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Saving Main Street: Small Business in the Time of COVID-19
A veteran journalist follows an inspiring ensemble cast of small business owners fighting to keep their businesses alive through Covid-19, while exploring the sweeping trends and government policies that had brought small businesses to the breaking point long before the coronavirus hit.
There is a tendency to fetishize small business even as it shrinks before our eyes. Americans extol the virtues of small, local, often family-run shops, yet buy from big-box retailers and chains that dominate the competition. Even before the pandemic, small businesses seemed endangered. When Covid-19 hit, the resounding question was: How will they be able to survive this?
Saving Main Street is an unfiltered, up-close examination of a small group of business owners and their employees, their struggles, and their strategies to survive. It is an eye-opening tale of grit, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit that follows three businesses: a restaurant owner and his rambunctious staff, an immigrant running her own hair salon, and the owner of a "non-life sustaining" gift shop--alongside a larger cast of vividly drawn characters.
Gary Rivlin focuses on the first days of the Covid lockdown and the ensuing eighteen months of chaos, including the personal and financial risks, a contentious presidential election, and contradictory governmental guidelines--all which compounded the everyday challenges of running an independent business trying to attract and retain customers who expect low prices, convenience, and endless choice. Rivlin keenly observes small businesses from all angles, examining commonly held "myths"; contradictions in government policy; enormous racial and class fissures; a national self-identity intrinsically connected to the ideal of small business, and how the decline of this American way of retail impacts our notions of American exceptionalism, community, and civic duty.
As Rivlin reveals, there's something enduring about small business in the American psyche. Life will have changed in unprecedented ways on the other side of this pandemic, yet hard times will also create opportunities, offering hope and survival.
There is a tendency to fetishize small business even as it shrinks before our eyes. Americans extol the virtues of small, local, often family-run shops, yet buy from big-box retailers and chains that dominate the competition. Even before the pandemic, small businesses seemed endangered. When Covid-19 hit, the resounding question was: How will they be able to survive this?
Saving Main Street is an unfiltered, up-close examination of a small group of business owners and their employees, their struggles, and their strategies to survive. It is an eye-opening tale of grit, perseverance, and entrepreneurial spirit that follows three businesses: a restaurant owner and his rambunctious staff, an immigrant running her own hair salon, and the owner of a "non-life sustaining" gift shop--alongside a larger cast of vividly drawn characters.
Gary Rivlin focuses on the first days of the Covid lockdown and the ensuing eighteen months of chaos, including the personal and financial risks, a contentious presidential election, and contradictory governmental guidelines--all which compounded the everyday challenges of running an independent business trying to attract and retain customers who expect low prices, convenience, and endless choice. Rivlin keenly observes small businesses from all angles, examining commonly held "myths"; contradictions in government policy; enormous racial and class fissures; a national self-identity intrinsically connected to the ideal of small business, and how the decline of this American way of retail impacts our notions of American exceptionalism, community, and civic duty.
As Rivlin reveals, there's something enduring about small business in the American psyche. Life will have changed in unprecedented ways on the other side of this pandemic, yet hard times will also create opportunities, offering hope and survival.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 18, 2022
7 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 29, 2022
The travails of small businesses throughout 2 years of government-imposed lockdowns and restrictions would be a worthy subject for a book. This is not that book.
Rivlin focuses on the operations of multiple small businesses in rural Pennsylvania in 2020 - a restaurant, a hair salon, a greeting card store, a pharmacy and a chocolatier - and there are some insights here about how small businesses survived the shutdowns (mostly Paycheck Protection Program funds) and some wider commentary about the state of small businesses generally beyond just the pandemic.
But Saving Main Street is really a narrative from the perspective of a leftist New Yorker who consumes only leftist "news.” Other than the interviews with small business owners, Rivlin’s information came exclusively from “newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and podcasts.” Which media accounts? The New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR and other left-biased “news” sources. Bad enough that he relied on news articles instead of scientific studies and data relating to the pandemic. Worse that he relied exclusively on biased media sources from one side of the political spectrum. Worst that he does not even acknowledge the limitations of his approach, regurgitating opinions from biased media as fact without questioning any of it.
