on the closing of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller

One of the joys of my childhood was going to Tanglewood Mall on a Saturday afternoon and checking out what was new at Waldenbooks and B. Dalton Bookseller. It’s hard to remember in a post-superstore and internet world how good these stores were, but they actually were decent stores with good selections in their heyday. They were at least as good as a typical Barnes & Noble and Borders, just smaller and lacking the chairs and coffee.

IMO what killed them was the shifting of corporate focus by their parent companies. After Barnes & Noble and Borders took of in the ’90s, both B. Dalton and Waldenbooks became de-facto outlets for their corporate families and started filling the fronts of their stores with worthless bargain book sections: poorly conceived clearance aisles filled with low quality books that should never have been published in the first place. The over-abundance of loss leaders shrunk the traditional book selections to a shadow of their former selves and ruined the two chains’ reputations as sources for quality books.

Even though Barnes & Noble corporate eventually saw the light and integrated the Barnes & Noble search and order capabilities into their B.Dalton mall stores, Borders corporate steadfastly refused to bring Waldenbooks in line with Borders search and order capabilities until Waldenbooks got so small they couldn’t support their own system.

It doesn’t take a retail genius to figure out that the companies were de-emphasizing the mall stores in favor of a larger, more profitable format and that the reduced selection of a modern Waldenbooks and B.Dalton would eventually make they easy to dispose of if the mall business never recovered (and it hasn’t so far).

It’s sad to think of how many small and medium sized cities will now have no new general-interest bookstore thanks to B. Dalton and Waldenbooks’ closures. Danville, Va. and Bluefield, W.Va. immediately come to mind: somewhat isolated cities that don’t have enough college-educated customers to be considered for a book superstore but yet have enough population to support one. Cities like these will be solely at the mercy of Walmart and the like, which only stock books they figure will sell to a mainstream audience and little else.

This is an embarrassing and depressing situation. Why should people in typically sized American cites have to travel 60 miles or more just to buy a non-New York Times bestseller book in person? I just hope that a company like Books-A-Million will step up and bring some essential choice and selection back to these towns.

Timothy Egan: Working Class Zero

By Timothy Egan, The New York Times

The working class and its self-proclaimed advocates are shouting at phantoms. (more)

top 15 modernist gas stations

Some of America’s best Mid Century Modern architecture is in the form of gas stations, with their simple space requirements and focus on innovative roofs.

Check out this link to pictures of the top 15 modernist gas stations. You can even vote on your favorite one.

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Playing to the Middle

By CINTRA WILSON

Published: August 13, 2009

J.C. Penney has broken free of its suburban parking area to invade Herald Square, and the most frequent question on New York’s collective lips seems to be: Why? (read more)

The new JCPenney at the Manhattan Mall in New York (former home to Gimbels, Stern's and A&S) is open and flourishing in an otherwise dismal retail market. What better way to celebrate its arrival and success by sending the New York Times fashion reporter Cintra Wilson into the store for a review. Ms. Wilson gives the store enough backhanded compliments and outright insults that's almost a parody of a serious article, even for the Fashion & Style section.

Consider this excerpt:

J. C. Penney has always trafficked in knockoffs that aren’t quite up to Canal Street’s illegal standards. It was never “get the look for less” so much as “get something vaguely shaped like the designer thing you want, but cut much more conservatively, made in all-petroleum materials, and with a too-similar wannabe logo that announces your inferiority to evil classmates as surely as if you were cursed to be followed around by a tuba section.”

Just like all good clichés, this hackneyed statement is partly based in truth, but not so much that no one would be able say it definitively. Penney’s is no runway show, but its offerings are no worse than those of Target, Kohl's or even most of the private label merchandise at Macy's.

Considering the questionable (and largely overpriced even at a discount) merchandise that passes for fashion in the dozens of off-price store that cover Manhattan, JCPenney seems like a measure of clarity. At least what you want is likely in your size.

