How about a hot cup of Joe?

Cafe Valverde opened today in what was formerly Fuel, on Essex Street. This is the first retail location for Nelson and Eleni, online coffee importers from the North Shore who focus on beans from Bolivia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Guatemala for all you coffee aficionados.

Cafe Valverde in Salem

We drink a fair amount of coffee around here and as you know Salem has some great offerings.  We decided to drop by and get a feel for the newest cafe in Salem.

The decor was simple modern coffee shop and the counters, floors and seating was clean comfortable. The earthen floor tiles, golden yellow walls and huge windows gives this small space a warm and inviting feel.

Prices range from $1.49 for a simple 12oz. cup of coffee to $5ish for some of the espresso drinks. They also have a variety of bagels, pastry, brownies, and other assorted goodies.

Counter at Cafe Valverde

How was the coffee?

With six people behind the counter and me being the only customer I figured this would be a 30 second visit.  I asked the counter girl what she recommended I try and got the typically uninformed answer of “everything is good”.  I chose a caramel vanilla latte and a plain cup of coffee.  After a 10 minute wait I got my coffee and hit the road for my 5 minute walk back home.  I took a sip of my drink and promptly burned the taste buds off my tounge. My latte was a scalding 168 degrees! According to the National Coffee Association, this is the correct temperature range, but I can tell you it’s hotter than anyone around town serves it so be careful.

Caution hot coffee

I usually reserve my palette for fine Scotch and rich chocolates, but the overall thought is that the coffees we tasted were a bit thin and, although clean, they left a slightly bitter earthy aftertaste.

If you are a real coffee snob, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Also, knowing that it takes a while for most restaurants/shops to work the kinks out after their initial opening we will return later.

Does my web site suck?

Look at the following rules and rate your website objectively, better yet have a stranger do it for you.

RULE #1 In today’s super-highway-information-tubes age people no longer pick up the phone to get the information they seek, they use google at any hour of the day or night and bypass pesky human interaction.

It might be hard for some elderly people to grasp but consumers comparison shop and gather information online. This is especially true for destination locations (like Salem, Massachusetts: the home of Halloween and all things spooky) where people might not be in the same time zone or don’t want to spend money for a long distance call. If people can’t find you, you don’t exist. Take the time to search for your site and see if it can be found.

When preforming a search, look for your business from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know of you.

• Don’t search for “Bella Verona” (yay #1 result)
• Do search for “Salem MA Italian restaurants” (boo not found in first 1000 results)

RULE #2 Just the facts ma’am

Once someone finds your site make sure important information is served up in an easily digestible fashion.  Remember the five W’s of journalism (Who? What? Where? When? Why?) and show them to your potential customer. People don’t want to be burdened by lengthy load times or superfluous BS. Content is King!

Good: http://www.picklepot.com
Poor: http://www.cilantrocilantro.com

RULE #3 Your online property is just as important as your bricks and mortar property.

For the love of God people, get a good domain name and have your web site hosted with a real company!  Your restaurant is in the bustling down town area or over by the college or on a heavily trafficked thoroughfare because you understand the first lesson in real estate – location, location, location. That lesson carries through to online properties. Own a domain name that is reflective of your business.

• Good : www.RedsSandwichShop.com – Name of business: Reds Sandwich Shop
• Fair: www.HipFinz.com – Name of business: Finz (I get it, they’re hip)
• Utter Failure: http://www.geocities.com/str_mw/ Name of business: who cares

Oh, and don’t let your domain name expire. If you buy a new one have the old one forwarded in case it’s indexed anywhere. Otherwise you might end up like this.

• http://www.pyramidbooksofsalem.com

RULE #4 The design of your web site is more important than the visual merchandising of your product or the exterior upkeep of your shop.

A polite and well groomed doorman greeting you at your fancy hotel goes a long way to justify the price you pay to stay there. He is a welcoming ambassador there to serve you. Your website is a silent doorman greeting more potential customers than you can imagine. It’s in your best interest to put on a good face and inspire confidence in those who might spend money with you.

Your best friend might have a flare for decorating a room or your brother-in-law might be a networking engineer, that in no way qualifies them to be interactive designers. Keep them away from your web site.   Let’s look at another three local Salem based websites and marvel at their design, which one is clean, has good use of color and font, is easily readable or inspires you to pull your wallet out?

