I thought I would take a moment to mark a milestone

I started up this idea in January 2012 and I thought to myself if I had 200 followers on twitter after 1 year it would have been a success but today I hit 2500 just before my 2 year anniversary.

I admit my inspiration was ShopTalk in The Coast and it’s great that I get to share ideas with lifestyle editor Allison Saunders who takes some of my observations and turns them into well researched and written stories. I also have to thank the gang at haligonia who syndicate the blog and retweet my babbling. Colleen Cosgrove who has also been a supporter and has made retail reporting more common place in the Herald.

The idea was to highlight the opening and closing of shops and to try to answer the age old question of “I wonder what they’re building there?” but it has turned out to be more. I had an idea to create an event to celebrate small business and I took my idea to Gordon Stevens, who with the weight (and frankly awesomeness) of the I Love Local HFX movement, took my idea and some ideas that were are already milling around and now we have the great OpenCity in May and CityHarvest in October.

My job is made easier by all of you who contribute ideas and share your observations with me. I try and cover all of HRM but most of my life I’m roughly no further than 5km of one of the bridges, but as a kid growing up in Woodlawn I know there is more to metro. All of you local business, a business associations that support me as well and realize that helping out your fellow biz makes for a strong community.

You can look forward to the same observations of Retail and Resto news as well as my often satirical observations of life in our great city on the twitter feed mostly just the highlights on the Facebook page and a weekly recap every Sunday on the blog, and a few pics here and there on Instagram.

So thank you to everyone who makes this hobby worth while and rewarding.
-Arthur

Now if only I could find an ethical way to monetize this