More scenes from the hopychangey Obamaconomy: Borders in Boystown closing its doors
Hope!
Change!
Bankruptcy!
© 2011, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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The downtown Indianapolis Borders is closing, too. This means my daughter is out of a job.
It’s very sad. I notice the books NOT sold seem to be Obama books. Quelle suprise!
Store just south of Dayton, Ohio is closing, in a town called Miamisburg, Ohio.
It’s happening in my neighborhood too. And it’s not the only chain to likely disappear this year:
http://www.comcast.net/slideshow/finance-disappearingcompanies2011/companies-that-could-disappear-in-2011/
Oh yeah.
“Teh 2010 Xmas Season” wasn’t nearly good as “Teh Won” said it was – nor any of his Hopey-Dopey-Chang-O economists said.
Lots more retail to close this year.
With the jump in FOOD PRICES, look for massive closings of cafes and restaurant chains this year!
“Brother can you spare a Banana Cream Pie?”
Not sure if they are closing over here but they are under Administration.
It is not just Borders though. It is also Angus and Robertson (I think that is the right one) plus a newsagency chain that has gone down.
Seems to be interlinked.
This Borders on Clark is where my Sweetie and I went to a lot while we were dating. Sad to see it go.
I’m in tears. This was “my” Borders.
“Who care ?”
- Queen Michelle Antoinette, American self-styled Breastfeeder-in-chief.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358829/Obamas-double-standards-family-holidays-telling-Americans-to.html
Clark St. between Wrightwood and Diversey in Chicago is undergoing massive changes. I just noticed how many ‘For Lease’ signs there are up. Many of the businesses that are gone or in the process of leaving have been there 10+ years.
Borders closing is so sad. Just as all the vacant crap is starting to fill up on Diversey, that triangle is becoming a ghost town.
Tho, Kev, have you followed the whole Walmart filling the Surf/Broadway vacancy debacle at all? Tunney had to walk back like crazy due to typical Liberal!Outrage! and even the ELV CoC was vehemently against it, which I found staggering.
For any non-Chicago person who’s curious, here’s the link that broke the story about the Walmart I mentioned. I think the comments speak for themselves:
http://www.chicagorealestatedaily.com/article/20101209/CRED03/101209867/wal-mart-finds-site-for-first-north-side-store#axzz1EeC7KwqW
What’s this about Wally-World Lansing?
I posted a link, but it’s filtered. Hopefully Kevin activates it; I’m no good with logging into WP around here so I just comment at random and see what the filter allows.
Short story: Southeast “Boystown” needs a grocery store and has huge big-box zoned areas. Big boxes have tanked around here (like this Borders). walmart proposed buying up the vacant commercial space to put in an “urban grocer.” Cue outrage and all of the “Walmart destroys everything!” kneejerk (open discloser: I have never purchased from a Walmart in my life). Politicos walk it back.
Storefronts still vacant, SE Boystown still without a cheap grocer, people complain about rising costs of living. The link I posted would contextualize it, but a quick google of “Walmart Surf Broadway” will probably get you from point A to point J.
Finally learned how to log into my WP acct — a log-in page would be killer. Both my other comments here were devoured and in moderation hell.
Anyway, here is the backstory on what I’m talking about:
http://www.chicagorealestatedaily.com/article/20101209/CRED03/101209867/wal-mart-finds-site-for-first-north-side-store
The comments section will give you a good indication as to the hyperbolic backlash.
asdf ugh filter keeps chomping my replies
Too bad the country’s borders aren’t closing!
Touche!
“Clark St. between Wrightwood and Diversey in Chicago is undergoing massive changes. I just noticed how many ‘For Lease’ signs there are up. Many of the businesses that are gone or in the process of leaving have been there 10+ years.”
That is such a dead stetch. The problem there is lack of vibrant frontage, IMO. The McDonald’s/Post Office/Best Buy/Sunset just make most of that stretch a bore — never mind those commercial rents are ridiculously high.
Clark south of Fullerton to Webster isn’t much better.
It’s a shame, I like Borders, hope mine stays open.
Someone needs to prop up one of those giant Everything Must Go signs right under Michelle’s and Dr. Utopia’s books!!
Then someone should cross out “thing” and put “one.”
Your local Borders is closing? Yeesh. That’s almost like learning that the local Starbucks is going out of business.
There’s a Borders near where I live. I might need to go to it more often just so I can enjoy it just in case it too is fated to close for good.
we lost the Starbucks
The coffee was not that bad.
We also lost Krispey Creme Donuts
Both of our big beautiful Border’s are closing..so sad…I loathe our B&N’s here. but, I can still order online from them, have discount coupons..and some free shipping..
