Exploring Both Sides of the Issue
This afternoon, I drove back from Ridgewood where my wife works and I had to endure awful bumper-to-bumper traffic the whole way home. A 12-mile ride took me 45 minutes.
Tomorrow, I will make the same drive to visit the downtown Ridgewood Street Fair and I guarantee it will take half the time. Why? Because on Sundays here in Bergen County, the malls are closed along with many other establishments. There has been some recent talk about lifting the blue laws or at least having a public vote on it.
I'm a lifelong Bergen County resident, and the blue laws were always a positive thing for me and my family for several reasons. First off, I enjoy exploring all regions of the Garden State and I think many folks are so conditioned to go shopping that statewide tourism would suffer as less families would go visit our farms, parks and outdoor festivals and instead will opt to just go get that latest trendy pair of jeans. Especially in the summer when it's hot out and stores have AC.
Secondly, as an outdoor street food vendor, I benefit from these festivals when I do work on Sundays which always have great turnouts and are all filled with mom & pop crafters and businesses. We are street vendors, without a “brick and mortar” storefront. We need all the customers we can get, but if they go elsewhere, it would reduce our opportunity to earn while simultaneously clogging Route 17 with horrendous traffic and turning what should be a pleasant family day into a hectic regular day just like all the rest. Or maybe I am wrong. Maybe it will have no effect on Route 17. Hmm...let's look into that...
See those who oppose blue laws in Bergen County could not be farther from the truth with some of their commentary, and this discussion usually gets very heated because of all the false rumors out there. It is important for one to understand all sides of all issues, weigh pros and cons, and not take a stand based on misinformation or knee-jerk reactions. I was a VERY staunch supporter of blue laws until having multiple conversations with a friend on facebook who is on the other side of the issue in that he supports a public vote on the subject, not an immediate lift. He wants the people to decide.
What I learned in our conversations is that if the laws are lifted, each individual town would get to decide for itself whether it wants to allow unrestricted business on Sundays, or if it wants to enact its own local-ordinance restrictions. Paramus has such an ordinance, so any lifting of the laws would not automatically mean that the malls would open. He explained to me how people seem to inextricably connect the doing-away of the blue laws with Paramus, and Routes 4 & 17 but the removal of the county-wide blue laws will have no impact whatsoever upon Paramus. They have an ordinance on their books that's even stricter, which would continue in effect untouched.
All of that being said, still, most of the time, those who argue for the lifting of the laws are doing so because they simply want one more day to go to the Garden State Plaza and the other Paramus malls. They protest their inability to do so out of laziness, not out of stimulating independent economic growth. What I mean by laziness is, people don't want to be inconvenienced by driving a few miles west to the Wayne malls which are all open. Now here's a fact about stores in Bergen County towns. They make more money than any other towns in the entire nation. In SIX days. That is a statistical fact, although these figures are not broken down into independently owned businesses and corporate chains which I would love to see.
The thing is, blue laws have been in effect since the 1950s, and if they weren't working, they probably would not have been in place for so many years. I for one am a traditionalist. And though they may have originated (at least in part) with God in mind, another misconception is that the current reason for the laws are that they are religious based. Religion truly has nothing to do with it, the purpose is to keep a certain quality of life in the busiest region of the state—noise, congestion, traffic, pollution—all get eliminated for one day, and it gives residents of the area peace and quiet for a change to leisurely enjoy one day to travel and shop as they please. Yes, shop.
Grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacies, entertainment venues and MANY stores are STILL OPEN on Sunday. It is only clothing stores and certain electronics and furniture stores that cannot be, and it should not be an inconvenience for one to drive to Wayne or upstate to Rockland County. Or anywhere south of Paramus.
Still, despite the fact that lifting the laws would not immediately mean the malls would open, I believe in the slippery slope theory, that they eventually would. It would be truly sad if the only ones who benefit from a lifting of blue laws end up being these malls who are filled with out-of-state big corporations and franchises, not the “little guy” who has to compete with such corporations and franchises for the other 6 days a week.
Overall, I am kind of on the fence with this whole thing. I once felt that the detrimental result of turning the lives of us Bergen County folks completely upside down would be the only thing that would occur by lifting the laws. But now I am not so sure. If we can do it on a “trial basis,” I think that would be a step in the right direction to collect some data. Or, what I would prefer would be the vote. However, unlike a straight public vote, I think there should be a forum consisting of Bergen County business owners, where everything can be discussed first and then the vote takes place. I would be glad to participate in a “mock study” of such an idea, if, for no other reason, market research purposes.
Whatever the outcome, that is the democratic way... And nobody should be blue about it!