I think judging the bookstore world from an experience in San Francisco may be missing the mark. Bookstores are still very popular, but by and large, they are busier in places where the Internet hasn't become the holy grail of finding sex. In that regard, San Francisco would be the center of the new holy grail, now wouldn't it! Bookstores seem to function much better in out of the way places (Horse Cave, KY, Pioneer, TN, Missoula, MT, etc). Sure, there are still great stores in some urban areas, but those are getting harder to come by.
I got a sense years ago that many bookstore owners had weighed their costs and measured their profits and many had decided that guys hanging out for hours in the back of their store, maybe eventually spending a dollar, and all the time being an unwilling party to the possible arrest of the store owner just weren't where it was for their business model. The money to be made was out front with retail customers who actually made purchases and weren't doing things the cops might frown upon (at least in the store).
I also don't understand the 'customer' (a word I use with some skepticism) who actually believe it is entirely OK to stand around in a store -- a business after all -- for long periods of time, with no expectation you need to make a purchase. Barnes and Noble can pull it off, or so it seems, but small businesses like an ABS need customers who will spend money. Here at CFS we deal with a similar issue constantly: customers who think it is perfectly OK to stand around and never contribute and never make a purchase. From that perspective, I side with the store owner.
Having said all that, bookstores have a long history of keeping an establishment that is often nothing close to clean. Clerks are often rude or, if you are 'lucky,' disinterested. Toilets are often closed or dirty. These conditions in a store seem more typical which is precisely why we remember those stores that are otherwise. Add to this customers who often enter these establishments with a lot of baggage. Baggage that includes self-hatred for themselves and their bodies. We don't exactly have the healthiest notions about sex and aging in other parts of our lives. The bookstore is often where our darker demons come to the surface.
With customers feeling like they are being treated rudely and with employees and owners fully aware of the risk to their personal freedooms, plus with bookstore owners aware of how much money people like themselves can spend in legal fees fighting for the right to earn a living, it seems almost pre-destined there will be an unhealthly tension in the world of the ABS. I wish somehow the owner, the employee and the customers could join together in an alliance to work for a better store environment, to work to repeal local ordinances that allow police to bother these stores, and to show the larger community the valuable service a bookstore can and does provide. Hey, I can dream can't I?!
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