As a result, Saving Main Street operates from the premise that all pandemic-related shutdowns, restrictions and mandates were warranted and appropriate, merely narrating how businesses were forced to deal with them while interspersing the narration with lies and his personal bias. We've got the lie-that-won't-die that President Trump called white supremacists "fine people" and the lie that he advised people to "drink bleach." But the general bias is more common. When Tom Wolf, the Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania makes inept pandemic decisions that needlessly threaten small businesses for no public health benefit, Rivlin blames this on Trump for not providing the governors with enough guidance. Rivlin elides consideration of the absurdity of various mandates, for instance, passing no judgment on a bizarre Wolf dictate that people couldn't drink at a bar unless they also ordered food (COVID doesn't spread while you eat?), and suggests that a mandate to wear a mask while standing in a restaurant but not sitting (COVID doesn't spread when you are seated?) is reasonable rather than idiotic. Because Rivlin only consumes biased media, he hasn't yet learned that vaccines don't stop infections or transmission, repeating long-debunked falsehoods about vaccine efficacy and falsely attributing the extended pandemic to the unvaccinated rather than to the failures of the vaccines to work as represented.
Like President Biden, Rivlin essentially declares the pandemic over in early 2021 when vaccines become available, ignoring the effects of the later surges that resulted when it became apparent to everyone but Rivlin and his media sources that the vaccines didn't work as advertised, and doesn’t address the endless unnecessary restrictions and disruptions that continued well into 2022 because the Democrats in control in places like Tom Wolf’s Pennsylvania refused to drop them.
If you, too, live in a leftist bubble like New York City, only consume leftist advocacy journalism that you believe is “news,” and enjoy an echo chamber in which the opinions you formed by relying on these media sources are deemed facts - Saving Main Street is worth a read. Everyone else who endured more than two years of oppressive, excessive and unwarranted "two weeks to slow the spread" shutdowns, restrictions and mandates imposed by government and public health officials who wouldn’t stop lying to us should take a hard pass.
Rivlin focuses on the operations of multiple small businesses in rural Pennsylvania in 2020 - a restaurant, a hair salon, a greeting card store, a pharmacy and a chocolatier - and there are some insights here about how small businesses survived the shutdowns (mostly Paycheck Protection Program funds) and some wider commentary about the state of small businesses generally beyond just the pandemic.
But Saving Main Street is really a narrative from the perspective of a leftist New Yorker who consumes only leftist "news.” Other than the interviews with small business owners, Rivlin’s information came exclusively from “newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and podcasts.” Which media accounts? The New York Times, the Washington Post and NPR and other left-biased “news” sources. Bad enough that he relied on news articles instead of scientific studies and data relating to the pandemic. Worse that he relied exclusively on biased media sources from one side of the political spectrum. Worst that he does not even acknowledge the limitations of his approach, regurgitating opinions from biased media as fact without questioning any of it.
As a result, Saving Main Street operates from the premise that all pandemic-related shutdowns, restrictions and mandates were warranted and appropriate, merely narrating how businesses were forced to deal with them while interspersing the narration with lies and his personal bias. We've got the lie-that-won't-die that President Trump called white supremacists "fine people" and the lie that he advised people to "drink bleach." But the general bias is more common. When Tom Wolf, the Democrat Governor of Pennsylvania makes inept pandemic decisions that needlessly threaten small businesses for no public health benefit, Rivlin blames this on Trump for not providing the governors with enough guidance. Rivlin elides consideration of the absurdity of various mandates, for instance, passing no judgment on a bizarre Wolf dictate that people couldn't drink at a bar unless they also ordered food (COVID doesn't spread while you eat?), and suggests that a mandate to wear a mask while standing in a restaurant but not sitting (COVID doesn't spread when you are seated?) is reasonable rather than idiotic. Because Rivlin only consumes biased media, he hasn't yet learned that vaccines don't stop infections or transmission, repeating long-debunked falsehoods about vaccine efficacy and falsely attributing the extended pandemic to the unvaccinated rather than to the failures of the vaccines to work as represented.