• http://www.redssandwichshop.com
• http://www.grapevinesalem.com
• http://dodgestreet.com

That’s right, it was a trick question none of them do any of those things. This is not to say that they don’t provide good content but they fail on the delivery method.

Like it or lump it, a poorly designed site is a direct reflection of your actual business, by the same token a well designed site is also a reflection of your business. Can you walk right in and easily find what you are looking for or do you have to go through a few doors then guess at where to find things based on some kooky organization that is understood only by the owner (Derby Books *cough*)?

• Easily findable segmented information: http://www.sacredgear.com
• Wait a tick, is this a site about a dead dog? : http://www.goddesstreasure.com
• What the hell? Get me off this kiddie ride! : http://www.penelopespetboutique.com

For people doing some research prior to their trip to Salem, their first impression is made at your web site.  Why would they come and visit your physical location if your competitor has similar product at similar prices but has made a better first impression?

RULE #5 Don’t piss off your reader with poor user experience.

Have you ever seen an ad saying that new HDTV you want is on sale but when you get to the store, you find the sale over? What about getting directions to somewhere but along your way you find an error and end up getting lost, stopped or misdirected? The same thing can happen on your website.

What makes a reader leave your page faster than a cop scooting down Washington Street on a segway? Broken links. Why even have a link on a page if it goes to nowhere?  I understand that sometimes you might link off of your web site to some other site and they might change their pages (although you can check for that) but linking to a non-existent page on your own site is a total bonehead maneuver.

• Bonehead maneuver: http://www.historicsalem.org (click on site guide in the footer)
• Try almost any link: http://www.wlpssp.com pathetic

Any copywriter worth her/his weight in Red Bull and Twinkies will tell you usage of “click here” as a link is dead. Looking beyond that, if you are going to tell your reader to “click here” you had better a) make it clickable and b) make it go to a live page somewhere.

• Click here fail : http://www.redlionsmoke.com/index_files/Page790.htm

Proper Coding

People don’t like to wait around. The average person will only wait 7 seconds for a page to load. Honestly, there really is no reason for any site to take longer than 7 seconds to load if coded properly.

• Fail: http://strombergs.com/directions.html 27.789 seconds (due to third party app)

That brings about another issue: pictures on your web site. Make sure they are the proper size and resolution. Don’t try and cram huge images in a small space.

• Photo Fail: http://strombergs.com/calendar.html that little photo is 2288 x 1712 px and 882 kb – WTF?

Links as we mentioned above are a major issue:

• link coded wrong http://www.salemathenaeum.net/resources.html House of Seven Gables link has an extra quotation mark within the link code
• even the heavily-trafficked http://www.hauntedhappenings.org/stay_eat.php didn’t close their link tag on the Clipper Ship Inn link properly

Great lots of sites suck, what does this have to do about being a Salem Insider?

I’m glad you asked.

If we were in some podunk little town with only dial-up service, dueling banjos playing in the background and the latest Charlie Chan film playing at the bijou theater, then I might cut you some slack. But Salem, Mass is filled with some outstanding web professionals, freelancers, design shops and authors. Because this historic seaport city focuses it’s efforts on publicizing retail, museum and historic businesses, you might not be aware of the abundance of talent working in the internet arena.

Tomorrow I will introduce you to some local web professionals. I’ll give you some tips on finding the right designer/developer/company to help get your website to where you need it to be. And best of all I’ll teach you how to head into a new site build or site redesign with your eyes open, knowing how to get the most from the person you hire.

Matt told me that he and his wife were not looking to become shop owners here in town but felt compelled to keep this well established clothier open and expand it with a focus on local artists and some edgier products.

The Grand Re-opening of Fools Mansion in Salem

Grand re-opening of the Fools Mansion

Traditionally the Fools Mansion cornered the North Shore market on Goth and Ren-Faire clothing with a good bit of Edwardian and Victorian pieces thrown in. Today they still have the cloaks , pirate shirts, and corsettted womens clothing but have expanded their inventory to add more contemporary hats, a line of day-of-the-dead bags, printed shirts from a local artist and more. In addition to clothing Fools Mansion carries jewelry, art and music all from local Salem artists.

