A funny thing happened on the Charlotte Amalie waterfront Thursday evening. Dusk fell and shops stayed open and scores of people filled the sidewalks, alleys and passages.
It was the first time in recent memory that shop owners failed to shut down by 5 p.m. The "Town Buy Night" experiment, which will continue on Thursday nights for the next seven weeks, was spearheaded by Jim Armour of Armour Enterprises, which owns Royal Dane Mall and International Plaza, and Fraser Drummond, senior vice president of Topa Equities.
By most indications, it was a successful start. Stores in the three small blocks from International Plaza to Trompeter Gade were staying open until 9 p.m., seeing customers and making some sales. There was live music in at least a half-dozen spots: a young woman played Irish pennywhistle at Beans, Bytes & Websites, a tenor saxophonist played some tasteful popular tunes in Palm Passage.
At Grandma Sandy's, Alonzo Haines did some Milt Jackson-like riffs on steel pan. Not a lot of folks were drifting that far down the alleys, but it wasn't empty either.
Tom Unger, an English teacher at Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, heard about "Town Buy Night" through the news media and decided to meet up with friends downtown for dinner. "I think it's a really good thing for locals too," he said at Grandma Sandy's.
According to Armour, local hotels had been hearing that guests wanted to be able to do some shopping after 5 p.m. The crowd for the inaugural evening seemed to be a mix of locals, sailors from the U.S. Navy ships moored outside the harbor and hotel guests.
A couple from Puerto Rico who were staying at the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort were pleased to poke through Carson Company Antiques in Royal Dane Mall. Owner Julie Carson said, "We’ve been getting a trickle of people in, and we've made a few small sales."
Carson, who's been in the same location since the mid-'70s, remembers when there was nightlife downtown and said she's all for the "Town Buy Night" experiment.
"There's a lot of people who want to come down here during the day, but it's hard to park — it's just too crazy," she said.
Seaman Mike Graf of the guided missile cruiser USS Cape St. George was certainly happy to see the shop Going Seanile open past 5 p.m. — and owner Janelle Zachman was happy to see him there.
Graf was buying a pair of the Oakley shades he had seen when ashore earlier. "I was waiting for like an hour for the ship-to-shore boat to fill up and head into the harbor," he said. "I was hoping I'd make it in time before they closed."
Zachman was beaming; the store was buzzing. "I think it's awesome, a great idea," she said of the late Thursday hours. "It's nice to see downtown not roll up the sidewalks. There's a good police presence — I've seen the same cop walk by outside a couple of times already."
Topa Equities' Drummond was spotted among those milling about, and said Police Chief Jose Garcia and Deputy Chief Theodore Carty have agreed to "touch base with us each week, to kind of fine-tune their manpower, figure out where to put the additional personnel."
Drummond hopes to see the number of people turning out grow as word gets out, and see more downtown stores, restaurants and bars join in.
Two uniformed officers strolling up the sidewalk may have inadvertently summed up best the first "Town Buy Night" when asked about their downtown beat for the evening.
"Everything's going smooth," one said. "It's a nice crowd."
"So far, so good," said the other.
