" I'm a part owner in Creep Industries, the record store at 239 Bridge Street. despite my efforts to inject some sort of musical culture into the small town of Phoenixville, PA the kids are mostly horrible excuses for human beings, while the entire town fronts like it wants to be some sort of “Arts and Entertainment” mecca (Mr. Demutis words not mine) what it has really turned into is nothing more than another craph0le small town with one street filled with nothing but fratboy bars inhabited by mostly overly conservative morons. Being a business owner in this town is even more frustrating and backwards, I along with my business partners were pretty much straight up lied to about the kind of foot traffic our store would recieve, yet our landlord is consistently telling us how much money our store “should be making”. Right now the rent for our small store in Phoenixville is $1400 a month plus bills, we recently came to find out that we can rent a store front of equal size in an up and coming area of Philadelphia for half the price, i’d love to do nothing more than close up shop and move everything down there but unfortunately that would probably cost a lot of money so its not really an option at the moment, Our business is doing okay but am I proud and happy Phoenixville business owner? no I find myself constantly pi$$ed off and aggravated with this town, rent is to high for almost all the business spaces and foot traffic during anytime other than dumb first fridays and whatever odd ball festivals they decide to throw is extremely minimal, a good weekday is getting 3 customers in the store, i'm sure some people will try and turn this around on me and say that maybe were not doing good business but thats bulls***, I would be willing to say ANY business in Phoenixville that claims to be thriving right now (Other than the bars) is straight up lying. Cheese! was a great shop that I frequented and would almost always have to wait for service because they were actually in the earlier days busier, they closed to my knowledge because the overhead of the place was to high, Speedies had really good food but it was hardly what I would call speedy nor was it affordable for what it was, despite this fact I ate there a lot because the burgers were so good but never once was Brian the least bit personable and on top of that it would sometimes take 30 mins to get a burger? what the he** man. Tyler James I always thought of as the least evil of all the bars but even that place sucked, drinks were expensive and I recall one night when one of the bartenders skipped all my songs on the jukebox because she didn't feel like hearing "that punk stuff" (she did not say stuff I cannot get this comment in with the word she actually said, how wonderfully conservative) despite the fact that I was in the bar all night drinking chimay and buying drinks for my friends, whatever, if you only want people to listen to nickelback and whatever other red state rock degenerate aholes listen to don't have an internet jukebox, don't give me the option to play something that your just going to skip anyway. I don't think the town is closing but I can tell you as a business owner that things do not look good and its probably not going to get much better, I don't subscribe to the weird backwards commradery that all the other business owners seem to have i'm trying to be honest about the situation for people who want to know the deal about whats going on. One of the owners of Wolfgang books bailed out because he just couldn't see being able to make it work (great guys, great shop one of the only ones who were nice and supportive of our shop early on.) and thats dissapointing considering how long they have been there, most of the businesses are for sale but people don't like you to know that and its not rumor, you can buy Hipster Home on Amazon or overstock for like 1.5 million (yeah right) as well as a few of the restaurants, while people may not be neccesarily closing they are definetly trying to get out before it gets much worse and thats a fact.
I feared coming here and sharing my opinions because I felt like my harsh opinions would make people maybe not want to shop in my store but then again almost all of our consistent business is from out of town clients or a tight knit handful of kids that feel the same way we do about everything, so I don't really care the townspeople have been very unsupportive for the most part in terms of coming in and shopping, but they are always up our a$$ about paying an obnoxious amount of money to advertise in the first friday flyer or whatever or to put up their flyers for some dumb festival. The only people who I think are doing it the right way right now are Sean and Jeff at The Pickering Creek, Rocky at the Kilt Shop, Fiber Salon and the people own the Bridgeside Deli (far better than any eats on bridge) there may be a few others but these are the ones I believe in, These guys have a great business model and yet are still open minded and smart as hell which is more than I can say for most of the business owners i've come in to contact with. And while were at it how bout letting a little corporate business work its way in, while I do appreciate phoenixvilles intent to keep it pretty independent down on bridge street there is just no foot traffic to support the retail businesses, no real retail related draw of any kind people would rather go to KOP, throw in a gap maybe a chipotle and a cold stone creamery and watch business boom, maybe not but at this point its worth a shot, If I could and money wasn't an issue our store would already be set up and running happily in Northern Liberties. Next time I will be sure to inspect the area i do business in a little more carefully. I've met a lot of really great people here but this town suffers from inflated ego, home prices and an unwarranted sense of entitlement, This is NOT Philadelphia nor is it really a Philadelphia suburb. It is what it is and maybe when it starts realizing that things will begin to pick up, If i'm still living here i'll welcome that change with open arms but more than likely, I won't be here. "