Gloucester, Gloucester, Gloucester

This isn’t a restaurant review. There will be time for that later.

This is an indictment. Not of the town and it’s resources, not of the casual or fine dining options. This is an indictment of you, my fellow Gloucester residents. Yes. You.

Perhaps you’ve grown accustomed to the quaint rural charm of the Courthouse area. Perhaps your lives are crowded by the relentless procession of obligatory undertakings, the day-to-day static of appointments and chores that seem to bleed into one another like country music stations when the radio is set to scan in this coastal outcropping of civilization. Perhaps there is comfort in the consistent mediocrity of corporate chain clones. There is, after all, less to find objectionable in a place if it has no personality.

Maybe this is why Chick-Fil-A is clogged with chugging engines, and Starbucks plays host to a carousel of caffeine junkies rushing through the chapters of their lives. Maybe this is why Wal-Mart is the most happenin’ place in town.

I’m not here to crusade against chain stores. I go to them. I too find solace in precisely met expectations, no matter how diluted those expectations might be.

I’m not crusading against anything. This is about what I’m crusading for.

And that, Gloucester, is your identity.

This country is strewn with the strip mall monotony of chain stores. Stand in the parking lot of an Applebee’s, and you could be anywhere. I’d say “literally” anywhere, but that word is actually something I’m crusading against. I digress.

What makes this place magical, and I do hope you believe your town to be just that, is its character, its charm, its subtle resemblance to the heavenly archetype of that little town in Tim Burton’s Big Fish, awash with daffodils and the easy Southern stroll of life being timelessly lived.

Stop and smell your daffodils, Gloucester.

There are so many great places to eat, to shop, to sip sweet tea and speak of things without stress among hanging plants, local art, craft beer. Over gourmet dishes, surrounded by the delicately picked notes of musicians you can grab a drink with when their set is done. It’s called Main Street.

Take that turn off Rt 17 (to speak metaphorically, there being some great locally owned spots on that road), and do something you can’t do anywhere else in the world: be a part of what makes Gloucester great.

Catch y’all in the Courthouse,
-The Gloucester Foodie