Picture it, it’s 1993, I’m 14, and in the doctor’s office with my mother for a regular check-up. Knees hit, ears explored, eyes peered into, looks like I’m doing just fine.
“Do you want to talk to him about your problem?” my mom asks.
I go red.
“Um… no thanks.”
“Emily’s been smelling soap,” she blurts out.
“Whatever do you mean?” the doctor asks.
The problem, if you want to call it that, is that I had started a soap collection and had been hoarding soap lobsters, seashells, Crabtree and Evelyn guest soaps, and even a soap hippopatamus in a basket in our upstairs bathroom.
I was a soap fiend. I spent about an hour a day bathing in the tub, molding my hands to create the perfect-sized bubbles, which are about 1.67 inches in diameter.
“Oh, I think she’ll grow out of that,” the doctor said.
We went along our way, but my obsession got worse. I started carrying around a half-used bar of soap and smelling it at odd moment of the day (hey, how did YOU survive middle school?).
Until 1995, when I returned from visiting the grandparents in Florida to discover that my mother had distributed my soap to hands unknown.
I found the hippopatamus, now a mushy glob, in her shower.
So wasn’t I surprised, delighted, and a little manic when I saw a hardcore natural soap shop on Liberty Street NE in the Reed Opera House. It’s called Slab, and it’s pretty much the best store in town.
And not because I like soap. Slab Handcrafted Soap Company is the best store in town because the customer has direct contact with the soapmaker and the store has a raw, designy aesthetic that looks like it belongs in Portland.
Sorry, Salem shopowners, for the most part, you need to step up. I will gladly purchase a bar of soap for $5 a pop if the experience makes me feel like I’m living in a city.
I picked up two bars of Douglas Fir soap (great gifts from Salem, no?), Plumeria, Avacado Butter, and a bar of Pomegranate.
If you go, ask the soapmaker, Tim, about the worst soap burn he’s ever had while laying out slabs in the Reed Opera House.
Yes! They were in the basement when I moved here and I was SO happy to see them “move on up” and get the street front window-age.
What many local retailers fail to realize is that if they want to SELL things, it’s about so much more than the product itself, because most of those are meer commodities and those who just want the bare minimum function for the bar minimum price will go to Wal-Mart or some other “I don’t give a damn, it’s just cheap” place and get it.
Whether they have a lot of money or not, many people are now starting to realize that their purchases MEAN so much more than just the commodity they hold in their hands. Their purchases support INDIVIDUALS and their WORK ETHICS and their COMMITMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY.
Or not.
And I hope, really hope, that one change we see come about from this economic bump is a turn toward not being afraid to work hard, and not afraid to pay those that work hard and play a role in an economy of dollars and minds and concepts that we align ourselves with.
They’ve also got the best real estate in town. Right next to the Amish Furniture store, or as we like to call it “that guy who can peer into your soul.”
Wait… you’re not getting away with that… there sounds like there’s a good story there! Peer into your soul!?
Just go in there and see how the owner responds to you…
[...] so this soap costs more than a bar of Safegaurd. But as I have shown with the Slab dude in downtown Salem, a house filled with beautifully, locally-produced, hand-crafted-by-one-person things can make [...]