Chain Art Supply Store That Has Gone Out of Business
Where Have All the Art Stores Gone?
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Flax's new shop at Fort Mason Center opened in Nov. 2015. (Courtesy: FLAX)
At a moment when any modify in the urban landscape feels like a crisis, FLAX fine art & design, the fine art supply shop, has announced plans to relocate its flagship Market Street location to Oakland as early on as Feb. xvi. The move comes every bit no surprise for those following Flax'south story over the past year -- in May 2014, loyal customers learned that a nine-story, 160-unit condo building would somewhen replace the xx,000-foursquare-pes building.
Only Flax's move speaks to demographic changes in San Francisco (a recent survey showed that 70 pct of the city'southward artists have been displaced from their workplace or dwelling) every bit much as it reflects the ballooning real estate market, a collision of nowadays realities with a family-owned concern that's been around for well-nigh 100 years.
Non the start, nor the last Flax
The Flax family unit'southward interest in peddling paper, pigment and brushes to aspiring artists started in 1918, when Sam Flax opened an eponymous art supply store in New York City. Over the years, various family members opened variously-named and independently-run Flax stores in Atlanta, Orlando, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco.
The kickoff Flax shop in San Francisco opened in 1938 at 437 Kearny Street, moving a few blocks down the street in 1951. It wasn't until 1981 that FLAX fine art & blueprint settled into its current space. When Flax became aware of the property developer'south plans for condos and told their lease would run its class, expiring at the end of 2015, the chase for a new location began.
In Aug. 2015, Howard Flax, the tertiary-generation owner of his family'due south business, happily announced to the San Francisco Chronicle he would soon open a 5,000-square-foot store at Fort Stonemason Center, and was entertaining the possibility of opening two additional San Francisco stores.
When those San Francisco locations fell through, a fourteen,000-square-human foot space in Oakland emerged, further sweetened by the city'southward offer of a $99,000 grant for interior renovations. The one thousand opening of the new shop, located at the corner of Martin Luther Rex Jr. Mode and 15th Street, will have place in early March, Flax estimates. That leaves the Fort Bricklayer Eye store, which opened in Nov. 2015, before long to be its only San Francisco location. And what will come of the Market Street shop's trademark exterior -- with its custom lettering and gigantic artist'south mannequins? Remainder assured: Flax is in conversation with Back to the Drawing Board, the company that originally designed the signage in the '80s, about transferring the entire building's facade to Oakland.
Struggling to stay open
Justine Kessler, a native San Franciscan, illustrator and "small fourth dimension taxidermist" who works as assistant managing director of San Francisco'south Artist & Craftsman Supply, says she'll miss the Market Street location, but she'southward happy the business concern plans to remain family unit endemic and in the Bay Surface area. "In that location's simply so many factors [to staying open]," Kessler says.
While Flax's shift to Oakland is a bellwether moment for the San Francisco arts community, the pigment tubes haven't dried up everywhere in the city. For many artists, Flax will never exist the most affordable shopping destination, especially compared to the deals offered at Blick, the big-box chain on mid-Market that opened shortly afterward the metropolis's branch of Pearl Pigment Co. closed in 2010.
But for those who prefer to patronize the independently-owned modest businesses of San Francisco, at that place are nonetheless options, still few. Art supply store Arch weathered their 2014 eviction by opening two nearby locations -- a space inside the California College of Arts San Francisco campus specifically catering to students' needs, and a pop-upwards store on Third Street in the Dogpatch.
Caryn Oka, an ARCH employee working in the Third Street location, confirms plans to movement into a larger space in the American Industrial Eye and aggrandize to something more than closely resembling their original shop in the most time to come.
Mendel's still operates every bit a family unit-endemic arts and crafts supply store on Haight Street, where it opened in the 1960s as a house paint and linoleum shop. Mendel'southward isn't going anywhere, owner Naomi Silverman says; thankfully, her grandfather had the foresight to buy the edifice.
The last ones continuing
For Silverman, Flax'south motion isn't just about the niche business concern of art supplies. "Information technology's more and more hard to run independent retail of whatever sort in San Francisco," she says.
Arty Cordisco, owner and operator of Douglass & Sturgess, a more often than not sculptural art supply store on Howard Street, hadn't nevertheless heard of Flax's move when nosotros spoke on the phone. "Information technology's non good news," he says, echoing Silvermen'due south sentiment about the changing retail mural.
When prompted, Cordisco is able to name more than art supply stores that accept closed than those nevertheless open. At this he pauses, and asks, semi-seriously: "Am I the last man standing?"
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Source: https://www.kqed.org/arts/11225430/where-have-all-the-art-stores-gone
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