Are physical stores on their way out? Has the Internet “won”? SHOULD it?

My gut reactions to these questions are “No”, “It’s not a zero sum game”, and “No”, in that order. I like having a nice little downtown area to be in, I like to go to stores and browse and buy things. And that’s a large part of the issue. Browsing. When I know what I want and I know how much it should cost and I don’t need any help and I don’t need it right this minute I’ll shout “To the Interwebs!” and head on over to Amazon or wherever I can get something for the lowest price that I still think is a reputable store (okay, usually Amazon)

When I don’t know anything and none of my friends are knowledgeable and I don’t have a good, reliable source of information I want to go to a store to buy something. When I just want to go in and look around and see what’s up and what’s new and just take it all in…you can’t really beat a physical storefront for that.

That seems like a recipe for disaster for brick-and-mortar businesses (Hey look – it’s the inquisitive people who just want to look around!), but I don’t think it has to be. You see, for a long time the trend has been away from the little specialty shops that proprietors curated and loved and tended like a garden and towards big-box mega stores like Target, Borders, Costco, etc. The only way to compete has been to genericize and cater to the masses. Every store starts to look like every other store and God help you if you don’t give enough shelf space to the latest craze that’s sweeping the nation. You don’t really care about it, but it sells and you have to pay the bills. But the only reason anyone still comes into your store is that you’ve got those little things way in the back that Target doesn’t carry, the things you ordered a box of once because they were exactly the sort of thing that people who like that sort of thing would like, and hey! your store is for people that like that sort of thing, right? The unfortunate result is that you don’t really have a differentiator and the big-box places have two – price and selection. And so little places vanish.

But along comes the Internet and whoops, there goes Barnes & Noble. There goes Borders. And, I suspect before long, there goes Target and WalMart.
After what they did to the little guys, though, I can’t feel much sympathy for the great big box stores.

Borders and B&N crushed the little independent book stores out of existence by being bigger and more capable of carrying more and different books. You only had one store place to go to get the books for the kids’ reading list, a cookbook, the biography your dad wanted to read, a couple of space operas and a good beach read. And it was pretty great. Anything they didn’t have they could order and you’d be able to swing by and pick it up in about a week.

Maybe two. Keep checking back.

Along comes Amazon. The reason I go to Amazon first is, again, convenience. They’ve managed to make a name out of being the one-stop-shop for everything. And if they don’t stock it they probably partner with someone who does and the item will still show up on their site. Depending on your shipping options you’ll have it in a week – for free, usually – or tomorrow. They’ve even got a recommendation service for things which people who like that sort of thing will like!

And yet, I don’t do all my shopping on Amazon.

Why not? Am I one of those people who really really wants to support local businesses and will therefore give them my money even when it costs more and is less convenient * ?

Yes, to some extent. But I’m doing so in my own self interest.

I’m one of those people who, when I go into a store and ask someone to tell me about something and recommend a particular product, will probably end up
buying from that store **. If I can rely on expert advice whenever I go in, I’ll buy there. In part because I know that if I don’t, that expert advice will go away when the store closes down.

I’m one of those people who, when I find a source for something I’m interested in from someone who loves what I love, I will go there – in part because I know that if they love what they do I’m going to get the right product. When I bought my snowboard from a local store they set us up with exactly what we needed. No upsell and no BS. Because they love what they do and they want everyone to have that experience.

I’m one of those people who likes to go into a store that sells interesting stuff that I might never have been aware existed. When you’re an enthusiast who runs a store filled with your own enthusiasm you probably have things that Amazon never dreamed of – because you’ve got years of experience doing this and you know that that special piece there that everyone loves? Well, after about three years it just falls apart, but this one that’s a bit uglier never goes wrong.

What I’m trying to say is that the era of the Internet in retail appears to be the death knell for the big box and a tremendous opportunity for the entrepreneur with a storefront and a passion.

I really hope I’m right.

* Word of caution – if it’s TOO inconvenient I don’t much care how great it is that you’re a local small business. If you’re only open hours that I’m at work then you appear not to WANT to take my money.

** This assumes that I don’t get a heady whiff of fresh BS from their explanation.

At this point I’m just hoping I don’t have a repeat of just a month back when I fell on my shoulder and couldn’t move my arm for about a week.

They went on to say “this is because we do not police every misbegotten thing that comes out of our employees’ mouths. They are human beings and we treat them like adults because the last time we checked there were laws preventing child labor. As long as they’re not telling our customers to go fornicate with Frosty, they’re entitled to whatever beliefs they may have, and inasmuch as they’re wishing good cheer and many nice things to our customers, we have to say we’re pretty much okay with it. Yes, Happy Hanukkah too. If our customers want to respond in kind, they are welcome to – and welcome to respond with a different message if they have different beliefs. And we’re okay with that. Really. So if you have a problem with our employees expressing their wishes for you to have a nice day and or solstice season in the style of their choosing, feel free to shop somewhere else, or perhaps jump in a lake.”

The store’s representative could not be reached for further comment. The chain’s headquarters has been torched to the ground by a group of self-satisfied self-righteous prigs of all stripes who finally determined that the only thing they could all agree to hate together was an appeal to common decency.

What I really want to talk about is this: At one point in the book, they encounter a wizard who invites the all to dinner and serves them each the food they like best to eat. Which strikes me as a really crappy meal, you know? Maybe one night isn’t so bad, but even that has its drawbacks, sinc everyone has their own individual favorite food. And I’d probably let it go, but I see this crop up in fantasy and science fiction all the time, and it’s time that this particular convention be addressed.

