I took the following photos while visiting the Borders store in Evanston last weekend. At the time, it had four days left on its going out of business sale. Now it's closed.
The Evanston store is one of over 200 closing in the United States, and one of a dozen in the Chicago area alone. Every single store in Chicago itself is closing except for the flagship store downtown on State Street.
I have mixed feelings about all of this. On the one hand, you have a large retail chain (along with Barnes & Noble) that pushed independent stores out of business in the 90s. On the other hand, lots of people are losing their jobs, and not to mention that these are anchor stores in a lot of malls, and it's never good when those sit vacant. In this economy, you can't be picky and choosy. Pretty much any business going out of business is a negative.
One thing that doesn't worry me, which I know concerns a lot of people-- is what this means for the publishing industry. There's little doubt that the rise of e-readers helped to fuel Borders demise. So does this mean that the printed book is dead? Yes and no. Maybe? Honestly, I don't really care. So long as people are buying and consuming written media, authors and publishers are getting paid, it doesn't particularly matter to me if that's in the form of a dead tree, or a digital file on an e-book. The important thing is that people are reading.
Photo Details: all shot with a Nikon D7000 and 16-85mm lens. I also took a few photos of the store in Uptown and have included one of those in the set.
1 comment:
"The important thins is that people are reading."---- I couldn't have said it better myself! Sad to see such a large store go away in malls... Although, I did get some pretty nice book shelves for my classroom very cheap!
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