I stopped going to B&N when the clerk made a snarky remark regarding a conservative book I was buying…I told him..well,you have just lost me as a customer..and all of my immediate family..it is really not a good business practice to insult 50% of your customers..dummie….
and from then on..would go in there in order to turn to book covers around..
Barnes & Noble is in deep water financially too. Perhaps had Borders not pulled books & magazine off the shelves and placed the koran in priviliged positions above all other religious books to please CAIR & other kornanimals I would not have boycotted them. Borders’ political correctness & leftist bias helped cook their goose financially.
Not stocking books by conservative authors was a pet practice at Borders but it seems to have backfired.
When Sarah Palin’s first book came out the Borders near my house never y had it in stock but I found it immediatelt at a locally owned Christian bookstore. Guess where I buy books now?
That’s it. Borders was just a leftist masquerading as a bookstore. Who cares? For books I like
http://www.edwardrhamilton.com/
books and bargains
I had not hear this about the Koran/CAIR issue. Do you have any more info?
Arizona is losing most of its Borders stores. I’ll miss them, but the company management has been unable to change with technology. Our friends who work(ed) at Borders have warned us for years that the chain had problems. Remember when free wifi was taking off and Borders charged for wifi? Borders was slow to embrace ebooks; they decided to charge for a “special” Rewards card just before going bankrupt; upper management declared that if you didn’t have a coupon (even though you DID have your Rewards card), employees were not supposed to give you discounts…
Our Borders in Anchorage is closing as well…Waldenbooks closed about 4 years ago, and now we only have B&N
order from Amazon online. You probably get better deals.
Aussie,
You have hit the nail on the head. While I dislike Obama immensely, the weak economy is only a small player in the closing of Borders. #13 cate007 (describing the inability of Borders to update and adopt the newest technology) and your mention of Amazon are the main reason the chain is going under. Amazon can undercut prices and provide very fast turnaround. Just as the book superstores helped put many, many small book stores out of business, online shopping will bury the superstores, including B&N. I used to work in the B&N corporate offices in NYC, I know their business and B&N will not be far behind Borders.
Very true. Borders totally dropped the ball when it came to technology. They outsourced their digital strategy to Amazon, they were late to the party offering free Wi-Fi, and offering their own reader.
A friend who moved to the State St. Borders from the Michigan Ave. one told me that the B & N on Elm St. may close that location as well.
Hey, I have shopped at that Borders! I think we bought a Harry Potter book and a blank diary.
Speaking as a family with a disabled member … we try not to go out because, even in this day and age of alleged ADA laws, it is such a pain … don’t get me started. We love Amazon where you can get free shipping right to your own door for most orders over $25. Such a mercy for the homebound. I have to wonder about that aspect to the Borders situation.
OT, but Rasmussen Reports reports poll finding that nearly half of Americans support Governor Walker’s budget bill.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
Excerpt:
48% Back GOP Governor in Wisconsin Spat, 38% Side With Unions
Monday, February 21, 2011
A sizable number of voters are following new Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s showdown with unionized public employees in his state, and nearly half side with the governor.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters agree more with the Republican governor in his dispute with union workers. Thirty-eight percent (38%) agree more with the unionized public employees, while 14% are undecided.
In an effort to close the state’s sizable budget deficit, Walker is proposing to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees including teachers on everything but wage issues. He is excluding public safety workers such as policemen and firemen from his plan.
…
can you post this to the open thread. That way it does not look so bad when I am posting links and information.
Will do.
HEY!
The photographer accidentally cropped out the “FREE BOOKS” sign next to the OBAMA books!
The Borders in the town near us is closing too. I stopped going there when I had to listen to two customer service reps dissing Sarah Palin’s book with a customer. I thought that was in very poor taste. If you work in a bookstore you should show respect to ALL the books.
The leftist loons and patchouli sotted leftovers who manned the Borders near me never did stock best sellers by Sarah Palin, Mark Steyns, Mark Levin, Michelle kalkin, or Jonah Goldberg’s best sellers but has whole sections with 8 ft. high stacks of Obozo’s garbage displayed several places. I had to get elsewhere to find books by consrvatives and now rely on other sources or Amazon and haven’t made a purchase at Borders in over two years.
Border’s deserves its self-inflicted fate of bankruptcy.
But when conservative books come out, they show up at Costco…
Brick and mortar book stores are in trouble since so many people are now reading on their eReaders. I read an article not too long ago titled something like the “iPad effect.” To be fair, I think this has been coming for awhile now. The lack of a leader who has any grasp of economics just sped up the process– and makes the whole situation worse.
I don’t think it’s so much the “iPad effect” — I despise digital reading — as it is a general disinterest in reading coupled with ease of online ordering.
