Downtown With Downtown Susie Brown
By Nancy Muldoon
I had the pleasure of having coffee with Susan Brown at Coffee Traders on Broadway this morning. We talked shop [blogging] and shopping and the value of perusing garage sales and thrift store of which Saratoga thankfully has many.
Susan Brown moved here to Saratoga from New York City ten years ago. She grew up in Binghamton, New York. When she was little her father used to take her to Saratoga Racecourse in August so she has always had an affection for all things Saratoga.
Susan started her downtownsusiebrown.com blog this past September when one of her daughters started first grade. She had wanted to do something creative and had been thinking about what to do ever since her daughter was in kindergarten and wanted to do something that would enable her to still be home when her kids came home from school.
Susan went online one day and noticed that the Saratogian was looking for bloggers but didn’t exactly know what a blog was. “I started looking in to it, I got hooked, I got onto blogger, I set up my page, and then I just started playing around with it, then I went out and got a better camera, not a great camera but a better camera and I just started going with it.” Said Brown.
“There were no resources, like the Saratogian [and] any of the local newspapers didn’t have a true style section or they have a lifestyle section but it was always about the Farmer’s Market or about food. It was never about this place [Coffee Traders] or any of the boutiques, I think a lot of Saratogian’s wrote the boutiques off as being too expensive or the places were only for tourists, but they [locals] brag about how we have this wonderful main street.”
“I always knew that there was this disconnect between… everybody loves our town, talks about it, raves about it but I was noticing a lot of people, Saratogian’s don’t really shop it or know where to go to find a great gift item or fashion trends.” Said Brown
Susan and I both agree that Saratoga is a tough place to shop for shoes. “That is such a need in this town, if anybody wants to open a [shoe] store, I would support them.”
Some of Browns favorite boutiques and store are Violets, 80 West, Aggies, Lucia and Pangaea, all located in downtown Saratoga.
“Any magazine you look at like Oprah, or In Style, any of those magazines, they always have their picks of the month or highlighting what the trends are and where to find them, what the stars are wearing and where you can find them, so that was basically my idea [about the blog] but how am I going to do this? I’ve never written [before.]”
Susan plans on launching a new look for her blog which she is currently working on and has plans on being an online magazine very soon. She also does makeovers and personally takes women shopping who need some guidance on what to purchase and what looks best for them. (Contact her directly for rates)
“My thing is really to focus on the Saratogian’s, people who work and the stay at home moms [who] don’t have the time to see what’s going on inside the stores and [let them know] this is what I found and you need to come check it out, in Lucia or one of these random stores that they have never been in, and see that’s there is some great stuff in there.”
So head Downtown, where everything’s waiting for you!!
Downtownsusiebrown.com or contact her at susan@downtownsusiebrown.com