Seems like everytime I turn around, there’s some other little thing about the city that I find out is changing permanently, and not for the better. Thursday it was finding out that the city’s best karaoke outlet, Phong Le Karaoke is pulling up stakes for the greener pastures of Houston. Impressively, they started limited operations on the 13th of September, which strikes me as pretty good turnaround for such a small retailer.

It’s tough to blame them, really. Considering the current state of the economy, a small specialized company has almost no chance in New Orleans unless it is in an industry that actually benefits from the kind of mass destruction we saw from Katrina or unless they have a large internet sales base.

Phong Le has been there as long as I can remember, and they always had a friendly and helpful staff. The really great thing about little mom and pop operations like Phong Le was that they knew the products they were selling. A much different experience than walking into a Best Buy and being accosted by sales people who don’t have any idea about the relative merits of the products they sell.

For me, one of the best parts of every trip to New Orleans was the visit to Phong Le’s to pick up the latest list of disks that I had accumulated since the previous visit. Luckily, I’ll be able to continue to buy from them online, but it won’t be the same. Best of luck to them and to all the other small local businesses that find themselves in similar positions.

Related posts:

1. Living “over there”
2. It’s aliiiiiiiiiiiiive!
3. Volunteers?
4. An overview
5. Ya THINK????