Updates and Amendments

So you may have noticed, this week's Echo cover story was done by your's truly, and naturally, as these things go, you get the big detail right after your deadline.

So if you didn't hear, the Family Thrift Store will only be around as long as the month of March. An attempt to hammer out a new lease failed and Ray Mitchell says that he will be closing up shop at the end of the month. But it won't go without fanfare.

I caught up with Mitchell by phone on Thursday, and while I make mention of our discussion in this week's "Guelph Beat," I'm giving Guelph Politico readers a bit of sneak peak.

"So we're out of here at the end of the month, whether we reappear again... it's unlikely," said Mitchell. "But it's not about us, we're hoping that we can shame [the city] into providing something for the artists. They have to do something after all of this."

And something does appear to be happening. "I think we're going out with a seven-day music festival," he adds. Several local musicians and bands of old are apparently gathering to the give the store a grand send-off in what Mitchell says he's leaning towards calling "Thrift-stock."

"So rather than be negative, we'll be positive because that will make city hall feel even worse," he adds.

Mitchell also said that he's been getting a lot of letters of support and remembrance from customers past and present, and will put them all together in a collected scrapbook as a souvenir. Plus, there's all the media attention Mitchell's story's been getting, and he adds that the Mayor called him personally last Friday, which he sees as a direct response to media pressure.

"But at the end of the day I'm going to be the only one that's happy, my customers are the ones who are going to be worse off," Mitchell says with his typical resigned manner. "I'll be better off then where I am now, but it's not the way I wanted."

Read the original story here.