Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

A Public Essay about Small Stores…by Robert M. Katzman

Filed under: Depression and Hope,Friendship & Compassion,Life & Death,My Own Personal Hell,Rage!,Retail Purgatory — Bob at 1:14 pm on Monday, October 27, 2014

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© October 27, 2014

Why support small Brick-and Mortar stores? Why bother? Some old man or woman selling a limited selection of whatever they sell or create. Walmart, Target, E-bay, Starbucks are infinitely more accessible, have mountains of things to sell and are coast to coast enterprises. You see one, you’ve seen them all.

Then why travel? Why visit little villages with unique pottery or cool coffee shops? Why go anywhere or meet anyone with the passion to create an imaginative, determined and one of a kind store? The odds of success are irrational. Some shopper can usually buy anything the small stores try to sell for so much less online. Brick-and Mortar shops?? Why not kill ’em all and just stay home in bed punching buttons and have stuff brought right to your door? That’s the life we all want, isn’t it?

No. It is a nightmare of computer selected items governed by region and recorded last purchases. You are no longer a person. You are a blip in a Cloud that knows all about you and what you want.

When you die, you are deleted.

Click.

Small stores are the beating heart of every neighborhood, artistic dreams peering out of a series of different shop’s windows, a person making a chair, designing a dress, rescuing a tattered old periodical so it may survive another hundred years.

Small stores represent the triumph of Hope over Logic.

Small stores supply an unexpected thrill when a unique item purchased there and given as a gift actually conveys the comprehension that the buyer of the gift bothered to take the time to do something special. That means, besides whatever one person presents to another, they are also expressing emotion that says: You are important enough for me to take the time to find a special gift.

Small stores sell magical emotion that the giant box stores can never duplicate no matter what they do.

Am I advertising?

No, I am one of those whom I describe here. I know the mind-numbing experience of staring out a wide store front window at an empty street.  I know very well the sinking feeling of: What-do-I do-now? I am seeking to awaken the general population to a reality that indifference to supporting local stores creates empty storefronts, which hollow out neighborhoods. People who open small stores have dreams too. Help make them come true.

Be a mensch.

Shop local.

If possible, to anyone who reads this and understands how to use the social media effectively, please find a way to make my heartfelt plea, my cri de coeur, be able to be seen by many more people or newspapers, which like small stores, are also dying. I don’t have that sort of modern skill. Thank you.

The Old Magazine Store.com 4906 Oakton St Skokie, Il 60077 (847) 677-9444

(This store closed 18-month later on April 10, 2016, ending my 31 years in the antique paper business.)

*****************

Publishing News! 

Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words

Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history and about one man’s life than a person may imagine.

Please visit my new website: https://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.

Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:

Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.

Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998 (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM

Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping

For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95

(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95

I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.

My Fighting Words Publishing Co. four original books, published between 2004 and 2007 are now out-of-print. I still have some left and will periodically offer them for sale on my new website.

8 Comments »

Comment by Katrin Threet

October 27, 2014 @ 3:16 pm

Oh please, I love the mom and pop stores, I grew up in Hyde Park. A FB friend posted an old picture of 53rd Street, my daughter got excited, she thought someone had reopened Kiddy Kicks, I used to buy her shoes there! I miss 53rd and 55th street with all if it’s unique stores, my sister still has dishes from Koolie’s Corner (I can’t remember if it’s spelled with a c or a k). Let us not forget Breslauer’s, she was a family friend for years, sister worked there for years hemming school uniforms! I could go on and on! I will continue to seek the mom and pop stores!

Comment by Ami

October 27, 2014 @ 7:20 pm

The ones who will be destroyed are the large ones, like Best Buy. Even department stores are in risk. But there is not much alternative to small mom and pop stores, as long as they invest not only in interesting merchandise, but also in ambiance…

Every time we pass thru Nordstrom (walking our way to Old Orchard from our home couple blocks away) I’m amazed and happy to see how crowded it is…

Comment by brad dechter

October 28, 2014 @ 3:19 am

As someone who is what one calls “technologically challenged”, I am a firm supporter of small businesses and Mom and Pop stores everywhere…
The concept of spending time selecting a gift be cause it shows basically that someone cares is certainly unique too in todays age.

