As its liquidation sale got under way last week the Borders store downtown was swarming with consumers, myself included, in search of bargain books, music and the miscellaneous merchandise marked down by 20 to 40 percent, ALL SALES FINAL. As a faithful longtime patron of both Bookshop Santa Cruz and Logos, I scarcely ever bought a book at Borders, but in the early years of the new millennium I did take advantage of the big chain’s extensive selection of new music, scoring quite a few excellent CDs, and—before the vandals trashed them—made use of its public restrooms from time to time.
I remember when Borders was about to move in on Pacific Ave., in the post-quake wave that brought The Gap and Starbucks and Urban Outfitters and other mall-worthy national and international merchants to town, how quite a few righteous advocates of hometown enterprise, especially Bookshop defenders, were up in arms and half hysterical sounding the alarm that local booksellers wouldn’t stand a chance against the corporate behemoth, a commercial predator whose marketing strategy was to move in close to a successful store and, by way of discounts and economies of scale, gradually drive it out of business.
Well, it didn’t turn out that way. Santa Cruz, a graveyard of capitalism in more ways than one, with its community loyalty and home-turf chauvinism, has kept our spunky little Bookshop alive (though Santa Cruz’s legendary “spirituality” couldn’t save Gateways, also currently liquidating) while the Borders bogeyman has keeled over, and not just here. The company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, closing some 250 of its 1200 stores in hopes of reorganizing and recovering from both the electronic tsunami and its own strategic mistakes, having expanded beyond its capacity to cover its costs. When your company is losing $2 million a week, something must be done.
Some locals will be glad to see Borders go—it gives the Bookshop and our other worthy independent, Capitola Book Café, a better shot at survival—but the 30 employees losing their jobs are probably not among them, and the 22,000 square feet of retail space left vacant by its departure will leave another gaping hole in the local economy. Worst of all, from a macro-cultural standpoint, the many publishers owed millions by Borders will have to absorb those losses in a marketplace already shaken by the shift from print to e-books.
Those ripples will hurt literature, already badly wounded by the attention-deficit epidemic, as fewer and fewer publishers will risk investment in a product, whatever its cultural value, that can’t pay for itself. While the independent bookstores and smaller publishers still standing—and Amazon and Barnes & Ignoble in their monstrous ways—valiantly struggle to remain viable as oases of old-school reading, everyone loses when a store like Borders goes down.
Tough competition, unfair as it can be when the big fish gobble up the little ones, can be a good thing; it keeps the competitors sharp and creative in the effort to say a step ahead of the other guy, and gives the customer alternative resources. The notion that local businesses are any less in search of advantages or profits than the giants is an illusion. Bookshop Santa Cruz is a better store than before, partly thanks to Borders.
“Any man’s death diminishes me,” wrote Donne, “because I am involved in mankind.” Borders’ downtown demise is nothing to celebrate—the bell tolls for books.
Stephen Kessler is a reader and writer residing in Santa Cruz.
