Up and Down on Main Street

As recently as last spring, Tsaderakis said, she was considering expansion, pushing back her kitchen to open more seating in the front of the restaurant. She said she tried getting a small-business loan from Wachovia but could not secure it without using her home as collateral, a line she did not want to cross. Now she is relieved she did not take on that debt.

"If I were to start my life anew, I would not start a small business," Tsaderakis said one recent afternoon, after the lunch rush had abated. "I am worried about what is going to happen if the economy is going to be unstable. I am worried if I am going to make it."

The commerce at Main streets has come to the fore in the recent turmoil. President Bush invoked the concerns of small-business owners when urging Congress to pass the $700 billion bailout package last month. More recently, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and McCain (R-Ariz.) have clashed in the presidential campaign over their tax plans, with McCain accusing his Democratic rival of promoting a policy that would hurt small-business owners such as "Joe the Plumber." Obama has argued that more Americans would see their taxes cut under his proposals.

Richard Dickson, owner of a two-man real estate brokerage, leasing and management firm called the Dickson Co., said that in his 30 years working in downtown Fairfax, he has seen many title companies, builders, developers and law firms give way to the specialty retail stores and restaurants of today. A mixed-use development called Old Town Village, one block away from Main on North Street, opened earlier this year, featuring a plaza, fountain, office condominiums and shops such as Panera Bread and Potbelly Sandwich Works. Many of the business owners on Main whom Dickson works with, and counts as friends, have seen sales declines in recent months between the added competition and the economic downturn, he said.

"It's been a double-whammy with the economy and a triple-whammy with the cost of gas," Dickson said.

In a modest, two-story building on the corner of Old Lee Highway and Main, at the end of the little strip, sits the Rust & Rust law practice. The Rust family has practiced law and community banking on or around Main Street for three generations since the early 1900s, John H. Rust Jr. being the latest heir in that tradition. He is the founding chairman and current vice chairman of McLean-based Cardinal Financial, a community bank with 25 branches in the Washington area.

Rust draws a contrast between the plodding nature of community banking and that of the complicated and risky financial machinations executed on Wall Street. Cardinal's loans have held up strong in the downturn, with no non-accruing loans on its book, the bank reported last week. But its mortgage-banking subsidiary, George Mason Mortgage, has been taking losses, showing that even community banks have not been immune to the downturn. Rust said he supports the government's interventions and worries about the interconnectedness that, while perhaps not always in plain sight, exists between Main Street and Wall Street.

"We have a dependency on the larger financial system that we cannot control," Rust said. "If it continues," he said of the financial crisis, "you will see a real downturn and a real impact and real economic loss."