FROM COLUMBUS ALIVE:

Like dust in the Tradewinds

by Bob Fitrakis

It's the last Saturday, ever, in Columbus' original "liberated zone" known as Tradewinds. Business is brisk inside the campus area's former countercultural headquarters. It's a fire sale--not a prairie fire as the Revolutionary Youth Movement envisioned sparking in the late '60s--and one customer is panicking and hording his favorite incense.

The store's owner, 59-year-old Yvette Garayalde Wyman, calms the frantic buyer by offering him a phone number to put him in touch with her supplier. A young man quickly grabs a T-shirt inscribed "Tree Hugger." I buy a sterling silver ring engraved with, Wyman informs me, a Native American fertility symbol.

The store's motif and merchandise seems like the product of a business merger of Garcia, Hoffman and Guevera. That's Jerry, Abbie and Che, for identification purposes. On July 15, Tradewinds' last Saturday, unrepentant yippies mingled easily amongst the tie-dye with a new generation of retro, neo and nouveau hippies and freaks.

Scott Solomon, Wyman's landlord, recently gave her a three-day eviction notice.

Tradewinds' pro-bono lawyer, Joe Reed, got a seven-day extension from the court--so on Wednesday, July 19, the business founded by the late and legendary community activist Libby Gregory was scheduled to vanish from the Columbus counterculture scene for good.

But not without one last fight.

Former Columbus Guardian editor Mimi Morris e-mailed her community of friends and political allies last week: "For over 30 years, this store has been the place where OSU first encountered alternatives, where exiled Columbusites went to check in when visiting their old hometown, and (very importantly) where the Columbus Free Press found sanctuary when the FBI tried to stifle dissent in Columbus."

Morris, a Free Press staffer and activist in the '70s, raised the question of whether Campus Partners' ambitious redevelopment plan killed the store. My, my. How the times are a changing--back.

Wyman said she became part owner with Gregory in 1975. "You had to do political work to be part of Tradewinds. We wanted to run a business the way we wanted work to be rather than the way it was," she explained.

Local artist Paul Volker, who worked both at the store and on the Free Press, sheltered in the upstairs offices, echoed this theme: "I think that one of the great things about Tradewinds was that it was a business, a capitalist endeavor, but it did not belong to `capitalists' per se. So it's like saying, `Capitalists don't have a monopoly on capitalism.' Having a store that functions as a hub for the community is a great thing."

Volker, along with Jill Hurley, painted the comfortably familiar mural on the Tradewinds storefront, 1651 N. High St. on the corner of Chittenden Avenue. There was "the dragon over the door," "the moon and the stars" over the window and at the end "the great wave."

Symbolically, the great wave known as the "corporate chaining and malling" of America blew away the entrepreneurial spirit of Tradewinds. When asked what would take its place, Wyman offered, "The word `Starbucks' comes to mind."

Wyman called it the "sterilization of High Street" and suggested that Campus Partners made the already run-down south campus area even worse by forcing out businesses. "There's simply no foot traffic or businesses left to attract customers," she explained.

Already in Chapter 13 reorganization, Wyman refused to pay a $2,000 water bill she claimed resulted from a burst pipe. "I've never paid water in all the time I've leased here and suddenly I'm responsible when a pipe burst?" Wyman believes the landlords who own the deteriorating property in the south campus area intentionally ran it into the ground, because it made more economic sense; once the area becomes blighted and a slum, they'll be eligible for public money, she observed.

Tradewinds' lawyer Reed admitted that the store didn't pay its rent on the first of this month, but has always paid its rent by the end of each month, and had never had a problem with this arrangement before. More than a year remained on Tradewinds' lease, which Reed says is "below market value." The $2,000 water bill was the first water bill the store received in 19 years, he said.

Reed said he is filing a counterclaim, for "intentional interference with business," and sees as Solomon's motivation the "gentrification" of High Street, which has unleashed corporations with deep pockets looking to lease in the campus area.

When contacted by Columbus Alive, Campus Partners spokesperson Steve Sterrett said he was unaware of Tradewinds' demise. "Campus Partners gets unfairly blamed for a lot of things," he said. "I was sorry to see the Souvlaki Palace go also. We favor locally owned small businesses."

Sterrett noted that Tradewinds was not part of agency's "Gateway Development Project," since the store was north of Chittenden and 12th avenues. He said that Tradewinds fit into Campus Partners vision of a lively and vibrant High Street.

He also denied a rumor that the Tradewinds landlord was on the board of Campus Partners.

Landlord Solomon also told Alive that neither he nor his father serves on the Campus Partners board, despite rumors circulating in the pro-Tradewinds camp. On the advice of his attorney, Solomon declined to comment on the Tradewinds situation, citing pending litigation.

As the Alive goes to print, Morris and Volker are orchestrating a symbolic "de-commissioning" of the Tradewinds murals. Volker said, while communities have often come together to paint murals, "This is the first one I know of where people have gathered to paint one out."

He explained, "It is important that we in the community `bury our own dead,' as it were. The store is closed, the mural is dead. Rather than letting the landlord have the privilege of destroying the work, I felt it was better to paint it over ourselves. In this way, the community...the family...still retains full rights to the corpse."

Volker sees the white paint covering his mural as "a death shroud."

Tom McGuire offers a positive perspective on Volker's website, columbusart.com, seeing the "diaspora" from the community gathering spot in a different light: "Good things sprang from such seed as was scattered around," from the strong activist winds that blew from Tradewinds.

The community activism nurtured at Tradewinds lives on in numerous organizations, from the Community Festival to the Free Press quarterly journal and website to this very column. Still, I'm reminded that we don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing up High Street.