All in Local Business
Pens and other art supplies, along with notebooks, tote bags, mugs, and enamel pins, are the main merchandise in Caroline Stockman’s new store, Of Aspen, which opened in Swarthmore last month. Stockman is an artist herself, and Of Aspen specializes in products she uses and loves. “Through the years, I’ve found a lot of products that I live by,” she says.
Mushroom strudel. Citrus-cured salmon. “Duck duet” risotto. Those were some of the dishes on the menu when Village Vine, Swarthmore’s first-ever wine bar and bistro, celebrated its grand opening last week. On the wine list: selections from Italy, Turkey, Chile, and upstate New York, among many other places. For owners Lori Knauer and Jill Gaieski, opening day was a long time coming.
The first Sal’s Barber Shop opened in Plymouth Meeting ten years ago. Pretty soon, owner Sal Giannone opened two more. He has repeatedly won Best Barbershop and Best Children’s Haircut in Montgomery County, as well as Entrepreneur of the Year. With clients coming from as far away as Delaware for cuts, he decided to open a fourth shop in Delco at 415 Dartmouth Ave.
Named in honor of Harriet Tubman, Harriett’s Bookshop in Philadelphia celebrates women authors and artists. But the shop’s owner, writer and activist Jeannine Cook, does more than just sell books. Cook is deeply embedded in her community. She organized a book drive for essential workers during the pandemic and curated material for local educators. During the George Floyd protests, she gave away books about anti-racism to marchers. On Saturday, August 22, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., Swarthmore resident (and Swarthmorean associate editor) Satya Nelms will host a sidewalk sale for Harriett’s in Swarthmore.
Have a beer after work on the terrace of the Swarthmore Co-op? Pick up a bottle of wine along with your chicken and your dish soap? Many Swarthmoreans have long dreamed of such scenarios. Now those dreams are one giant step closer to coming true.
Swarthmore Borough Council approved a plan on Monday to construct “parklets”: portions of roadway blocked off for outdoor restaurant seating. Swarthmore Town Center (STC) developed the proposal to help struggling restaurants in the borough. Parklets will increase the number of patrons restaurants can serve during the next phases of reopening.
What will the Swarthmore business district look like this summer? That was the question local merchants discussed at a May 27 Zoom meeting with members of the non-profit organization Swarthmore Town Center (STC) and Mayor Marty Spiegel. With Delaware County slated to move from the red phase to the yellow phase of reopening on June 5, business owners are trying to figure out how to proceed.
The Indigo Healing Arts Collective is a wellness sanctuary offering sacred movement, psychotherapy and bodywork. Their services include yoga, Pilates, guided meditation, sound-bath healing, massage, tarot and astrology readings, aromatherapy, counseling, and more.
The Swarthmore Farmers Market is opening on Saturday, June 6. There will be strawberries and scallions, cheese and chickens, peanut butter cookies and portobello mushrooms, just as there are every June. Other things will be different.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s March 19 order to close physical locations of non-life-sustaining businesses has hit Swarthmore’s town center hard. Only a few stores in the business district — like the Swarthmore Co-op, Swarthmore Hardware, and the two dry cleaners, as well as some restaurants open for take-out — fall into the life-sustaining category. But across town, merchants are rising to the occasion and creating innovative solutions to keep themselves in business until they are permitted to reopen.
Occasionally Yours remodeled its restaurant last fall, and revamped its menu. This spring, amid the coronavirus outbreak, it’s recasting its mission too. The restaurant is not only continuing to feed the local community (though now only through curbside take out and no-contact delivery), but it’s also taking on a new goal.
Picking up dinner can be a way to give the cooks in your household a break. It’s also a great way to support local restaurants and delis. Here’s a list of options in Swarthmore, courtesy of Louise Coffin.
Jill Gaieski was recently sworn in as the borough’s newest council member, and with her partner Lori Knauer she is working hard to open Swarthmore’s first wine bar. She also had a couple of other interesting careers in her past.
It’s Thursday evening at the Swarthmore Community Center, and Michelle Frumento is getting ready to teach “drop it” to a room full of humans holding the leashes of excited dogs. This is beginner manners, one of several dog-training classes Frumento has been offering out of the community center for the past five years. Manners, not obedience.
How to inventory a whole year? What to remind you of, and what to skip? What would you rather forget, but maybe shouldn’t? What have you already forgotten that might interest you to recall? Collecting (recollecting) these happenings and lives and milestones is a way to consider what we have accomplished and aspired to and worried about as a community, as we take the first steps into 2020. To think about where we have succeeded, where we have more work to do, and where we might want to start all over again.
In January the Healthplex Sports Club will have a new owner and operator: the Community YMCA of Eastern Delaware County. The Healthplex, which offers work-out equipment, a swimming pool, basketball courts, tennis courts, children’s programs, and more, has been located at Springfield Hospital since 1996.
Two Delaware County residents — Val McAdoo from Wallingford and Pete Postiglione from Springfield — decided on Swarthmore as an ideal setting for The Actors Co-op to offer classes for children and adults who aspire to learn acting and creating for today’s media. They teach performance in front of a camera, emphasizing that acting for film and television is very different than acting for the stage.
As of August 2020, the Swarthmore Community Center, over the decades a locus of arts and exercise classes, after-school clubs and teenage dances, party rentals and fundraising events, will cease to host any of these activities in the space it has occupied for the past 47 years.
When you think about eating out, the leafy lanes of Wallingford don’t usually come to mind — until now. With the recent opening of La Cannelle Cafe on Providence Road (next to the Wallingford post office), the predominantly residential area now has a delightful breakfast, lunch, and coffee bistro within easy reach. The Swarthmorean sat down with owner Loubna Lemgard for coffee and the backstory on this welcome addition to the neighborhood.
The Swarthmore Co-op will present a summer Dinner and a Movie Night series, starting Friday, August 2, from 6 to 10 p.m. The grilling starts at 6; the movie more like 7, all on Lincoln Way by the Co-op. Admission costs $5 per kid and $10 per adult, with proceeds going toward needed refrigeration system repairs at the food market.