With regard to this Borders, it was often just a public restroom stop, with multiple people pulling books off the shelves, reading them in the cafe area, and sometimes even putting them back with bookmarks(!) for later.
I don’t think the digital era has “killed” the genuine big-box bookstore as much as the “treat the bookstore like a posh library” trend has.
“…reading on their eReaders…”
Yep. As much as I love physical books, if it’s not available in some kind of e-format, I am just not interested.
I got the free “Kindle app for PC” last fall, and never looked back– I’ve got over 130 favorite childhood books– all free- plus a few current ones I cared enough to pay for.
Books, and bookstores are lovely things, but they are so last century…
I love going to bookstores and reading books but I’m buying a Kindle when Uncle Sam sends me my tax refund. I can’t wait.
There is a Barnes & Noble that I go to and the selection in the book categories that I like, history and biography, sucks.
This B & N store moved into a bigger building and the selection still sucks. It seems like they filled the place with games, toys and other junk. People go to bookstores for books, not board games, tote bags or coffee mugs.
Rather ironic considering that nearly 20 years ago Tom Hanks’ big box bookstore was about to close down Meg Ryan’s lil independent book shop in “You’ve Got Mail.”
Even aol and its trademark greeting is going the way of the dodo. These are some crazy fast times we are living in.
In the high end area of central Philadelphia called Rittenhouse Square, once an elegant serene place to relax among trees fountains and top notch classical musicians from The Curtis Institute who would perform for free, things are CHANGE ing. It’s starting to look like the hippy dippy days of the late sixties and seventies. Their were always some homeless people sleeping on the benches and a small group of young hippsters playing hacky sack, but its different now. The dead beats dominate the place and the elegant side walk cafes that surround the square don’t offer the same pleasant view of something civilized placid. Now it’s a little bit more like cuba then the US. And yes businesses are closing in the areas of Philadelphia that had been enjoying a great renaissance during the last two decades.
Here in our little burgh in South Indiana, we are also losing our large Borders store as well. The one thing I noticed about Borders through the years was Borders here seemed to lag behind the other book stores in technology. Someone mentioned the paid WiFi up thread, and that was a problem here, and we had a terrible time when we first went in to buy the full set of Harry Potter CD’s. On the other hand, I never saw any problem of our Borders promoting left over right leaning political books, or vice-versa for that matter. In fact I never ran into any attitude seeking out any type of political books. The staff here is great, and I feel terrible about them losing their jobs. Our Borders even had community awareness days where certain local charities would have a spot in the store to make people aware of their presence. I’ll really miss going in on the days when the local Greyhound Rescue is there, being the dog lover that I am. Frankly I think the Borders franchise stores are more a victim of too little too late regarding technology more than anything else. My partner bought his NOOK at B&N here, because the Borders version of their e-reader just didn’t cut it. Even though we have a friend that works at B&N we still went to Borders more, although our friend at B&N said he has been hearing rumblings about B&N as well. Nothing definite, but he is a bit worried having a new wife and baby daughter. We already lost a wherehouse type book store called “Books-a-Million” and now Borders, not to mention the over-priced book stores in the poor excuse for a mall we have here. Seems like B&N is going to be the only game left in town. Amazon is out for us, just a personal family feud thing of an exec working for Amazon that is a member of our family, yadda-yadda. I hope for our friend that B&N stays open, we can get e-books anywhere, but it is kind of sad to see bookstores close up. Sometimes I love just browsing around in a bookstore, like I used to do all the time in West Hollywood, where it seemed there was a mom & pop (or make that mom & mom or pop & pop) bookstore on every other corner.
The one in Century City, Ca is closing, too.
Borders is restructuring under Chapter something or other (11?). They’ll be closing their underperforming stores. I haven’t seen any indication that the ones near me are closing yet, but we’ll see.
This has been coming for a LONG time – I think I first heard about it maybe a year ago, maybe even two. Amazon is killing brick & mortar bookstores because they can offer books shipped straight to your door for lower prices; when you don’t have to operate brick & mortar locations, your operating costs are tremendously lower. And Borders didn’t get the Kobo out in time to seriously compete with the Nook (which, I suspect, is what’s keeping B&N afloat) and the Kindle.
This is all based on Amazon and other on-line entities. If you can order a book online why do you need a store – pure and simple. This technological change will have a deep effect on shopping centers and commercial real estate.
