The owners of Amore are an example of the cool people to whom you are referring that are trying to make this place special and unique. If you want to keep the cool people around, you best make sure you support their businesses, which tend to employee even more cool people. I know two cool people who moved away in the last two weeks. If you want the plastic, keep supporting the chains and franchises and the world will be the same everywhere you go. Let's go to McDonalds in SoWal. They have the best french fries. Give me a break. You try to afford rents in Gulf Place by selling $5 dollar pizzas and you will go broke very quickly. You see, you don't sell things for a cheaper price than cost and expect to make up the difference on quantity. Personally speaking, people like TylerT would do just fine buying their pizza online from Papa Johns or Pizza Hut. That is just fine by me. There is a place for that, but, and thankfully, I don't remember either being in the 30A area of SoWal. I support local business when I can. I enjoy the sense of community it brings and the relationships of the many wonderful people who own the shops and the staff who keep it running. That is worth the price difference in most places. When I walk in the door of a place where the staff know me, I feel like I am home again. Never have I felt that on the rare occurance of walking into Wal-mart. I don't want SoWal to have one biga_ss store, named Walmart where you can shop to get everything you ever needed or wanted, including banking services, home buying, toothpaste, toilet paper, and fresh baked frozen pizza.
Just my loud and obnoxious $.02