Romance, Downtown Crossing, problems. We’ve addressed these matters in this column. You might want an update on how certain things are progressing.

Perhaps you remember the couple who got engaged at the Boston Athenaeum. The man had arranged for a videographer to record the proposal. The couple, Xavier Rozas and Liz Hale, will be married on August 6 at the Commandant’s House in Charlestown, according to the groom’s sister. For his bachelor party, Xavier went to Pamplona to run with the bulls. These tidbits about this couple suggest that they may have an adventurous life together.

A couple of columns I wrote on Downtown Crossing highlighted the efforts the Downtown Crossing Association was making toward establishing a Business Improvement District. The group finally succeeded in getting the support they needed from the building owners in the district, and the matter is now before City Councilor Linehan’s Economic Development and Planning Committee. Linehan is behind the proposal, which should be taken up by the City Council in early August. If it passes, owners will have 30 days to opt out of the effort, after which they will be assessed a fee on their tax bill.

A BID is a welcome development, since the extra revenue it raises ought to enable businesses to make the district friendlier to shoppers. With its handsome building façades, its secret passages, and its narrow streets, Downtown Crossing is a good example of an area possessing a sense of place. If you’re on Winter Street or Temple Place, you know you aren’t anywhere but Boston.

Of course, Downtown Crossing still suffers from the economy with John Hynes’s and Millennium Partners’ empty lots. I decided to get involved. I called Nordstrom, in whose Michigan Avenue store I shop every time I’m in Chicago. I asked why they didn’t sign right up here in Boston so Hynes could get going again. Hynes said he thought that a retail arm of his company, Boston Global Investments, which was then Gale International, had approached Nordstrom, or at least the company’s off-price store, Nordstrom Rack.

Colin Johnson, Nordstrom’s spokesman, said Nordstrom was already in Boston. I wondered where. He mentioned Natick, Burlington, Peabody and Braintree. I pointed out that those locations weren’t in Boston and besides, they were in those regrettable parking lots called shopping malls, where no self-respecting downtown Boston person would ever go.

He explained his company’s strategy. Right now, Nordstrom had decided to concentrate on the suburbs. I was perplexed. After all, cities have become more fashionable than the suburbs, and Boston has a large downtown resident population, not to mention its daytime workers, with a lot of money to spend. I also pointed out that Nordstrom’s downtown stores appear to be doing quite well. I was surprised that a company that seemed to run a good operation would be so behind the times demographically. I didn’t change his mind.

I could have pointed out that Downtown Crossing has a lot of attractions right now. It has the legendary E.B. Horn, a sliver of a jewelry shop that looks as if it’s right out of the 1940s, which I hope stays forever. It has Footpaths, a reliable casual shoe store for both adults and children. I could have pointed out that Downtown Crossing has several nice restaurants—Locke Ober and Bina Osteria, for example. And Bina Osteria shows Italian movies with subtitles on Monday nights in the summer, which is one of the coolest things I’ve heard of a restaurant doing.

I could have pointed out that Downtown Crossing will get better. But I didn’t, since I got the idea that Nordstrom’s wild west outlook on the world made its executives wary of a place where people who could have afforded to live anywhere had chosen to live in the cramped downtown of a large eastern city. So I dropped it—for now.

Meanwhile, several readers have emailed or called me about concerns they have about their neighborhood and Boston in general. One suggested we have a little gathering of people who would like to talk about Boston. So let’s do it. I’ll be at Panificio at 144 Charles Street near the Charles/MGH T station at 9 am on Wednesday, July 28, and everyone is welcome to join me for a conversation about this city. Panificio has been forewarned.