But last week I had to ditch my car to get local. See, the Buy Local movement is made up of people who often share the same politics about the environment, local control, and living simply. They aim to eliminate their carbon footprint. They like running into each other on the sidewalk serendipitously. They’re not in any particular rush. So many of the most hardcore localists don’t own cars.
Kevin Donoghue, the uber-localist who was elected to the Portland city council last November, hasn’t owned a car in nine years. He’s lived in Portland for almost four of those years, and won on a platform that stressed pedestrian-friendly urban planning. Donoghue doesn’t own a car because he’s concerned about fuel conservation. He also wants to recreate the shopping habits he enjoyed a few years ago when he lived in walkable cities in Germany and Holland.
Problem is, some of the basics aren’t within reach of his footpath. Like underwear, most electronics, or locally grown produce from a locally owned store. Since the independent Whole Grocer was sold to the Texas-based chain Whole Foods a year ago, the Public Market is all but closed (sorry, Romeo’s Pizza), and the farmer’s market is gone for the winter, Donoghue has had trouble finding food that fits his local criteria, not to mention scraps of locally hewn cloth to cover his unmentionables.
“There are things that I go without because I just can’t get them,” says Donoghue, 27. “I live on the peninsula, I’m busy. I don’t have a way to carry much cargo and the choices aren’t there unfortunately. We should really be focusing economic development on making sure basic consumer needs are met.”
Donoghue says he was able to feed himself back in 2005 with local food from local purveyors like the Whole Grocer and the farmer’s market. But now the only stores on the peninsula with a decent selection of produce are chains. “We have very poor food choices,” he says. “We can decide which country or which state we’re going to throw our money away to and which surface parking lot we’re going to subsidize.”
His underwear source, the army-navy store in Monument Square, closed last year, leaving me to wonder exactly what Donoghue wears to our esteemed council meetings. Ahem. Moving on...
In a world where committed relationships can start on the Internet and products are shipped overnight from almost anywhere in the globe, even Donoghue finds it impossible to live like Half-Pint in Little House on the Prairie. Donoghue just got a job working for AAA — a national corporation that supports automobile America. On a recent lunch break, he shopped in Wild Oats (based in Colorado) because he only had a half an hour to eat and the Marginal Way store is a block away from the AAA building. “We compromise every day,” he says as he shops. “When was the last time I bought something that wasn’t local? What did I do last night? The greatest destructive purchase I’ve made in the last year was my computer [purchased online] but there was no alternative there. I try to be aware of my choices and make the best choices that are there, but, yes, convenience is the dulling effect.”
