Saturday, July 23, 2011

The funeral for Borders Books begins

I had this to say in Borders Books 1971-2011.
Sigh. I think my wife and I will go to the Birmingham Borders on Friday for a going out of business sale.
We didn't leave the house yesterday because of the heat, but lots of people did. WXYZ has the story from Borders flagship store in Ann Arbor.



Borders has begun liquidating their inventory as they go out of business.


Watching this segment really hits home. This store is where I spent more than a decade hanging out, browsing, drinking coffee, and buying books. That it will soon close permanently makes me grieve.

I'm not the only one grieving. I posted an obituary at Journal Fen, and got ten comments that agreed that this was a demise worth mourning.

For an even better obituary, read Goodbye, My Love: The Death of My First Real Job by Ferrett Steinmetz, who blogs as theferrett. He worked at Borders when things started to go south, but very few people noticed at the time. His perspective is that all of the things that bothered him about the company finally did it in. He has links to his other essays on what went wrong at Borders. The one I most recommend is this one, where he compares the causes of Borders decline and collapse with the lack of vision he thinks ails the United States. It's very perceptive and very discouraging.

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