Off Deadline: The town that scrolls past itself

Colusa County likes to talk about small-town pride.

We share old photos of Colusa, Williams, Arbuckle, and Maxwell, and we say we miss the bustle. The old shoe store, the bike shop, and the place where mom bought all her dresses.

When a new shop opens in town, most people do not notice. However, when a chain announces a grand opening and we line up around the block for stickers and selfies. If we want to know why our main streets fade, the mirror is close at hand.

We have grown comfortable telling ourselves stories about why a business closes: retirement, a building sold, or they're moving out of state. Those can be true, but often the truth is simpler.

The support was not there.

A ribbon cutting is not a business model.

Day after day, month after month, our choices decide what survives.

We also judge our neighbors more harshly than we judge the brands we follow. A local shop messes up one order and instead of walking back in to talk like adults, we blast them on social media like we were served Minny’s "special chocolate pie."

We write them off over a small mistake.

Meanwhile, Starbucks or McDonald’s can miss the mark again and again, and we shrug and come back tomorrow.

One gets dragged. The other gets a pass. The difference is not quality. It is habit and hype.

We say we want walkable towns. Yet we choose drive-through convenience and next-day delivery.

A downtown built for people will not thrive if we never step inside.

Cities can sketch pretty streets and plant trees. None of it matters if we treat local shops as a backdrop for nostalgia instead of places that need steady customers to pay rent, staff payrolls, and keep the lights on.

There is another quiet pressure.

We ask small shops for donations, discounts, and freebies to prove they belong. We praise “support local” in public, then buy the same goods from an out of town box store, or a garage seller who does not collect sales tax or carry a license. That starves the very services we expect. Police, fire, parks, and clean streets are funded by the daily churn of legitimate local commerce. When we bypass it, we chip away at our own quality of life.

This is not a call to guilt.

It is a reminder of cause and effect.

If we want a thriving downtown in our communities, it will not be built by hashtags or wishful thinking.

It will be built by repetition, by ordinary visits, by patience when a neighbor has a rough day, and by the simple act of choosing a door you can walk through.

If the mirror feels uncomfortable, good.

It means we still care enough to change the picture.