Tiny Talk with Ian Golden

You’ve owned and operated a store in this town for 20 years, which is amazing (and seems daunting, since you’ve survived two location changes). What’s some advice you’d have for someone starting a brick and mortar business?

Probably making it through a couple of recessions and COVID more than this being the third location. I don’t know that I’m the poster person for a small business owner in some ways. It’s pretty much eaten my resources, I don’t have a retirement or pension, and after 20 years I can not provide for my family through just it let alone feel secure in what’s ahead. 

But it’s provided an established place in the community, the flexibility to at times be a stay at home parent, to make it to my kids activities, to provide jobs for dozens of people over the years and in what’s hopefully a fun place to work, the ability to have an occasional customer cry in the moment as they’d prior given to hope that they’d ever find shoes that would alleviate their pains in walking and in that sense hopefully contributed to others happiness, and to eek out a living doing what I really enjoy.

I’m not sure I’m worthy of giving advice. Unsure I’m the picture of a success story. I may be in Matt Foley’s shoes in any given year from now. I have though been referred to as an enabler. I’m here to provide that to any who may need enabling.

You’re also a race director and put together a really interesting set of mostly trail courses with huge climbs. I think of these experiences as something that participants will remember their entire life. What’s an event you’ve been able to participate in that has stuck with you (for better or for worse).

 In 2001 I’d been living for a short time on Oahu. Through friends in the community I’d been aware that a first time race was taking place called the HURT 100. The course was about a half mile from where I was living at the time and I headed up after work that Friday afternoon to see if they needed any help. They said the leader, Luis Escobar, could potentially use a pacer, and to come back sometime that night. I didn’t really know what that would entail, whether I’d be able to hang with the leader of the race let alone be of assistance. My longest run to date was probably less than 20 miles. So many hours of bonding as I covered 40-50 miles of tropical rainforest trails with him through the night and into the following day. The smell of papaya in trees and smashed throughout the forest floors. The startling sound of wild boar disturbed in the night and crashing through the forest in their escape path. The sound of water. The envelopment of massive banyan trees. So amazingly visceral. It was hugely influential. 

I’ve probably done maybe 40-50 trail ultras since then including pacing him again a couple of years later. So many incredible experiences and connections. But that first HURT 100 connection in kinship, the minimal degrees of separation in the trail and ultra community for sure at that time, would very much shape my roads and trails ahead. If I’m at all successful in putting on events, it’s if I can come even close to offering those same possibilities for others in return.

What do you do when you don’t know what to do?

A more potent memory, is of one of the opening weeks at Ithaca College. Before cell phones. Before computers being much more than Lemonade Stand. Before an established pod of friends on campus, or homework that needed getting done. Moments of walking around campus with nothing really to do. And the feeling of relative anxiousness that that carried with it. 

I think I’ve been lucky enough to have had a community and support structure, whether in family, neighbor kids, sports, work, study, that it’s rare that there aren’t a plethora of things to pour myself into, or to get done, or those to spend time with. I suppose that’s interwoven into being a small business owner. There’s never really a time when there aren’t things I could or should be doing. I find peace in creating things, in staying in motion, in maybe always having taken on a bit more than I can possibly chew.

We both went to college here and kind of…stuck around. I’ve realized now that it’s  not as common as I thought it’d be. What are some of the wildest differences in town and what hasn’t changed at all?

Yes there are new buildings. The Nine’s deep dish which took forever to arrive on account of the amount of drugs being done in house, but oh how good it was and worth the wait. The ABC Cafe and wonderful breakfast on dirty dishes. The Carriage House’s amazing scones. The Home Dairy’s moon pies. The original Haunt who hosted Dylan and Pearl Jam and where we’d often end up on nights after meets, if only to have drunken teammates climbing up walls to pull decorative records from the walls. Centipede in Moonshadows. These have passed but are fully woven my Ithaca fabric.

Maybe more powerful though are the places that remain, but where we’ve gotten older those places reflect moments and memories that of times gone by. Of youth. Of wonder and experience. So many late August / early September nights under moonlight jumping off the cliffs and climbing the falls above Beebe Lake. Of jumping from the cliffs into tight glacial pools along the Buttermilk Gorge Trail. The house, only a few up from where I now live, where I spent so many nights with my girlfriend, one of the closer people ever in my life who passed away 16 years ago now. Of college kids walking down hudson en route to bars howling in the night to each other. The THERM letters as solid and literally unbreakable as they always were. Of the Finger Lakes Trail through Treman, with nearly every twist and turn of rolling singletrack still there, but where I don’t still carry the physical certainty to send it like I once could. These are the places that remain as they always were for me. Only I’ve changed. We’ve changed. That appreciation, that lens of both experience and longevity in place, that’s the wildest part.

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