and Lakewood Ranch Main Street, which all those new homeowners on the Manatee side of University Parkway should be supporting, but aren’t (just look at the parking lots).

Worried that we would never again be able to buy first-crush fresh olive oil, or $2,000-a-pound white winter truffles in Sarasota, I called Sarasota Olive Oil’s owner Kelly Kary today. Sadly, truffle season is over. Happily, she’s moving down the street next month to the corner of Central and Fifth, has applied for a beer and wine license, and is taking in new gourmet pastas from Treviso (Sarasota’s sister city as of February last year). Kelly recommends the one made with a radicchio that grows only in the Treviso province of Italy ($9 a pound). 

Another happy ending:  Crème has resurfaced on Tamiami Trail with all the same skin care services and products, plus a new hairstyling salon. Owner Marina Eckert, formerly an esthetician at Clarins in Paris, is touting the new paraben –free, organic Swiss skincare line, Luzern, which is making headlines everywhere from People magazine to Vogue. Fans of Luzern’s Force De vie Crème ($95 for 1.7 oz.) include supermodels Karolina Kurkova and Melani Knauss (Donald Trump’s wife).  May the “Force” be with you as you shop locally in 2008!

Marina Eckert at her new Creme salon on South Tamiami Trail.