Last Saturday night following their Friday ribbon cutting ceremony with the Mayor, they held their Grand Re-opening party. With a packed house well known goth/industrial DJ Addambombb spun a great mix while a newly opened back room served as the dance floor. Earlier in the night Orange Nicole preformed as did local belly dancer Aepril Schaile.

Fools Mansion

The opening party brought together plenty of Salem insiders, shop owners and a few out of towners. I’m sure that with their new community focused approach, inspiration from fabled NYC St. Marks street shops and great customer service Fools Mansion will continue to be a staple shop for tourists and insiders alike.

For more pictures from this event check out our Flickr page.

Recently I was asked to come and cover the ribbon cutting ceremony with the Mayor, Chamber of Commerce and some business owners over at one of Salem’s newest and most unique shops in the down town area, Witch City Ink.

Jennifer Bell(l) Witch City Ink Staff with Mayor Kimberly Driscol and Renus Oosthoek(r)

Your first reaction might be – Why? Why is there a tattoo shop in down town and why would there be a ribbon cutting ceremony there? Why does this shop interest the mayor and the chamber of commerce and why does this new retail space draw other business owners?

First of all take every old stereotype of a seedy tattoo parlor filled with bikers and sailors and toss it out the window.  If you keep up with current trends on TV (TLC or Discovery Channel) you know that there is a new era of tattoo, piercings and body modification being ushered in by young artists turned business people with a focus on quality, respectable work.  Witch City Ink is one of this new breed of tattoo studios raising the bar for their field.

Situated in the Pedestrian Mall on Essex Street (with an additional entrance from the Museum Place Mall) across from Pamplemousse, , this new business features Italian marble floors, Tibetan red walls, and a selection of antiques collected by shop proprietor Natan on his various world trips.  It is obvious that much care was spent transforming this old retail space to a new high end shop in the same vein as Salem Wine Imports or Sacred Gear.  The front retail/waiting area leads to a hallway where various artists have rooms for tattooing and piercing.  The back area of the shop (where one enters from the mall) is another waiting area with racks of “flash” or pre-drawn art.  These 6 foot tall 3 foot wide displays contain thousands of examples of traditional imagery which a customer could ask for or use as inspiration for a custom piece of art.

Why is this a big deal?

Unlike many of the businesses in the Museum Place Mall and allong the Pedestrian mall the hours of Witch City Ink promise not to be 9-5.  This draws the interest of the Salem Chamber and other local business owners as there is a push to bring life to this area at night.  The Salem Chamber “after hours” events (similar to “alive after 5″ campaigns) highlighting the fact that many businesses close up shop at 5pm.  On some of the web forums that residents participate in a large concern is that shops that some locals would like to patronize are closed up by the time people get out of work.  With Witch City Ink staying open later into the evening and a Rita’s Italian Ice opening up next door (many franchises have 10pm closing hours) this could be the catylist Salem needs to bring about friendlier hours in some of our down town shops.

In addition to the obvious economic implications the arrival of Witch City Ink could have to the area,  its location is key in opening the eyes of those who still have negative connotations about this type of business. Derby Streets’ Purple Scorpian has been doing tattoos and body piercings for some time now and the recently opened Sacred Harp Tattoo on Boston Street prove that Salem is forward thinking in its acceptance of this art form.  However neither shop is as visible to the passer-by as this Essex Street locale.

Whether you love or loathe tattoos and the people who wear them one thing is for sure, new and diverse businesses in the down town Salem area is a positive step for all local businesses. Many residents sit on the side line complaining that there are too many of one type or the other stores yet they do nothing about it.  It’s refreshing to see young entrepreneurs with a new perspective opening up (or taking the reins of) shops like Hex, Fools Mansion and now this upscale tattoo shop Witch City Ink.

(c) Forrest Frazier

Chris Crandall over at In Season is offering a great service to the people of Salem who are interested in getting some locally grown / harvested food. They have New England suppliers for fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, bread and dry goods and deliver it to down town Salem each Saturday. All you need to do is log on to their website, click on the shop links and find what you want. Saturday you mossy on down to Pamplemousse where they will be set across the street from 11am to 2pm and pick up your fresh food.

This time of year there is not too much in the way of fresh fruits and veggies but I’m assured that is soon to come in the warmer months. For now, check out their other selections including meat, dairy, breads and jams.

