Post by Fairweather on May 28, 2009 13:25:27 GMT -5
Okay, dear ones, this thread is for idle notions that fit no other category on this board so far:
Like, say, the virtues of having a good used bookstore in close proximity.
Here in my little knob town, we got our second used bookstore about a year ago. The first one, which opened a good twenty years ago, didn't do well, and closed within a year when the owners' marriage fell apart with startling rapidity.
The second wasn't doing well because of its location. Here, downtown is for all intents and purposes a ghost town since Wal-Mart went in out on the bypass when my nephew Bubba was a baby. Most of the business transacted in town proper centers around the courthouse; there are a few banks within walking distance, a couple of restaurants that do a booming business thanks to their proximity to the courthouse; a mental health clinic in an abandoned jewelry store; a consignment shop for women's clothes; several law offices, an antique shop and a dance studio. The bookstore was located in what, back when Mom was a girl, was the local honkytonk, directly across from what is now the courthouse annex but was in her day (and my younger ones) a gas station; a tall dark forbidding building, owned by people who moved into town with no connections. It would have helped to have connections, in this place where the natives become increasingly insular as outsiders come in. Its biggest liability was this: NO PARKING. The main street of our town is called College St. and was once part of Old Highway 68; you hooked a right down at the far end and eventually would end up at the local Methodist college, which is dying a long slow painful death--but that's another story for another time.
At the point where the bookstore was located, across the street from the courthouse annex, the street is hardly more than twenty feet wide, if that. There's parallel parking in front of the annex, angled parking in front of the bookstore, all of it invariably full of those transacting courthouse business. A parking lot down the street is also invariably full of those on similar missions, and on Sundays provides parking for First Baptist Church.
Not good for business, not having good parking--especially when the readers in town are generally older retired people who don't like the walking distance and book nerds like me who don't like either parallel parking or backing into a frightening narrow main drag.
About two weeks ago, Willard and I were riding up to Fort Loudon State Park when we noticed that a little house right on the five-lane, built and zoned commercial but used only briefly as a real estate office, has a new tenant: the used bookstore, formerly in town.
Yesterday we had time to stop and check it out, taking the precaution of having books with us to trade. It's tiny. It's got way lower ceilings and less floor space than the old honkytonk, and Willard complained that the tall shelves, placed close together, made her claustrophobia act up.
My main complaint is that the selection, like the house, is frankly tiny. I got spoiled over the course of several years by going to a MacKay's (a humongous used store with locations in Knoxville and Chattanooga) which had miles and miles of floor space, shelves and shelves of books on any subject imaginable, and also an annex which sold video and computer games and music CDs. So this wee store, in a space not much bigger than the living room and my bedroom here at home, was a bit dismaying; the selection is not broad enough to suit me.
But I am gonna do my best to support it, for this reason: the bibliophiles in town deserve it, and with time and careful attention it could become something far better. My dream for it would be that it become successful enough, and well-stocked enough, to move from this tiny house to the abandoned Wal-Mart building in the Ingles Center, which has sat all but derelict since the opening of the new midsize supercenter a decade ago.
Now THAT would be good--for me, for the town, and for the booklovers among us. And since I buy a lot of books, I'm gonna do my da*mnedest to contribute to its success.
Now then, some of you--tell me about your used bookstores. Sarah ban Breathnach says a really good one is an essential for life--and I'm inclined to agree.
Like, say, the virtues of having a good used bookstore in close proximity.
Here in my little knob town, we got our second used bookstore about a year ago. The first one, which opened a good twenty years ago, didn't do well, and closed within a year when the owners' marriage fell apart with startling rapidity.
The second wasn't doing well because of its location. Here, downtown is for all intents and purposes a ghost town since Wal-Mart went in out on the bypass when my nephew Bubba was a baby. Most of the business transacted in town proper centers around the courthouse; there are a few banks within walking distance, a couple of restaurants that do a booming business thanks to their proximity to the courthouse; a mental health clinic in an abandoned jewelry store; a consignment shop for women's clothes; several law offices, an antique shop and a dance studio. The bookstore was located in what, back when Mom was a girl, was the local honkytonk, directly across from what is now the courthouse annex but was in her day (and my younger ones) a gas station; a tall dark forbidding building, owned by people who moved into town with no connections. It would have helped to have connections, in this place where the natives become increasingly insular as outsiders come in. Its biggest liability was this: NO PARKING. The main street of our town is called College St. and was once part of Old Highway 68; you hooked a right down at the far end and eventually would end up at the local Methodist college, which is dying a long slow painful death--but that's another story for another time.
At the point where the bookstore was located, across the street from the courthouse annex, the street is hardly more than twenty feet wide, if that. There's parallel parking in front of the annex, angled parking in front of the bookstore, all of it invariably full of those transacting courthouse business. A parking lot down the street is also invariably full of those on similar missions, and on Sundays provides parking for First Baptist Church.
Not good for business, not having good parking--especially when the readers in town are generally older retired people who don't like the walking distance and book nerds like me who don't like either parallel parking or backing into a frightening narrow main drag.
About two weeks ago, Willard and I were riding up to Fort Loudon State Park when we noticed that a little house right on the five-lane, built and zoned commercial but used only briefly as a real estate office, has a new tenant: the used bookstore, formerly in town.
Yesterday we had time to stop and check it out, taking the precaution of having books with us to trade. It's tiny. It's got way lower ceilings and less floor space than the old honkytonk, and Willard complained that the tall shelves, placed close together, made her claustrophobia act up.
My main complaint is that the selection, like the house, is frankly tiny. I got spoiled over the course of several years by going to a MacKay's (a humongous used store with locations in Knoxville and Chattanooga) which had miles and miles of floor space, shelves and shelves of books on any subject imaginable, and also an annex which sold video and computer games and music CDs. So this wee store, in a space not much bigger than the living room and my bedroom here at home, was a bit dismaying; the selection is not broad enough to suit me.
But I am gonna do my best to support it, for this reason: the bibliophiles in town deserve it, and with time and careful attention it could become something far better. My dream for it would be that it become successful enough, and well-stocked enough, to move from this tiny house to the abandoned Wal-Mart building in the Ingles Center, which has sat all but derelict since the opening of the new midsize supercenter a decade ago.
Now THAT would be good--for me, for the town, and for the booklovers among us. And since I buy a lot of books, I'm gonna do my da*mnedest to contribute to its success.
Now then, some of you--tell me about your used bookstores. Sarah ban Breathnach says a really good one is an essential for life--and I'm inclined to agree.