Brad

Comment by steffijude

October 28, 2014 @ 3:34 am

You are right Robert!! It is definitely true about small stores and the excitement and thrill it creates. It is also a great place for purchasing gifts and other such kinds for the our close acquaintances.

Comment by Herb Berman

October 28, 2014 @ 4:01 pm

I also love small stores that sell quirky and unusual things. I love art galleries, antique stores, used book stores, odd little gift shops, cozy restaurants. When I was a kid, I loved the corner soda fountain, the penny candy store, the odd little “magic and novelty” store, and the newsstand that carried hundreds, maybe thousands, of papers and magazines. I also loved Saturday matinee double features with cartoons, shorts and newsreel at the local movie theater just around the corner. I loved taking the bus for a nickel to the baseball game where my buddies and I could sit in the bleachers——we were the “knothole gang”——for 50¢. Gone. All gone, never to return.

We’re in the midst of a technological revolution every bit as radical as steamship, railroad, auto, airplane, radio and TV. I fear that, except in special cases and in particular areas, the small, independent shop is doomed. I plead guilty to loving the freedom and ease of internet shopping, the breadth and depth of goods available. While I can happily spend hours in a used book store, no store in the world can match Amazon with its network of third-party sellers. If I see a book favorably reviewed or run across a poet I’d like to read more of, chances are that an Amazon vendor will deliver whatever I want to my home at a good price——often at 1¢ to $1.00 plus S&H. I remember haunting used book stores wherever I happened to be looking for an out-of-print book on the “Great American Songbook.” I finally found it in a shop in Ft Myers FL for $50. Now I could buy it a lot cheaper from my study with a flick of my index finger. It’s a blessing, but we all know there’s no such thing as an unmixed blessing.

Comment by Don Larson

October 29, 2014 @ 11:06 am

Bob,

Small stores will not go away entirely. However there is a steady reduction in their number until a new equilibrium exists to satisfy a local population.

Although a percentage of people shop online for free delivery of razor blades delivered by a drone, not everyone wants that experience.

People want value however they define that quality. You have quality products that are not readily online. If your business was online, your local community would be coming to your doors for pickup and remote customers would be scouring your website to order items for delivery.

Is that not unlike your original newspaper stand where some customers came to you for immediate pickup and others had home delivery?

I for one miss the days of our youth when we could walk to a local store and get what we wanted. It was unheard of to order by phone from a far location. Those days are behind us in too many ways.

I will share your post to my Facebook Wall.

Warmest regards,

Don

Comment by Bebe

November 15, 2014 @ 2:58 pm

Just came across and read your latest:

Ending excerpt–
“If possible, to anyone who reads this and understands how to use the social media effectively, please find a way to make my heartfelt plea, my cri de coeur, be able to be seen by many more people or newspapers, which like small stores, are also dying. I don’t have that sort of modern skill. Thank you.”

Seems to me, if you want to save your store you may have to learn that modern tech skill and set up a website:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=creating+a+free+website&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IE8SRC

OR find someone to do it for you; if you can’t pay, you might consider bartering store stock or (if you like most people, have other skills– trade in kind, like people who need dental work trade baby-sitting, etc).

It is just going to depend on you and how much you are willing to keep your store; if you are, you make it happen (if you don’t care anymore about it– and that’s all right too, then it dies).

Your pleas is very passionate– but, are YOU? Still passionate about your store?

Comment by Tulsi

December 4, 2015 @ 12:04 pm

I really enojyed your book. I have been following your story for a while now and it gives me hope for my husband who also has a brain injury and is in a care home. Little is provided in the way of rehab, so it is up to me to provide whatever rehab I can.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>