It was an improbable moment in an improbable place.

There I was, innocently getting my hair cut by a local barber, when another merchant entered his store to inquire about his potential participation in a future community event.

The event, now, is just three weeks away, and yet this was the first time that the two had spoken about it.

"I'm sorry," the man cutting my hair said after checking his calendar. "I have to go to a 50th anniversary party. If you had told me sooner... maybe next year I can do it."

Now, this wasn't a case of a man making excuses. In fact the business man in question cares passionately about the main street he does business on — I know, because we talk about it every month.

Conversations like this occur all the time in local mom and pop establishments, but I'm not sure what followed does:

As I sat there in the barber chair, the left side of my head coiffed, the right side still wet and awaiting a trim, the gentleman cutting my hair expressed some dissatisfaction with the performance of the local Business Improvement District.

Specifically, he said, he had real misgivings about the leadership of the community, which seems, to him, to be intent on cracking down on long time merchants for things like the size of type on their awning, while the rest of the town is being allowed to go to the dogs.

"Go to a BID meeting and air your concerns," the other merchant told him.

"I have been to a BID meeting and they seemed to me a waste of time."

With this, an angry confrontation ensued. The first merchant, a woman, began waving her finger at the barber, waving her hand inches from my face.

When mention was made of certain new merchants who don't keep their stores up to the standards of the old merchants, the woman said, "Well that's the fault of those landlords. They'll rent to anybody."

Then, as the barber continued to press his point regarding dissatisfaction with the BID, the woman, who is closely aligned with the BID, blamed the village for her main street's problems.

"You know the village," she said. "They're slow to get anything done."

Then, as the argument continued, the woman said an interesting thing in justifying the existence of the local BID.

"We're doing Operation Downtown," she said.

We're doing Operation Downtown.

You know, we hailed County Executive Thomas S. Gulotta for creating Operation Downtown, and we believe, were correct in praising him.

Isn't it interesting though, that this has now become a justification.

"We're doing Operation Downtown."

What exactly does that mean. Where are the plans? And who is deciding what projects are being undertaken and that they'll be of real benefit, not just to the business districts in question, but to the communitys they're occurring in.

For years now, we've been writing about the plight of local downtowns for several of the newspapers in the Anton Community Newspaper family.

In that time, we've seen a lot of panaceas come down the pike, Business Improvement Districts, community flea markets, and yes, Operation Downtown.

And we've seen a wide variation in terms of the level of success that has been achieved.

Isn't it time that these phrases we bandy about become more than just words? And what about an independent evaluation in each community in Nassau to see if things like local BIDs have worked.

If you could have heard how empty and meaningless the phrase "Operation Downtown" sounded on this woman's lips, we're sure you would join us in asking, "What's really going on here?"