| Searching for cool in Coolidge Corner
The heart of Coolidge Corner may be where Harvard and Beacon streets meet in Brookline, but the soul is just west of the corner, where many of the businesses are still independent. Rhona Hirschowitz calls these businesses the "brave survivors," the ones that have plugged along as more and more chains have arrived.
Hirschowitz knows intimately who's made it and who hasn't. As vice president of the Coolidge Corner chapter of the Brookline Chamber of Commerce from the mid-1980s to 2002, she visited both the owners of new stores (to welcome them) and departing owners (to grieve with them). The 68-year-old South African native was herself a shopkeeper, running an international craft store, The Pear Tree, on Beacon Street for 20 years and then reopening it as a bead store on nearby Marion Street for one year. She sold the business last year. Hirschowitz agrees to show me around, and we start at Wild Goose Chase (1431 Beacon Street, 617-738-8020), which appropriately bills itself as the end of the quest for the perfect gift. Crazy clocks, funky frames, and groovy garden decor are all here. Across the street is Bazaar International Gourmet (1432 Beacon Street, 617-739-8450), a grocer that has a line seven deep when we go in. "Look, they have 10 different kinds of feta," marvels Hirschowitz, pointing inside a glass case packed with edibles that you can't always find on this side of the Atlantic. Continuing on, we walk by Brookline Natural Nail (1376 Beacon Street, 617-739-4445), where Hirschowitz gets her nails done "when I do go, which is the biggest treat." She adds, "There is a profusion of nail salons here." She points an unmanicured finger across the street to the Russian eatery Victor's Cafe (1379 Beacon Street, 617-232-1168), which, she says, serves "the most incredible borscht. . . . There are so many great ethnic restaurants here that I don't know how to even begin to tell you which ones are the best." But this she knows: The Indian restaurant Rani (1353 Beacon Street, 617-734-0400) makes slow-cooked food in clay pots that is so good it's "indescribable." One of our last stops is Party Favors (1356 Beacon Street, 617-566-3330), where owner John Pergantis offers all manner of cakes as well as a fiesta of pinatas, balloons, and candies. But today his focus is on repairing a Shrek cake that a customer accidentally smudged before a birthday party.
Patrick Gerard Healy Back |
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