A Few of My Favorite Things, and why that’s not what I want to eat:
Think about your favorite food for a minute. Think about, say, your top 5 favorite things to eat. Consider this. Now add the next 5. And the next. And so on. When you get to about 50, stop. Now. Those are the 50 meals you have to live off of for the rest of your life. No problem, right? you could go almost two whole months without repeat, and it’s all stuff you like. Now this isn’t really a problem – and we’re assuming that you get that kind of choice (Because the repetition of meals would kill it, and that’s a known value, and generally only gets done when there’s supposed to be a *moral* to the story). Even if you *do* get to choose from 50 or so meals, though – I’d be very very frustrated. I mean, I like what I like. I can become very fond of a particular food. But I love even more to explore new food. And while I’m not necessarily “normal” by any stretch, my basic sense of exploration *should* be normal for the kind of people who like to read fantasy and science fiction. If you’re stuck with things you already know you like, what about the wonderful things out there that you’ve never *had*? I mean…what about chupaquesos? I bet you don’t even know what that is. And you never would, if you were stuck with things that were already your favorites! Maybe you wouldn’t even like it – but you’d never know!

What about your favorite things?
Here’s the other part of my concern. Food, to me, is a very social thing. If left to my own devices, I’d just eat Oreos and macaroni with cheese. Or various cheeses. I never said I’d be around very long. The point is, though, that without that social aspect, food just doesn’t matter to me. When my family goes to a restaurant and orders, it’s a given that everyone’s going to get something different, and everyone’s going to share. It’s fun – and everyone gets to try a little of everything. Partially this is because we don’t go *out* to eat all that much, so we never go to any one restaurant often enough to each try everything. Partially it’s because we’re very social people. I don’ t know why, but sitting down at a table were everyone had exactly what they most wanted to eat just sounds so…boring. Who would want to share? I’ve got exactly what I want. Why would I want any of yours? Why would you want any of mine? There’s no anticipation, no excitement.

If I were an enchanter, and I could magically make food appear, I’d conjure up things you never even dreamed of. Know what? I’m going to go home, drag out my cookbooks, and try and do just that.

You may be aware the I’m a geek. I think I’ve made that rather obvious to anyone that reads this blog with anything approaching regularity – but just in case you need a refresher:
I like fantasy and science fiction. I always wanted to play RPGs where I could be some kind of sword-swinging, magic wielding, devastatingly handsome and heroic character – in other words, lots of stuff I can’t do anywhere else. Part of the attraction of these games is the constant accumulation of experience points, allowing you to build up your skills and abilities and giving you neat new powers like, oh, blowing off a basilisk’s head with a fireball. This sort of thing is generally slow, and very discretely incremental. From level 4 to level 5, you might only gain one new spell – and it might just be “light up a room” – alternatively, you might gain a single health point. You come to cherish these small gains, knowing that taken over the course of, say, levels 4 through 10, you’ll go from being potential food for a Dire Wolf to being known as “Ogresbane”. Or something equally silly.

The point of all this is that, when you go to the gym, the same tiny bits of achievement come to you over time. This week it might be noticing that your veins are standing out a bit when you lift that weight – next week it might be noticing that you can move up 5lbs. on another set. Individually small achievements, but taken as a whole they can be really neat. Two years ago I probably couldn’t have run from my house to my car. Today I’m considering riding my bike all the way to work (the only thing stopping me at this point is getting up early enough. I’ve already proven I can go the necessary distance).

Here’s to small victories, here’s to feeling better, here’s to bumping that charisma up to 18/20.

p.s.: geeeeeeeeeeek.

That said, I’m always appreciative of the humor inherent in taking something to the extreme.
Thus, I present to you…(drumroll)….the Freedom Tickler.
Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the Freedom Tickler is little more than a rebranded French Tickler.
Found in a vending machine on the wall of a convenience store bathroom so deep in Southwestern Virginia that it’s spitting distance to Tennessee, the Freedom Tickler embodies all that is truly American in this day and age. Shamelessly self-aggrandizing, of questionable quality, jingoistic and isolationist, while at the same time embracing the wonder that is outsourcing. That’s right. Underneath this All-American exterior lies a small, powdery piece of latex that was manufactured in Korea. God Bless the USA.

Avoid any path that gives you an excuse to be lazy – great advice. And advice I wish I’d followed. And advice I still need to consciously follow. It’s difficult, though, in high school. I took a creative writing course (I still had that much personal integrity that even though I was told it was a waste of my time I took it because it interested me…) and wrote story after story. Some of them I was truly proud of. Some of my poems…well, my poems were pretty much crap (especially reading them now), but anyway. There were a few really neat stories I wrote, and the germs of some stories about personal identity that I still have knocking around in the back of my head and are just waiting to be fully realized. I submitted them all to the “literary” book the school published every year. Not one of them was selected. Fine. That didn’t bother me so much – what bothered me was that one story I hadn’t submitted, a story I’d tossed off in about 4 minutes to fulfil a course requirement which was full of cliches (intentionally) and, because I wasn’t interested in the assignment, I’d forced a really bad, predictable plot into the cheesiest of frameworks and turned it in, was selected and praised by the creative writing teacher. I was more than a little disillusioned for more than a few years. Indeed, the other thing I’d done for the booklet, a few sketches, were little more than doodles that the instructor had seen and requested. Wonderful.
Let’s hope a few other people read his article and manage to do some amazing things.

So….how do you get to be immensely popular, anyway?