You also have to consider that every other large scale retailer that has been in this mall since the fall of Gimbels has tanked. Stern's, for all of its history as the "Show Biz Store," looked more like a bad infomercial when they were there. Steve & Barry's was even worse, stretching its bland wares into an oversized space that was doomed to fail. Don't get me started on the perpetually lackluster specialty stores in this mall. JCPenney is a strong enough name that it could be a serious contender with the right amount of traffic.

UPDATE: Apparently neither the public or Ms. Wilson's bosses liked the article very much.
The Insult Was Extra Large
NYTimes Issues Apology For Cintra Wilson Article

This is why people don’t go to the mall anymore.

I was at the mall last week with my mom. She was buying a new pair of jeans and I was attempting to buy concert tickets.

Her search for pair of basic jeans was successful only after going to several stores and enduring dozens of pairs of slim-fit, low-rise stretch models clearly not marketed towards the majority of American women. Until she dug for an hour in JCPenney and settled for a less than stellar pair that was the only one that fit that wasn’t severely flared, distressed or heavily decorated, she almost left empty handed.

Go online, they say. But what is the mall there for if everything I need is online?

Who are the buyers for these stores aiming for? The “thin, Middle American, mid-thirties mom with kids” demographic is almost overserved at the mall, and by and large she’s not at the mall in the first place because she doesn’t have time to shop. Yet all the stores are filled with merchandise for her and, largely, her alone.

Teenagers are also heavily marketed to, but they’re usually price conscious in this economic age and looking for deals. No deals are to be found when the stores still think it’s 2005 and try to push aspirational merchandise. Bling is dead, y’all. $2.50 gas and random layoffs killed it. Kids are trying to pay for their cars, cell phones and apartments, not Air Jordans and Louis Vuitton handbags.

The fat, the old and, notably, men and kids get short shrift with the mall too. Need that in a 2x, folks? Go to the back of the store and dig through embarrassing garbage to find something that still probably doesn’t fit. Are you tall? Go elsewhere unless you only like blue polos. Need a suit for church? You MIGHT find it, but it’s either too cheap to last or too expensive (and form fitting) to bother purchasing. Need shoes? They’re too wide, too short, too cheap or too “boogie,” and that’s just at Sears! How about some cool toys or the latest electronic gadget? Sorry, we don’t carry those!

Go online, they say. But what is the mall there for if everything I need is online?

As for me, I left empty handed. I needed concert tickets for U2’s performance in Charlottesville, and since I can’t get affordable high speed internet service, I attempted to ditch the online purchase of same and buy them at my local Ticketmaster outlet, which the website suggested as an alternative. My somewhat friendly Ticketmaster rep informed me that contrary to what the website says, the purchase in person of tickets for a show TWO HOURS AWAY in the SAME STATE was impossible, because Ticketmaster was a “regional operation” and the Roanoke and Charlottesville weren’t in the same region. She suggested I go online.

That accomplished a lot. I could have bought them online in the first place.

Go online, they say. But what is the mall there for if everything I need is online?

Long story short, I got my tickets and I’m headed to Charlottesville to see U2 in October. It took a half hour of frustration online on Ticketmaster’s website to get them, during which I endured several up-sell attempts including event insurance, promising to cover my tickets if something happens (with no mention AT ALL about what constitutes a claim, much less how to file it, and a handy “print your own tickets” utility that somehow costs $2.50 more than having them mail the damn things to you.

This is what I was hoping to avoid by going to the mall.

Carry on.

A Prefab House That Dazzles Still

By ALICE RAWSTHORN
Published: June 15, 2009

The Eames House in southwestern California, which turns 60 this month, remains a model of economy and creativity. (more)

Malls of America: R.I.P.

As of today, the much appreciated Malls of America blog has been removed from Blogger. Keith Milford's work over the past several years chronicling the history of retail was legendary and remarkably thorough. The commentary was always informative and fun, and the photo quality was consistently good.

Malls of America was around for a couple of years before new posts came to an abrupt, unexplained end about a year and a half ago, but it served as the inspiration for at least a half-dozen blogs and websites. I was a supporter to the end, and I kept going back to the site for a while hoping to see new posts. Alas, it was not to be.

If you've never seen the site, check out the archived version before it's too late.