Did you shop locally this holiday season? Even if you traveled to a big box in the E-town, Oakland shares territory and sales tax with a percentage of Emeryville’s big box districts ... and you may have consciously spent a percentage of your holiday dollars in Oakland.

In recent years, our political leaders have become aware of the importance of shopping locally. Our new Mayor, Jean Quan, even spoke to the significance of the issue in her inaugural address. She asked Oaklanders to buy 25 percent more of their goods at home as a way to help pay for more police staffing. New Councilwoman Libby Schaaf is even leading by example - she told me that she only shops in Oakland. Her inaugural outfit was purchased in Montclair.

As the unemployment rate remains high, local shopkeepers have had to remain vigilant in choosing inventory, hiring staff and finding inexpensive ways to continue marketing efforts. However, many parts of Oakland do still show good income demographics and Oakland shop owners are beginning to see them spend it at home.

For instance, Nathan Waldon of Nathan & Co. on Piedmont Avenue told me, “2010 was an amazing year for us and our increase in sales during December matched what most other months brought to us ... we are very lucky to have a great core group of customers. They love that we are 110 percent Oakland owned and Oakland run. Ninety percent of our employees don't even drive to work - they live close enough to walk.”

Piedmont Avenue is one of the more successful shopping districts in Oakland, but it did not escape the effects of the crash and there were a lot of empty storefronts all along the Avenue during the last year or two. Now they seem to be filling up and many shops and restaurants are quite busy.

At Heartware on College, a little shop which is packed with gifts, toys and whimsical items of clothing and home décor, Owner Maggie Hutchens told me that she had a good holiday season and felt quite hopeful. She said she believes that her reasonably priced items and eclectic mix make the difference in a difficult economy. Further down College Avenue, a children’s store owner recounted that items “under $25 flew out of the store,” but not the expensive toys parents and children’ usually crave during the holidays.

On Lakeshore a new children’s store, Silver Moon, has opened after moving from its old Grand Avenue location. It had one of the most beautiful window displays on the Avenue and were kept busy with customers all day, so owners say they are hopeful.

On the other hand, some jewelry store owners are showing only a slight uptick and cannot afford to bring in higher-end items that might sell to well-heeled clientele. The price of gold has soared as people continue to hoard it as “protection” against the possible collapse of the dollar. Silver prices have increased also, and jewelry sellers are hard hit.

The owner of Mezze, a fine dining establishment on Lakeshore, responded to my impromptu survey with an interpretation of the mood of local diners. He said he  believes that “the consumer is seeking deals ... and is willing to try those that provide those deals.” He offers three-course prix fixe (set menu) dinners at $23, an extensive happy hour menu and no corkage fee nights. As a result, he has seen a 15 percent upswing from last December to this holiday season.

So after talking to lots of merchants, I asked them what one thing the city could do to help them succeed as there seems to be a genuine desire by local officials to promote our neighborhood retail districts.

As you can probably guess, most of the comments had to do with parking. Previously the lack of it was the biggest problem in our most popular districts. But ever since the "Great Parking Debacle," as it is always likely to be known, wherein city officials raised the fees to $2 per hour and more significantly, extended the hours so that meters ran to 8 p.m., a great rebellion arose.

Thereafter, the city officials backed down on the extended hours, but kept the rates at $2 per hour and raised the fine to $55. Ten dollars of the $55 was mandated by the state and now, ahem, the state has mandated that another $3 be added to the price of the tickets. So a parking meter violation in Oakland will cost you $58, which is the price of a little fun shopping trip, or a prix fixe dinner for two including the tip, or, well, you get the idea.

For a number of years, Oakland offered free parking for three hours at a time on Saturdays in December. Then that perk was removed to help Oakland’s volunteer-run merchant organization secure staff with a city grant. Now that grant is gone and so is the free parking, but Oakland, like other cities in California, is increasingly on its own to fund city services and struggles to provide them.

Many merchant advocates believe that the free parking needs to be reinstated. Scott Peterson at the Oakland Chamber agrees.

