Taking stock at Dandelion Blue
"A guy works all day, he don't want to look at his plate and ask, "What the fuck is this?" He wants to look at his plate, see a steak, and say "I like steak!""
-Pascal, Big Night
Even since it closed three months ago, Dandelion Blue remains considerably cheerier than many of the shops in Brockley that claim to be open for business.
Its unshuttered, untroubled windows expose as a fallacy the idea that shops need heavy steel shutters to protect them from vandals and thieves. Its stacks of jars and bottles still look tempting whenever we walk past and its powder blue, zinc and wood stylings are what we wish our kitchen looked like.
If it were never to reopen, we should preserve it as the museum of gentrification and a monument to the optimism of 2007. However, the signs are that it's about to spring back to life, which is further good news for Coulgate Street, following the recent confirmation that both the common and the station will be drastically improved in the coming months.
A number of readers have seen stock taking going on and Tyrwhitt Ali writes here that:
The staff were doing a stock take today and the "for sale" sign has gone. A judicious bit of earwigging tells me that the new owner intends to "run it pretty much as before".
We hope we'll hear from the new owners soon.
25 comments:
'Optimism of 2007' is generous. I'd call it the peak of the boom.
Providing the bright grey daylight of reason to BC since its inception - Hugh.
Peak of the boom = optimism
Same same.
PS - according to your bright grey reason, we should by now all be scratching around in the soil of Hilly Fields, like a scene from the Grapes of Wrath. Or maybe The Road.
Peak of the boom = general delusion.
I'd like to think my sunny disposition is something more wholesome.
Grapes of Wrath? Read the book. These days I suppose we must content ourselves with a reference to the celluoid adapatation.
I was right about the Talbot, wasn't I?
I think you'll find that books have "scenes" too.
I hear scraping, not scratching.
Magi have also started transferring their stock. Walked past Cost Cutters yesterday when to my surprise in the shop next door I saw a very flowery cake stand a la Cath Kidson.
It wasn't open for business yet though as shortly afterwards the shutters went down.
Looks like some fun stuff in there though so will definitely go in when open.
good news for Brockley but can Brockley have 2 commercially viable Deli's? There is already the French deli, Degustation. It would be good if both survive but in the present economic climate is it likely?
I rarely went to Dandelion Blue towards the end of its opening period.
The Broca food market has some 'high end' goods, and coupled with the fact that its generally cheap and on my door-step I go there instead.
Can brockley have two commercially viable delis? Yes. They co-existed until three months ago when DB's owners moved on. The stuff they sell is very different and their combined floorspace is a tiny fraction of a a single aisle of Tesco.
I presume the new owner (who will have had access to the DB books before taking the plunge) thought so too.
Let's just look forward to it shall we?
I wonder of Erin still intends to open the cafe element to the Broca food market now that she's expanding into magi? Would be a shame if not - I'd use it and be prone to the odd impulse buy once I was in there.
I think she is still planning on it, but not a high priority for her at the moment.
I never realised it was shut. A closed deli in Brockley looks quite similar to an open one.
Damn, we should have staged a slightly inept middle class robbery. I suppose a Prius is not the speediest of getaway cars.
Hugh could have been our bent lawyer when we inevitably got caught.
Talking of poshos - Corpus Christi College, Oxford have just been stripped of their title - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7919830.stm
I feel a bit sorry for all concerned - just because the poor lad could not get funding for his PhD and had to go and become a number crunching wage-slave... It was an amazing contest, though.
As mentioned in the Guardian talk pages, the real tragedy here is that a talented Chemistry PHD student goes to work for a bunch of accountants.
I'm impressed that someone has the balls to take this on in these times. I was thinking that unit would remain closed for a while. Good news.
Training as an accountant means the guy will be well-placed to move into a finance director role later and make the ching-ching sound whenever he sees his mates.
"Or maybe The Road."
Well someone has dumped a shopping trolley in my front garden so I'm half way there...
great news that dandelion blue will re-open - the more nice delis the better! Also Magi is now open in its new place - I popped in to get a birthday card last night and it's looking very nice (even though not quite finished)
Does anyone know if the Broca is knocking through or just having the extra shop?
Hugh - if he's trained as an accountant he won't have any mates...
Can we have a pic of the new Magis please?
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