Like President Biden, Rivlin essentially declares the pandemic over in early 2021 when vaccines become available, ignoring the effects of the later surges that resulted when it became apparent to everyone but Rivlin and his media sources that the vaccines didn't work as advertised, and doesn’t address the endless unnecessary restrictions and disruptions that continued well into 2022 because the Democrats in control in places like Tom Wolf’s Pennsylvania refused to drop them.
If you, too, live in a leftist bubble like New York City, only consume leftist advocacy journalism that you believe is “news,” and enjoy an echo chamber in which the opinions you formed by relying on these media sources are deemed facts - Saving Main Street is worth a read. Everyone else who endured more than two years of oppressive, excessive and unwarranted "two weeks to slow the spread" shutdowns, restrictions and mandates imposed by government and public health officials who wouldn’t stop lying to us should take a hard pass.
February 28, 2023
A solid overview of the pandemic's impact on small businesses. Rivlin talks with chocolate bar makers, gift shop proprietors, and Italian restaurant owners -- mostly in Pennsylvania -- to get a sense of how things played out economically. There aren't any major conclusions here, but Rivlin does offer a useful portrait of preexisting corporate greed creeping in further, the seeds obviously well established even before the pandemic happen, and small businesses struggling to survive, putting in long hours and resorting (in some cases) to desperate measures. I would have liked to learn where some of these scrappy people are now today. The book sometimes doesn't know whether it wants to be a summary of top-down economic policy or a methodical investigation of the little guys, but the microcosmic approach does work in its favor.
September 5, 2023
An interesting book on the effect of the pandemic on a couple of small businesses. Liked this one. 4 stars.
December 17, 2024
The narratives for the businesses who experienced hardship from federal restrictions was excellent but the book was very subjective with negative targeted opinions. Ruined the book.
January 24, 2023
Let's face it. Small businesses, restaurants, gyms, stores, had a rough time of it during the pandemic. This is the story of some of the small businesses in Northeastern Pennsylvania, which is a microcosm of what happened across the country.
Jobs in small businesses were brought to a stand still, but on the outskirts of town, Amazon and Walmart thrived, and didn't share their infection numbers. To mask, or not to mask; to be open as essential, or be deemed non-essential. Some survived, some gave up.
There was issues with government, local, state-wide, and federal.
"The job of saving small business, along with the rest of the US economy in the wake of CVID, fell to a man whose most salient skill seemed an ability to suck to his boss. As secretary of the treasury, Steven Mnuchin had lauded DJT's 'perfect genes' and described him as 'unbelievably healthy,' despite the president's lack of exercise and preference for junk food. Mnuchin, who is Jewish, defended Trump after violence broke out in Charlottesvlle, where marchers chanted, 'Jews will not replace us,' prompting the president's 'fine people' comment about the anti-Semitic protesters. Mnuchin also blocked congressional Democrats seeking Trump's tax returns. According to press accounts, Trump routinely cursed out his Treasury secretary, but Mnuchin's loyalty never flagged. He jumped to defend the president with every outlandish statement Trump uttered and in the face of every unflattering tell-all by a former aide...."
There was dissatisfaction, too, with the Governor, and the severity of the closings he mandated.
I only remember what happened in my neck of the country (northern Illinois, northwest of Chicago) Things were not perfect anywhere. I remember northern Wisconsin begging people who owned second vacation homes in the Northwoods areas not to come. They came anyway.
I learned a lot in the reading of this book. I learned how the chain pharmacies (Walgreens, CVS) evolved to where they are today, and how prescription benefits managers (PBM) wreck havoc on small pharmacies struggling to make a profit. I learned a bit about the structure of Hallmark, and how they manage their franchises, and the slim margins of profit when Amazon takes to selling the same merchandise (Yankee Candles) in their stores. I learned how restaurants juggled to shift to takeout orders to stay afloat, and celebrated small increments in opening.
What I loved is a glimpse offered into the lives of those profiled in the book.
A very interesting read.
Jobs in small businesses were brought to a stand still, but on the outskirts of town, Amazon and Walmart thrived, and didn't share their infection numbers. To mask, or not to mask; to be open as essential, or be deemed non-essential. Some survived, some gave up.
There was issues with government, local, state-wide, and federal.
