The island may have been quiet, but the skies were clear on New Year's Day, meaning the vibrant red sunset Chocklokas Beach is known for would still be open for business. Michelle and I decided to walk to the water – only three minutes from my house. The sky didn't have the same radiance as Summer, but the lower sun still had a burning ember quality. Instead of reds and oranges filling the sky, the glowing red ball had a corona of light pink and purple – the kind of shades Ailyn imagined Paris would have. Like so many things here this time of year, the sunset was the same, but different.
After the sun fully disappeared behind a cliff, we decided to stroll town and see what was or wasn't happening. It truly wasn't much. A few people walking their dogs – others looking like they were going from one house to another. We encountered maybe ten people moving about in total. That fit.
However, some of the open businesses made less sense. Of course the liquor store and the wine cave. But the Blue Star ferry ticketing office not only on a holiday and not just a day with no ferries – but two days before the next ferry? A jeweler, a florist and the Christodolous bakery – open. No one had a single customer, although Michelle bought a small fruit tart to eat while walking from Christodolous.
Naturally, more businesses are open today. Only I still don't understand the economics behind a lot of it. How many people be shopping for high-end designer clothes at a couple of the boutiques? Is anyone buying diamonds today from the jeweler? Is anyone stopping by the beachwear shop – at all, ever this time of year?
In August, Patmos swells to about 20,000 people lodging and gets sometimes 400 to 6,000 more day-visitors from cruise ships making port calls. These people are on vacation and primed to spend. All the businesses make sense under those conditions.
Obviously, many business owners know there businesses wouldn't be profitable to remain open in the winter and close – hence one has to go to the edges of town even for a cafe right now. With 3,000 residents – of which perhaps half are away right now – it doesn't seem like many businesses would be able to sustain themselves under these circumstances.
The ferries receive public subsidies because they provide vital infrastructure even during periods when there may not be enough customers to keep them profitable. Sometimes I wonder if some of the shops here are really running as public services.
Depending on your definition of a grocery store, there are between two and four open right now. The largest, Alpha Beta, is the one corporate chain business on the island. It has two stories and the square footage of a smaller American supermarket – like the size they sometimes were when I was a kid, not the typical 40,000 square foot size of today.
I find scale and how economies work both fascinating and sometimes hard to imagine. So I researched how many people it takes to support an American supermarket. Unsurprisingly, there are varying answers because geography, square footage and the range of products and services a store offers all matter. That said, it seems a good rough ratio is 5,000 customers to a 40,000 square foot supermarket. Patmos has 3,000 people and let's say Alpha Beta is half to two thirds of the size of your average American store. This seems consistent with the ratio.
Only Alpha Beta isn't the only game in town – because not only are there three other grocery stores of varying size and offerings, but a produce shop, three trucks selling mostly locally grown produce, two butchers, two fishmongers and six bakeries. All of these local specialty shops are predominately supported by locals and likely see only modest sales boosts in the summer – with the exception of the bakeries, particularly the three in the front of town.
I have to assume Alpha Beta – and maybe all of the grocery stores – take a bath in certain off-season months which are offset by Orthodox Easter and the May to September tourist season.
Still, the boutiques, two jewelers, three household cleaning supply stores (separate from the grocery stores that all carry cleaning supplies), the newsstand and souvenir shop that gets stacks of newspapers and magazines in a variety of languages, two or three art and knick-knack shops…. how do they survive? Or are they being operated mostly to give their owners something to do year-round? On an island with three barbers and one bank branch, how can three household cleaning supply shops thrive?
I have a Bachelors of Arts in Business Administration from the University of Washington and the spreadsheet in my head just can't crunch Patmos.
The real estate also confuses me – though I realize there may be more factors I don't understand. From Chokolokas Beach, you can look up at the hill to the left and see new homes and/or apartments being built. Turn around and to the right and there are rows of homes, hotels and holiday apartments abandoned and in disrepair. The same around Grikos – new expensive houses are under construction on some slopes while existing buildings are left either unfinished or to rot on others. Grikos has some For Sale signs, but I saw none around Chokolokas. Maybe the declining properties are tax write-offs, or someone hopes to rehabilitate them as soon as they're able? Or the properties are caught in some kind of probate or contested will? Unlike the economics of household cleaning supplies, there are people I can imagine being able to clue me in about property. Real estate has a lot more narrative than retail.
When Emily and I first arrived on Patmos in late August 2010, I didn't expect to stay the four weeks we did, let alone care anything about real estate and economics. Patmos was just a delightful island stop in a year full of many stops and adventures. Here I am, more than fourteen years later – not just passing through, without Emily and a consumer of household cleaning products. You never know where something will take you, even the most innocuous things.
One thing has remained the same – Patmos has been a refuge from the world. In August 2010, Emily and I left Israel exhausted from its energy and pace – looking forward to Greece where we could slow things down several notches. I flipped through the Lonely Planet looking for a Greek island that had a white house, Santorini-type vibe without all the tourism. Something small and quiet Greek dream. I noticed Patmos and the first line of the section said something to the effect of "if you're looking for a quaint, relaxed Greek island with white houses off the beaten path, Patmos is a gem." Someone might have just written, "this is the island for you." Emily thought it sounded good and was tired enough to let me pick.
Patmos delivered then and it hasn't stopped. Sometimes Patmos hurts some. I look at the curve of the road along the water in front of town and I remember all the days Emily and I walked between Nicholas' and the center of town – or when we returned four years later and did it with Sennen in a stroller. The other day I saw a dog that is probably a descendant of a dog Emily loved in 2010 and despite it all I want to tell her – my heart hurts a little. I could fill a blog post just with these memories – we left them embedded in the fabric of the island – as one does with good memories.
Just like in Westlake, the answer is to keep making new good memories until they outnumber the ones that hurt. After all, Patmos has been home to people for thousands of years – their memories, joys, tears, challenges, triumphs, loves and broken hearts all woven into the very same places as mine – although maybe some are under the cobblestone and pavement since the roads weren't always paved.
There is something in the ancient-ness of the island that feels good.
I suppose in the end, all the things that don't make sense are either mysteries to be solved in future sojourns or things to let go – because sometimes understanding doesn't benefit us anyway. Without embracing ignorance, a little mystery in the world keeps it interesting.
I also try to remember where I see magic and mystery, many people are living the banality of their lives – just like I do at home. It doesn't mean I see Patmos better than the locals or they see it better than I do. It just means we all get lost in the banality of everyday life. The magic is here even if going to school or work doesn't feel very magical to a Patmian. Likewise, Westlake is special in many ways. Maybe the trick - hard as it may be – is more to keep my eye on the magic and less on the mundane.
