Sacramento will be losing more than the most eclectic greeting card shop in town when Etc. closes next week. The city is also losing a one-of-a-kind neighborhood gathering spot. Owners Jeff Heald and Abdon Legrand — with help from a glittery, life-size chrome man standing sentry outside the shop — have welcomed shoppers and passersby to the corner of 21st and L streets for two decades. The pair are closing their shop — previously known as Postcards Etc. — and moving to Mexico. They plan to open a new business: Café Como No (Cafe Why Not) in Punta de Mita, near Puerto Vallarta, said Heald, 57. Heald grew up in the Sacramento area. However, 47-year-old Legrand grew up on the Gulf of Mexic

Sara and Mike Barlow are one outdoorsy couple. They carved out their own trail to the fledgling store they opened in Old Sacramento, Trailmix.Net. After falling in love in a small Idaho college town, they honeymooned in a remote cabin reached by water-taxi in Washington's North Cascades National Park. Both were into hiking and camping in the Pacific Northwest. But they actually had to relocate to San Francisco to get more hardcore. "It wasn't until we moved to California that we kind of went crazy with it," said Mike Barlow, 37. "We went though this shock of people congestion. So we would escape up into the Sierra. That was how we got our fix." She took up backpacking with him and they

Sacramento retailers are still feeling the bitter sting of the recession this holiday season. Local merchants selling everything from kids' snowshoes to William Shatner's first album are mostly reporting decreased sales — although some say 2009 holiday sales haven't been as dire as predicted. "I think the holiday season will be a disappointment to most merchants," said Ed Castro, who owns Ed's Threads at 1125 21st St. "I'm not shooting for the moon, so I'm not going to be disappointed." With the country's economy in its third year of recession, retailers operating downtown and throughout the central city are struggling the same as retailers elsewhere. Industry-wide, holiday retail sale

If you build it, they will come. What's been said about baseball diamonds in Iowa is now being said for downtown Sacramento's future retail market, according to a retail consultancy firm that has just finished a study of the J-K-L corridor. In this case, "they" represent 72 percent of the greater Sacramento area's 1.65 million population: "urban chic" Sacramentans who own homes in the central city; young, child-free metrorenters; "in style" suburbanites who love the gritty city; long-time residents and new homeowners living just outside the core; and connoisseurs who want the best of everything, said Scott Schuler with Downtown Works of Washington, D.C. "You have got to draw people from