“Feel Good Friday.” Support Local Words and Waves.

By Visit Ventura

  It seems like an odd combination, but it’s not really. Ventura is home to world class waves that will send your heart soaring, and equally uplifting writers whose words will do the same. Writers like Woody Woodburn and Roger Thompson and Jeff McElroy. Waves like C Street, the Rivermouth, and Rincon. No surprise that some of the writers are surfers too. “Feel Good Fridays” are about Supporting Local, and this Friday we’ve decided to take a somewhat left of center tack. Yes, Visit Ventura has been working hard to do our part to help all our local friends through these difficult times. We started “Takeout Tuesdays” (for our restaurants), and “Thirsty Thursdays” (for our breweries/wineries/spirits/and even chocolatiers). “Feel Good Fridays” are the next right step — and they’re as simple as they look. Pick a Friday (or honestly, any day of the week), and do what you can to support a local business. This time around, we’re asking Venturans to cast an eye toward our local surf shops, book stores, writers, and — in a collective writing sense — our community newspaper, the one-and-only Ventura Breeze. At their roots, they’re all small businesses. And, like so many small businesses, they are all labors of love. No one at the Harvard Business School ever stood at the podium and said, “Invest everything in a surf shop” or “Publish a community newspaper,” but, thankfully, many Venturan’s don’t walk the conventional path and life isn’t just about the ledger. Not many PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants can walk away from their desk when there’s a swell, and their life is the poorer for it. But it is also true that COVID-19 has hit these unconventional businesses as hard (or harder) than most. So on “Feel Good Friday” (or any day), we are asking you, if you can, to pay a little something forward. Surf shops like Ventura Surf Shop (Today — May 29th — at 9 am on Visit Ventura’s Facebook Page, we spoke with the one and only Bill “Blinky” Hubina of Ventura Surf Shop; you can watch any time after the fact), Walden Surfboards, Wave Front Surf Shop, Proctor Surfboards, Rip Curl Surf Shop (Yep, we have A LOT of surf shops; lucky us). Or reach out to local writers like Thompson, McElroy and Woodburn (you may know of others — let us know). Or drop into local bookstores like Abednego Book Shoppe (open now) or Bank of Books (opening soon) — world class in their own right (Renowned book lover Anthony Hopkins favored Bank of Books). Clarey Rudd, owner of both Abednego Book Shoppe and Bank of Books, has even come up with an innovative Support Local concept. “We’re encouraging people to visit twelve small Ventura businesses, to maybe stray beyond their normal pattern and visit some of the amazing, unique places maybe even they, as locals, don’t even know,” says Rudd. “I call Ventura the ‘Hub of Small Businesses in Ventura County.’ We overflow with uniqueness. Take a vacation locally, and travel to shops in our community that you’ve never been to.” The reward (other than discovering something wholly unique)? Well, bring your list of the twelve places you visited into Abednego Book Shoppe or Bank of Books, and you can pick up a free book from their Community Support Department. Rudd, who encourages other Ventura businesses to come up with similar incentives, smiles. “We’re hoping to give away thousands of books.” No more powerful tool than optimism Now is the time to do what Ventura does best — help each other. It’s a proud fact — roughly ninety percent of our businesses are locally owned. They are our friends and neighbors. Sometimes they are our family. They might even be you. What nicer way for all of us to help our neighborhood retailers than helping in a small way to see them through these difficult times? Small things add up. When Venturans pitch in, they add up fast. Community gets community through hard times. But Venturans already know that.