“The city should provide free weekend parking to attract holiday shoppers," Peterson said. "The sales tax the city could recoup would be worth the slight loss in parking revenue during those holiday periods.”

Some of the merchants had alternative solutions. Tootsies’ owner on College Avenue, who had an overall good year with double digit improvements in her two stores, suggested offering free holiday parking only on Saturday afternoons from 2 to 6 p.m.

Montclair’s Business Improvement District director, Roger Vickery, said that most Montclair businesses were busy during the holiday season, especially during the holiday stroll. But that the city of Lafayette had a practice he’d like Oakland to try - they still issue citations for overdue parking, but they give the violators a 30 minute amnesty before issuing the ticket during the holidays.

The owner of Homestead who said he had a pretty good holiday season by being very careful about the type and cost of his inventory told me that there has been a whole different tenor to shopping in Oakland since the parking debacle of last year.

“People don’t browse anymore because they are always thinking about their meters.” He said he understood the city’s need for revenue, but that it had somehow spoiled the atmosphere in Oakland’s retail districts.

We talked some more and it became clear that people are not so much reacting to the increase in hourly fees, but are genuinely frightened by the $58 ticket. When that ticket was still $27 or even $35, one might curse their luck and wish they had plunked another quarter in the meter, but $58 is a real hardship and not worth taking a chance on. So, as this merchant said, they go out to pick up their dry cleaning, but do not stop to check out a local shop or run in to see something that caught their eye.

There is a reason that when you visit a mall, there are few clocks to be found. Getting shoppers into the mood to relax, browse and even spend some money is not compatible with a constant state of anxiety over finding that the fun you had or the trinket you found irresistible has now cost you an extra $58. If some way could be found to reduce the price of the ticket, it might begin to significantly improve the atmosphere in some neighborhood retail districts.

As to the results of this impromptu survey, they are purely anecdotal. Stacy Mitchell at the Institute for Local Self Reliance will release the results of a study for Oakland Grown and Buy Local Berkeley, local small business advocates, next week. This study will better quantify how our small businesses in Oakland and Berkeley did during this holiday season.

National studies seem to say that U.S. retailers’ sales showed “the biggest one-year gain in more than a decade," although on the same page it showed some toy sales and department store sales down.

There is another side to the story of shopping in one of Oakland’s 40 districts, and it brings us back to the “two Oaklands” that Quan talked about during her campaign. Quan said that she plans on prioritizing bringing services and commerce to the neighborhoods that have not shared in the good times and subsequently suffered more deeply during the bad times.

When I talked to Karen King, the chair of the East MacArthur Merchants Association, she sobered me up about the small “recovery” that some neighborhoods are beginning to experience. King has a flower shop near 73rd Avenue on MacArthur called Karen’s Flowers. She responded that her sales were down double digits overall this year. Her walk-ins spent more than usual, but that was countered by the loss of income from fraudulent checks and credit cards.

“People are doing everything everywhere for money ... too many scams out there,” King said.

Other merchants in her area are experiencing similar losses. Still King and her local boosters held a holiday boutique that was reasonably successful and they plan to keep “moving forward to shed sunlight on this area. We have real services and quality goods with fair pricing.”

In the Laurel district of MacArthur, The Laurel Bookstore’s Luann Stauss reported that “last year was a roller coaster ... . People are still cautious about spending money, but it was a fun and thoughtful gift buying season.”

Her December sales were up a little, but overall sales for the year were slightly down. She said she feels that the Laurel district is “on the rise,” but still needs a better mix of businesses. Also on her wish list would be “a zero tolerance policy on crime, from vandalism to car theft to murder.”

Luan Stauss is entering her 10th year in the independent bookstore business, and is buoyed by the sense of growing civic engagement. She wrote, “I noticed a real increase in people recognizing the importance of shopping at local stores and very consciously shopping in Oakland specifically. I'm looking forward to a more prosperous year in 2011.”

Amen to that.