'There's no foot traffic': Downtown comic shop set to close its doors
He said there were break-ins and theft from the Terwillegar location, as well. He said he knows it comes with the territory of selling collectible items that can soar in value as time goes on.
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'When we had our widows smashed here, it was a desperate act of a desperate man, and he didn't get anything, really,' said Bardyla. 'The second break-in, the guy didn't steal very much. It was just like $200 worth of stuff. He just wanted specific things, and it's not even helpful to me because I couldn't make an insurance claim because he didn't steal enough stuff.'
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After the second break-in, Bardyla said police advised him to invest in roll shutters, but he argued that it would make the neighbourhood 'look like a prison.' He didn't want to contribute to Downtown being any more uninviting.
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While the crime occurrences in the store didn't drive him out, the stigma of Downtown being unsafe played a major role. The feeling of unease Downtown leads to more people staying off the streets, and retail badly needs casual foot traffic in order to survive. The fact that COVID turned many people into full-time online shoppers has also hurt main streets all across the world.
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ICE District a 'holding pen for suburbanites'
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He said that Edmonton Oilers -related events kept some of his regulars away on game days. And he said the people who went to watch parties didn't go to his store before or after the games.
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'The watch parties — that's a holding pen for suburbanites,' he said.
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Bardyla also offered studio space to local artists. Cartoonist James Grasdal held classes for kids in the space. Wall space was allocated for local artists to hang their works. The hardest part of closing the doors was telling those artists they'd no longer have access to the space, said Bardyla.
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Puneeta McBryan, the CEO of the Edmonton Downtown Business Association, said that the closing of Rolling Tales Pop Culture is sobering news.
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'It's tough to hear about Rolling Tales closing its doors to switch to an online-based business, and we feel for owner Jay Bardyla who is a great community member,' she said. 'The EDBA continues to make every effort to support our businesses and to get Edmontonians thinking about shopping Downtown and supporting local.'
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Rolling Tales was part of an advertising campaign run the EDBA called the Epicentrics, which focuses on quirky shops in the core.
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'The City of Edmonton has also launched a campaign in the last year asking Edmontonians to shop local, in a time when convenience and online shopping is dominating consumer shopping habits,' said McBryan. 'Right here Downtown, over 80 per cent of our retail businesses are local and independently owned and operated, which means that their revenue stays in our city and fuels our local economy. There's a lot more that needs to change to ensure these local businesses can survive and thrive in the core and in other neighbourhoods.'
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