"The job of saving small business, along with the rest of the US economy in the wake of CVID, fell to a man whose most salient skill seemed an ability to suck to his boss. As secretary of the treasury, Steven Mnuchin had lauded DJT's 'perfect genes' and described him as 'unbelievably healthy,' despite the president's lack of exercise and preference for junk food. Mnuchin, who is Jewish, defended Trump after violence broke out in Charlottesvlle, where marchers chanted, 'Jews will not replace us,' prompting the president's 'fine people' comment about the anti-Semitic protesters. Mnuchin also blocked congressional Democrats seeking Trump's tax returns. According to press accounts, Trump routinely cursed out his Treasury secretary, but Mnuchin's loyalty never flagged. He jumped to defend the president with every outlandish statement Trump uttered and in the face of every unflattering tell-all by a former aide...."
There was dissatisfaction, too, with the Governor, and the severity of the closings he mandated.
I only remember what happened in my neck of the country (northern Illinois, northwest of Chicago) Things were not perfect anywhere. I remember northern Wisconsin begging people who owned second vacation homes in the Northwoods areas not to come. They came anyway.
I learned a lot in the reading of this book. I learned how the chain pharmacies (Walgreens, CVS) evolved to where they are today, and how prescription benefits managers (PBM) wreck havoc on small pharmacies struggling to make a profit. I learned a bit about the structure of Hallmark, and how they manage their franchises, and the slim margins of profit when Amazon takes to selling the same merchandise (Yankee Candles) in their stores. I learned how restaurants juggled to shift to takeout orders to stay afloat, and celebrated small increments in opening.
What I loved is a glimpse offered into the lives of those profiled in the book.
A very interesting read.
November 16, 2022
In 2020, when Covid first entered our lives, and likewise in 2021, we were understandably bombarded with stories about the death toll that it wrought. However, Rivlin’s book focuses on a more uplifting theme: the survival (for the most part) of numerous small businesses in northeast Pennsylvania. With his usual attention to detail, he brings to life the various ups-and-downs that these businesses experienced during those years through vivid portraits of the business owners themselves. Using his fine reporting skills, he explains, in an easy-to-read style, how government (national, state and local) dealt with this plague. At the same, he brings compassion to the plight of the small business owners who, during the period that he writes about, are not trying to thrive. They’re just trying to survive. Sadly, Covid is likely to be with us for years to come. RIvlin’s book will serve as a reminder and record of those early years, years fraught with terror and, at the same time, marked by almost-heroic endurance.
December 4, 2022
It didn't grab me. I'd like to give a thoughtful or insightful reason as to why, but mostly it didn't grab me. The only substantive thing I can say is that I'd have liked a list of characters up front because I had trouble keeping the business owners straight at the book bounces around from one to the other.
Might just be COVID fatigue for me. I really liked the other Rivlin book I read, Fire on the Prairie, which is an excellent look at 1980s Chicago politics.
Might just be COVID fatigue for me. I really liked the other Rivlin book I read, Fire on the Prairie, which is an excellent look at 1980s Chicago politics.
December 14, 2022
Really helpful recent history of the experience of small business owners during the pandemic, the controversial policy that shaped our lives, and the macroeconomic trends that threaten the institutions that make our communities special.
January 2, 2023
Probably not great to read this in 2022 but it was a good recap of the struggles small business faced. Have to remember it is an incredibly small sample size that probably skus a bit. Overall, good book. Would love to read this in 2050 to see the impacts.
February 15, 2025
Good account of the tough situations that small businesses in rural Pennsylvania encountered but that’s what it is. An account. For those looking for concrete ways to saving Main Street, this may not be the book for you.
October 25, 2022
Excellent! Reads like a novel. Engaging stories of struggling business owners --with a surprising ending.
November 8, 2022
Very interesting look at several small businesses and the challenges they faced during the COVID-19 lockdowns, how they survived, and their future prospects.
November 20, 2022
Pretty depressing reading. Didn't realize how corrupt our leadership was during Covid
December 14, 2022
A really well written and interesting read. Got a little political at times, but there were political issues to consider. Kept me interested until the end.
January 25, 2023
Stark reminder of what the Covid-19 outbreak did to small American businesses.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews