No Borders

In downtown Boston, the last Borders bookstore has closed. I love bookstores, and I visited the shop to pay my last respects.

For bookstore fans, the process is grim. The liquidators start with a fully functioning store with books, a newsstand, and a café. Then the whole operation seems to cave in on itself. The café closes, the books are marked down, and the shelves are stripped. Everything must go. The periodicals are herded into a corner, and even the furniture is put up for sale. After a few weeks, most of the choice books and magazines are gone. All that’s left are damaged books, rejects, and copies of less popular magazines like Cigar Aficionado—things that most people wouldn’t buy anyway. On closing day, they turn off the lights, and the former vibrant bookstore is forlorn and bare.

With the closing of Borders, only one large bookstore remains in all of downtown Boston. This, in the Athens of America, a city renowned for knowledge and readers. Now only one national bookstore company remains—Barnes and Noble. B&N would seem to have a monopoly on the business. But even it is reported to be not in the best of financial health.

Bookstores are victims of changing times, technologies, and economics. You can surf the web for a book on Amazon and probably get a better deal. The overall number of book buyers has decreased, and it has been reported for a while that people are reading less. On top of that, the whole idea of books is becoming an anachronism. Reading in the near future is to be done on an electronic tablet, to which you can download hundreds of electronic books. Paper books then will be a thing of the past.

But bookstores don’t only sell books. They provide a place where you can browse, have coffee, and in general experience the world of literature in an inviting, participatory space. With the passing of bookstores goes a loss of a cherished public space. I suppose you could try to visit the local department store, but reading the clothing labels does not provide the same type of experience.

Once the bookstores are gone, all we may be left with are libraries. Fortunately, it seems that public libraries will be around for a few more years to come. Libraries are somewhat immune to the market pressures that have sunk bookstores. I like visiting my local library, and I’m glad it will continue to exist in the near future. But the library experience is a lot different. At bookstores, patrons are invited to browse, chat, and even sip on coffee at the café. Libraries are more like a middle school classroom, with enforced silence and absolutely, positively no food allowed. At bookstores, the books are enticingly displayed, inviting you to browse and hopefully purchase. At libraries, the books are mostly warehoused, and you need to know what you’re looking for ahead of time to find it. The aesthetic of a bookstore is like that of a book vacation, where you can walk in, browse thousands of books, and purchase any that you want for your own. The aesthetic of a library is more like that of a book prison. The books may be permitted out on the lam for a few weeks. But after that brief period of parole, the dogs are called out if the prisoners aren’t returned.

The bookstore industry’s collapse poses some significant implications for infrastructure. Bookstores inhabit small and medium-size commercial spaces that in many cases graced small downtown shopping areas. Without bookstores, storefronts go vacant, and villages start to die on the vine.

It’s not just bookstores, of course, but an increasing list of merchandisers that have fallen to the Internet and Walmart. On a recent bike ride I passed by a defunct video and record store. These spaces have not been rented for new uses and have sat vacant for months. With a loss of each function, whether it be records, bookstores, and so on, commercial downtowns and villages with their small shops become less economically viable. There are not enough tenants to rent the stores.

All we are left with then are giant big box stores and the Internet. The de facto public space provided by the former private enterprises is going away and not being replaced. A big box store is inherently asocial—no cafés and book browsing there. Maybe someone will figure out a financially viable way of providing casual public meeting space. Urban planners refer to this as the “Third Place”—not at home and not in the office. The Third Place is a key part of the marketing plan behind Starbucks, although at five dollars a cup of coffee, Starbucks may not be so viable in the long run, either.

The changing public landscape is a developing story that perhaps you can read about at your neighborhood bookstore. If you can find one.