Borders will close 200 stores--a list and a post-mortem.

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_borders0216_20110216.html

What I'm about to write wouldn't have passed the Literary Correctness test in, say, the year 2000.

Back in the day, no one would have imagined the corporate book chains of Borders and Barnes and Noble (then underpricing many independent stores out of business) would face the store-closings and bankruptcy filings of one-decade-plus-later.

And, to give one example, you certainly couldn't go into the now-quite-dead Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica and carry a bag from either of the Independence-Slaughtering Corporate Behemoths.

In terms of my experience, there were (and are) good and bad Borders stores.  Some of them had better stocking of nonbestsellers than others; some also had a fairly deep selection of CDs and DVDs (until the Great Culling of 2008-09).  And some stores had more friendly, helpful staff members than others (who will be nameless, but employed certain young-and-sometimes-older people who thought of customers as something to be endured).

As poetry gatherings in L.A. are concerned, three of the earliest readings I look back on fondly were those taking place in Westwood, Santa Monica and Glendale.  The Westwood and Santa Monica stores are now closed; the Glendale store made the dreaded List of 200.

In reading the death list, I was disappointed to discover the imminent closing of the store at the Pike in downtown Long Beach--they have a Wednesday reading and actually stock local icons such as Gerald Locklin.

Also, I was semi-surprised that the Northridge Mall store (which has suffered from sometimes below-par staff and is more run-down than it used to be) was spared.  It gets a fair amount of shoppers, but I was guessing that Borders would have pulled the trigger to get out of their lease with the mall owners.

It will be interesting to find out--for all the media whining and moaning about imminent death of brick-and-mortar bookstores and overemphasizing the sales figures of e-books--whether independent and second-hand stores will again gain the deserved traction they lost in the past decade.