It’s the Christmas shopping season and while many opt for the convenience of shopping online, Christine Schoefer prefers a practice called ‘kugeling’.
When I was a child in Berlin, my mother and I walked to the grocer for milk and jam, to the bakery for bread, to the butcher shop for soup bones. The open-air market offered seasonal produce. We passed beguiling window displays: boar bristle hairbrushes arranged around a toy boar; pyramids built of saws and hammers, leather suitcases among cardboard palm trees. Our shopping trips took time. But they were deep dives into the realm of the senses, so they always satisfied.
I never became a pragmatic shopper. Dashing in and out with a list? No. For me, shopping is about looking, touching, walking and talking. That’s why I prefer small shops, even when I’m on a tight budget.
But these seem to be a dying species. When I see another one has closed, I feel sad. And I appreciate all the more the proprietors who love their work of curating – picking special items from the infinity of products and lovingly arranging the selections in artful displays. These tend to be the same shopkeepers who beautify sidewalks outside their doors, set out water dishes for dogs, and donate to local non-profits. They know their customers and care about their neighborhood.
My friend Robin called it kugeling - the happy pastime of strolling down streets to explore small shops, people-watch, and banter with strangers. The Bay Area has many places for ambling from boutique to café to bookstore, for wandering among the color-popping stalls of farmers’ markets, for visiting Mexican, Indian or Ethiopian shops whose smells conjure up travel adventures.