One of my friends on FB posted that Earwax Cafe in Wicker Park (Chicago) is closing too after 21 years. The hits just keep on coming.
http://www.wickerparkbucktown.info/_webapp_1347011/Earwax_Closing_February_28th_2011?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d62eb63b1f56db5,0
I am not sorry to see Borders close. I love bookstores; they’re my favorite places in a city to visit. (My sister always joked that if they lost me in a city, they’d just go to the nearest bookstore and I’d be there with my nose stuck in a book.) But Lord help us, Borders was a different thing entirely. Their staff here began at rude and went down from there, to the point where I was wondering if they got bonuses on their paychecks for being nasty to customers. But the midnight release of “Half-Blood Prince” was a nightmare that even now, years later, I can’t think about without getting a fiery burn to the stomach. Suffice it to say from that moment onwards, I never darkened their doorway again. Under the circumstances, I confess it’s truly Schadenfreude to see their stores ‘darkening’ permanently.
At least I could get a discounted Atlas Shrugged t-shirt before they closed!
The Borders out in the ‘burbs never really had any kind of leftist bias… conservative and liberal political books are equally on display… that’s where I bought my copy of Rules for Radical Conservatives. But then again… that’s probably because it’s the suburbs.
I live in an upper middle class area in a ast area of suburbs that vote repubblican and Borders still played the leftist game. I am 25 miles from the central society and even further from the moonbat zones.
I think it’s something like 220 Borders stores closing. When I saw the list included in the Chapter 11 filing it looked as though most of the Indiana stores were going bye-bye. B&N at least jumped into the eReader market with the Nook. Borders just sort of sat there going deeper into the red. The graphic novel sections were so-so at the locations I’ve been in, but they still owed the main comics/GN distributor $3.9 million. The stores were attractive, but as you dug deeper they (and the company) were a mess. (Make your own political metaphors
)
Face it, books are a luxury when times get tough for many, myself included. Add no Kindle or Nook ebooks and Borders is the odd man out between B&N and Amazon. I doubt they will survive nationally without major luck and massive reinvention.
Borders rocked in the 90′s, they truly did. They changed though when B&N started biting into them. In MA at least it seemed like they became more like B&N than staying true to what made them original. Pretty soon it was hard to tell what store you were in. I started going to B&N then, it was closer.
I love books but have felt the pinch of too many $14.95 – $19.95 stinkers. Now, I get them from the library. As I am a re-reader, if I like them I will buy them. Of the last 7 I’ve read this year, I’ll only buy 3. Of the other 4, 2 were just OK, and 2 I did not finish. By not buying the 4 that looked interesting when I read the blurbs on them got me a week’s worth of gas.
/my $0.02
That’s the thing about bad economic times: they shove weak or ill businesses and business models and shove ‘em off a cliff.
Of course, the coming increase in the price of gas, food and clothing will push even more people into tighter budgets and less for other, less immediately important items like books.
Expect the beatings to continue until morale improves.
It broke my heart when my Border’s on Michigan Avenue in Chicago closed recently. It was a place I frequented for reading, buying, coffee drinking and just enjoying being in the presence of so many nice books and magazines. I heard that Borders is filing bankruptcy and will close 1/3 of its stores. They just cannot compete with Amazon and other online stores (now Kindle is also hurting them). Too bad. In the future there may not be any stores to go to, we will have to purchase everything on line.
Oh, crap! I did not know it had closed! I don’t get around there too often anymore, but I used to work close by and was in there almost daily.
Thanks for the heads up. I head that way more often in the summer and if I’d just come upon it I probably would’ve started crying like a dork, right in the middle of Michigan Avenue.
Capitalism v. Bureaucratic Socialism….CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.
Hypocrisy Today
——————————————————————————–
Political Science 101
This chapter has been plagiarized from an article that has cruised the Internet for several years. Author unknown.
FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and as many eggs as the regulations say you should need.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You help to take care of them, and you all share the milk.
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.
DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment and you get caned.
MILITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.
BRITISH DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. You feed them sheep’s brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. After that it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbours try to kill you and take the cows.
CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull
HONG KONG CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly-listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax deduction for keeping five cows. The milk rights of six cows are transferred via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly owned by the majority shareholder, who sells the rights to all seven cows’ milk back to the listed company. The annual report says that the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. Meanwhile, you kill the two cows because the fung shui is bad.
ENVIRONMENTALISM: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
FEMINISM: You have two cows. They get married and adopt a veal calf.
TOTALITARIANISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the male-centric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
COUNTER CULTURE: Wow, dude, there’s like… these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk.
SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
There WILL be a quiz on Monday
They are shutting down the Border’s in Pasadena, CA too. It has always had a large selection of conservative books with many of them prominently displayed on the shelves.
The Borders on downtown Milwaukee is closing also. I enjoyed going there because it was a fast trip on the city bus. The clerks were always nice and friendly and the store had a good vibe.
6 more in DC closing (plus one last year)