Underground Business Society

Every Saturday morning at the Charlottetown Farmers’ Market, after we have our smoked salmon bagel and coffee (or smoothie), we swing around to Lady Baker’s Tea, where we order up whatever the iced tea of the day is.

Often we’ll take an extra moment and have a chat with personable owner Katherine Burnett or one of her crack team, and that’s exactly what we did last Saturday: I asked Katherine where the best place downtown to get a wide selection of her retail tea was, and she invited me to come to their new location in the basement of the Kirk of St. James.

As you might imagine, given my recent relocation to a protestant church basement myself, hilarity ensued, and plans for each of us to make a pilgrimage to the other’s operation were hatched.

All of which led me to decide that what we really need to do next is to conjure up an mutual aid society for we running businesses from basements, and this begat the launching, via printing press, of the Underground Business Society.

Once the cards are dry, I’ll launch the formal membership drive. Besides me and Lady Baker’s, I can think of Lightning Bolt Comics, and the tartan annex of Northern Watters Knitwear.

Can you suggest other basement-location Charlottetown businesses?