Last night I attended the Grand Opening celebration for Atomic, my sister's new store in downtown Dover. My sister and her partner, Rebecca, have opened a vintage/retro boutique with full service hair salon on Broadway, between the skateboard shop and the fire station.
I've been hanging out at the store, offering to help but never doing much more than chatting and giving Stef an excuse to step out to grab some coffee. It makes me feel like Rhoda's sister, Brenda, a shlumpy little sister who hangs around kvetching and cracking jokes.
Aside from the groovy clothes and accesories, hair stuff and general ambience of the shop, another cool thing about my sister's store is that it continues our family's tradition of retailing in Dover. My grandparents had a shoe store here and my uncle's menswear shop was right next door. My only remaining memory of the Dover store and the summer I worked for my uncle is from when I scraped the side of his van on the brick building corner trying to maneuver out of the little parking area behind the store. (Uncle Stu, if you're reading, sorry I never told you about that!)
My grandparents and uncle also had stores in downtown Portsmouth, where I grew up. I can still remember running through the stacks of shoes in the back of my grandparents' store as a kid and the little second floor office my grandfather had that looked down onto the shop floor, like a king surveying his kingdom.