Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Bookshops Closing, high streets change, get over it?

Northfields  Ealing has lost its bookshop (it's not alone in this)- the business model of Amazon has all but destroyed the high street bookshop, Waterstones is hanging in there and W H Smith and the big Supermarkets manages to stock the TV tie-ins and some popular fiction.

Music shops be they vinyl, CD or sheet are becoming a memory for some and the pleasure of flicking through albums is one that will never enjoyed by many.

So earlier today I was thinking about how when I was still in short trousers my older brother used to take me on walks of discovery across Leicester visiting small cafés little more than downstairs parlours where we used to have a Vimto to drink (goodness how much these used to cost), well those  establishments are long gone. 

Now in the local Town centre the dominant players are the coffee shops and banks - the days when a town would have 5 or 6 shoe shops and a plethora of Newsagents has passed but is this something to worry about?
Pubs are it seems in terminal decline apart from those that are almost ironic in their thematic horror, Wine bars were all the rage for a while but now a part of 90s mythology.

Well retailers might rail about how they provided a service but without customers it is a service that's not needed - Nostalgia it's not what it used to be.
Closed bookshops - progress?

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