The End of Big Box stores

[Ed Hocken]

AV club just put up an article about the end of Big Box stores and the writer made this point which I thought was great:

I’m not surprised. I stopped my weekly visits to our local big-boxes years ago, largely because their stock kept dwindling. Not their Dow Jones stock—the price of which is also dwindling—but their actual inventory. The same old CDs and DVDs were there, visit after visit, with little to no turnover. If I decided on a whim that I needed a CD copy of an old Who album that I only had on vinyl, more often than not, my local stores wouldn’t have it. I couldn’t even rely on the release-day ritual anymore, because I couldn’t be sure that the media superstores in my town would have, say, the new Drive-By Truckers album on the day it was released.

While my local Borders is shutting down, I went by Bookstar (Which is Barnes & Noble) and noticed just how shabby it looked.

[Abraham Smashington]

It's sad. I'll always prefer going to the store to purchase items as I'm an impulsive shit head and I hate waiting for items to be delivered to me.

[Ed Hocken]

Right, plus I usually get ideas of what to get by browsing. Plus, it's such a great way to waste time.

[Ed Hocken]

I will say this means I never got to have my dream of working at a bookstore or video store as a nerdy high school/college student.

Closest I ever got was when I worked as a temp cashier at the college bookstore back in '05.

[BillyG]

I used to do the Tuesday ritual at Best Buy and a former local dvd/game shop. I've stopped spending as much but I also got a Prime account which is better than shopping in a store.