Last week the Borders Group, parent corporation to the chain of Borders Books, Music, Movies, Borders Express and Waldenbooks was going into liquidations, and all of its remaining stores would be shuttered by the fall. For anyone paying attention, the writing was on the wall back at the start of the year, when the company went into bankruptcy, and most folx were aware of the hole the chain would have to dig itself out of in order to regain some semblance of solvency. Attempts to sell came to naught this summer, and so the booksellers have headed to demise after almost 40 years in business.
There have been a lot of reasons for Borders' end bandied about for a good couple of years, since the company has steadily lost money since something like 2006. The long and short of it was, the book industry is changing quite a bit, and Borders didn't adapt to those changes much.
That said, does the end of the Borders Group mean the likely demise of the big box book store? Media and entertainment superstores like Tower, Media Play, FYE, even Blockbuster have rapidly faced distinction in the 2000s, and it is all too plausible the notion of the super-sized book store is likewise going the way of the dodo, as Amazon dominates the book retailing market, and the market, much the same way as the music industry shifts towards a digital dominance.
Unfortunately, it says something more than a little sad about modern culture's communal nature: we don't have one anymore.
I for one am going to miss Borders. Yes, it was a 'big box' store, but if you're going to succumb to corporate megaliths, at least you could enjoy some culture. There was something genuinely pleasant about going into a virtual labyrinth of books of inordinate variety, browse to one's content, grab a coffee, spend a third of one's paycheck (okay, that one just belongs to me before I started paying for a house), and have a genuinely mellow and enjoyable afternoon or evening.
Yes, folx have complained all along that the big box bookstores were largely responsible for killing off independent book sellers, and there is some truth to that. Years back here in Buffalo, there were all sorts of small to moderate bookstores, catering to all sorts of genres or markets, from Village Green, to Outland, to the Buffalo Book Sellers in the Northtown Plaza. Today they're few and far between.
It's possible, with the demise of so many big-box media stores, the sole survivor will ultimately be, surprisingly enough--the niche market mom and pop book stores. We've witnessed similar events in music retail. Big box stores have steadily died out for years, while many smaller retailers met their sad fates as well. But, for example, here in Buffalo, the stores that survived, were record retailers who have managed to eke out, and carve out a small, yet dedicated niche. One that will likely stick around for some time. The Record Baron in Kenmore, NY has, and continues, to make its name as a haven for vinyl record collectors. A vinyl collector is already as niche as you can get, and while the consumer base is small, it's not likely to get any smaller. Granted, these tiny stores could fall victim to a seriously bum market economy, but as is evident this decade, size can't prevent that problem either. In fact quite the opposite may be true; mom and pop retailers have already been accustomed to running a fuel mixture that's as lean as it can get.
So the survivors in the Buffalo book stores may wind up being places like Talking Leaves, who have stuck it out all these years. Even if they don't choose to follow the digital wave, they and other small bookstores may survive as collector's niches in the same manner as vinyl record stores have. This may mean a lengthy future for the likes of Old Editions downtown. We should be so lucky, if for only a few semblances of locations where people congregate and exchange not just money, but human ideas. The saddest thing missing in music nowadays was the rapid rate of exchange between actual human beings, not just trolls bad-mouthing artists or albums on an anonymous iTunes review. I don't want the book world to fall victim to being just a set of Amazon ratings, as useful as they can be.
The death of Borders of course makes a lot of people wonder about the likes of other big slugger stores, like Barnes & Noble. B&N had been smart enough to go on-line almost in lock step with the rise of Amazon back in the '90s, and they weren't too slow on the draw in coming up with and marketing e-reader technology to keep from falling behind on the digital revolution. They may survive for at least another 5-10 years. But unfortunately, I always prefered shopping at Borders.
I like Barnes & Noble just fine, sure, but it never felt like the place a bona fide bookworm would hang if they're going to choose to hang in a big box mecca. To me, Borders just felt more book geek friendly. B&N instead always comes off as a place where a soccer mom who wants to appear well-read would go. A lot of national critics nit-picked that Borders staff was too young or not knowlegeable enough, but c'mon guys. One blogger noted that you'd never find a Borders employee who could tell you who won the Pulitzer this year. My response was, I'M a guy who reads a friggin' TON of books, and I couldn't give you the answer to that either!
And so, with the announcement made, the trek to oblivion began. This past weekend we walked into the Orchard Park location of Borders, the liquidation sales already at a fever pitch. the was busy, seriously so, though not on a gradiose levels more than the stores in our area generally ever did. That was the thing, we still had quite a few people in the local stores shopping and buying all along.
There was, however, a discernible pall over the mood of the store, which would on ly be expected. A mix of dread you feel, just after the death of an elder relative, or after they've been moved into a home; when the family members start turning out the closets and drawers in their house, picking through the flotsam and jetsam of a full life, in search of things they can claim as useful to themselves.
In the case of the store, it wasn't yet in a state of full-on disarray; closing sales have usually been going on over a week before a death-tolling store starts really looking like a picked over carcass. However, there was a maudlin, scavenger-y vibe going on, and it made me vaguely sick to my stomach, even as I participated in the carrion-feeding myself. I dare say, it won't likely take our area stores very long before they've shuttered permanently, at least at the pace the grave-robbing was going this weekend.
The sentimental side of me remembered all the Sunday afternoons I used to do writing homework there, or the Christmas shopping, or just the general post-work-shift-I-hate-my-life retail therapy spent among the shelves, and was overcome with a shudder of defeat.
The real defeat came from the chalk-board still hovering above the already-closed, and mostly emptied coffee kiosk. Scrawled in yellow chalk, the crew from the counter wished to thenk their regulars, and give a fond farewell. but it felt like a note from the dead, still hanging after the apocalypse.
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