Perhaps I was correct when I stated “now is the time to pick up retail space in the pedestrian mall.” When Cool Jewls moved out of their corner spot in the mall, Salem’s Vintage Photography saw an opportunity and moved right in. The prime location will surely boost their bottom line. Acupuncture Solutions is also moving from their current home next to Cinema Salem to a more prominent spot just down from Essex N.Y. Deli & Pizza.

Another move from inside the Museum Place mall and expansion into a more prominent location in the pedestrian Mall was Signatures. The womens clothiers storefront and interior looks much more clean and sophisticated. Now if they could get their website out of the early 90′s they would achieve a total transformation.

Fool’s Mansion closed its doors which is sad to see, now the goth kids will have to be content with Hot Topic. Update: According to the current owner a couple has agreed to purchase the shop and continue carrying its current clothing lines hopefully re-opening in April.  The papers may be passed as early as next week. On the other end of Essex Street however, Salem’s own manwitch Christian Day is set to open up his new venture Hex. Salem’s latest witch shop, in a fantastic location between Harrison’s Comics and Laura Lanes Skin Care.

Also hitting the ground running is Salem Wine Imports (seems like we mention them often around here) with a variety of offerings. The newly reopened Spirit’s is packing in the customers at their bar and still working out their dining issues. The old Bella Luna space has been built out and opened as Sixty2 on Wharf it looks to be a sweet summer spot.

The pedestrian mall will also be seeing an other new shop next month when Witch City Ink opens up across from Pamplemousse. Witch City Ink will be Salem’s first down town tattoo shop since the 1940′s. It’s owner a Salem resident was a driving force behind this art form becoming legal once again in Massachusetts, and prides himself in his clean shops and exceptional artists.

It’s nice to report on Salem businesses opening up and doing well. Keep your eyes open for more reviews of the shops mentioned here and a few in depth inteviews with the people that make it happen.

I enjoy the bunghole for something fun and different once in a while. It’s also fun to share a friends first bunghole experience with them, I love to see the look on their face. The bunghole never fails to get a smile. I love Bunghole Liquors.

With the recent holidays, I hosted a few out of town guests who were excited to go to the bunghole of all places. This modest package store (packie and package store are Massachusetts slang for liquor store) probably sells more T-shirts than cases of beer. They have parlayed their unique name into an online brand and sell swag near and far.

Salem’s Bunghole has a storied past with the building being used as a funeral palour during the time of prohibition (19th century prohibition not Salem’s first prohibition in 1657). Downstairs in a room perhaps used for embalming, the funeral director and his cohorts would meet to put back a few cocktails (he put the “fun” back in funeral). For whatever reason, the group refered to this private drinking spot as “the bunghole.” A bunghole is actually a hole bored into liquor casks (think scotch, wine or rum) which is plugged by a large cork known as a bung. One of the owners drinking buddies suggested that if prohibition was ever lifted he should turn the place into a liquor store. On December 5th, 1933 when the Twenty First Amendment was ratified Bunghole Liquors applied for and was granted the second liquor license that Salem issued.

There are plenty of better package stores in town but the Bunghole is fine for a neighborhood packie. And if you are like many tourists you’ll want to swing by for a photo and perhaps a coosy, church key or t-shirt. Just don’t forget, they sell alcohol in there too.

Well, after much anticipation and a huge flame war on one of Salem’s message boards, Salem Wine Imports is now open.

Now we at TheSalemInsider.com are not oneologists but we do like a good glass of wine now and again. Thankfully the owner of Salem Wine Imports was available to help guide us through the store. Wines are arranged by region and nicley displayed around the shop.

A special bonus for any wine n00b is the eight bottle draught system in the rear room. A nitrous system keeps the wine fresh so you can sample a variety of bottles before you buy. This is a great feature and I can for see many wine tastings in the future.

In a time when so many other businesses are moving or closing their doors its great to see a new and somewhat unique shop open up in Salem. We wish them success.

Looks like it’s a bad time to be an existing business on the mall. On the flip side, I bet you could pick up some retail space for a great price!

While there is no information on their website, the front window at their 177 Essex Street location is now sporting the big “For Sale” sign you see above.

I don’t know anything about the costume business but my guess is that you probably wont see a dime until next September.