The Merk — Attraction in Longview

The Merk has a number of little shops in the building and my daughter likes to go there to look around and decided we should go one day. We stopped in at Forest, Stone, and Sea first, I remember the name because of the many gems and stones on display along with all the hand crafted jewelry and spiritual items beyond gem stone. They have a good selection of incense, natural and machine made.

We also went into a small shop where they have all sorts of items including a good selection of miniatures. A lot of the miniatures were macabre items that would make for some great Halloween displays or recreation of Poe novels. I found and bought a book there about Hauntings of Astoria Oregon which was a very interesting read and actually presented more history of the town and its surrounding area along with the local ghostly legends and witness accounts.i also got my daughter a hoodie that was an old lady skeleton sitting in a recliner on the face of a tarot card called "the dog mom", I really wish I could remember the name of the shop cuz it was a nice place to stop in. The last stop we made that day was into the bakery in the front of the building on the commerce side, my daughter got some macarons and I got a cookie. The cookie was huge and soft with a great mix of white chocolate and raspberry, the macarons were delicious too. I do feel the bakery was a bit on the spendy side, 6 macarons for $15 and the cookie was $5, BUT the quality and the size of the items were much larger than I've seen other places, plus small businesses have to charge a realistic price for their products. In reality, small businesses all have to price things based on reality and it was a good day with my daughter which gave me the opportunity to show her that supporting local small businesses may cost a little more but the quality is always going to be well worth it. It also gave me the chance to explain to her how people will make a product and sell them on consignment through small businesses and that will contribute to the price.

All in all, I really do enjoy seeing places like these are still around and haven't bowed out to the imported cheaply made...

Years back, the place was maintained. There was always someone cleaning, vacuuming, washing. The restrooms aren't always clean, either. The elevator smells like a bagel, and the air throughout is musty. On the day I visited I was up in an office on the 3rd floor and it was bloody hot. The tenant there said that they had complained about the lack of air conditioning but that the landlord hadn't responded to them in days...AND their rent was recently increased adding to their...

Did a walk downtown to see what was happening around the holidays and the Merk was so quiet. I don't know if it was the time of year, the cold weather, or just the time of day. Maybe thats just the Merk. The best highlight was Kristi's Boutique though. They were fast at work, baking cookies that a client had ordered and the scent of gingerbread cookies and sugar was deliciously heavy in the air. I bought a cupcake, but I filled up on that wonderful...