As expected, the end has arrived for Jim Leonard's SKR stores on 
Liberty St.   The remaining stock is now 30% off.  
 
A clerk said that holiday sales were disappointing, and that the stores
would close by the end of January.

SKR Classical was originally a division of the old Schoolkids Records,
and for about a decade it was a pretty good classical specialist shop.
The Classical store was sold to manager Jim Leonard around what, 1997?,
as the original Schoolkids struggled for capital.   After 
the original Schoolkids suspended operations on Liberty St. in fall 1998,
Jim Leonard's SKR Classical took over the storefronts and ran a 
pop/rock side and a jazz/blues side.    The new SKR stores never seemed 
to establish themselves with customers; I rarely saw more than one or
two people in there, at times when Borders was packed. 

I was afraid this expansion would end up costing us SKR Classical, 
and my expectations were fulfilled when the SKR operations ran a 
"partial liquidation" in Spring 2000.    That large sale wiped out most
of the classical stock, and it was never rebuilt; since then the stores 
have just seemed to be marking time.

Previous comments about the Schoolkids and SKR stores can be found in 
the music conference, items 149 & 154.   (item:music,149 and item:music
,154)

   ((( linked between Agora, Music and Classicalmusic )))

194 responses total.

I never really shopped there.  I'm a different market.  In fact, from the
looks of it, *everyone* is a different market.

My only worry is what is going to replace the location.  Another music store
would be nice, though economically hard to justify.  I'd prefer to keep some
of downtown reasonable attractive to visit.  Starbucks is infringing on too
much already.

At this rate, South U and the rest of downtown might not be recognizable (or
worthwhile) to me in five years.  

  So how many record stores are left in Ann Arbor now?

Discount Records at State & Liberty,
The music section at Borders (which is pretty well stocked),
Harmony House on Liberty right close to Discount Records,
Encore Records (used CDs, vinyl, & cassettes),
Some kind of used store (or maybe two) over on S. University,
Wazoo (used)
P.J.s (used)

Then a lot of big-box stores on the edge of town, if you want to count them.

Don't forget that you can also find used records and CDs at the public library
book sale (Sat. mornings), Kiwanis (ditto - records start at 10 cents and go
up to a dollar), and the PTO Thrift Shop, and Reuse Ann Arbor (both open
daily), and yard sales.  Anywhere else?

(there's a store or two in Briarwood, last I checked.)

yes, but ever since briawood made the exclusive deal with record town making
them the only music store in the mall, both tape world and musicland closed.
If you wondered why Musicland expanded their store in Arborland (back when
it was "indoors") that's way.  to make up for the lack of one in Briarwood.

How could I have forgotten Schoolkids in Exile?  It's still there under
Bivouac.

  How on earth does Discount Records stay in business?  Or is it for some
  reason being propped up by the remainder of the Musicland chain?

discount is a sam goody store.
if you want to talk about used records, I think treasure mart has a slew of
them too.
Disc Go Round is on south university.

I hope tower comes back and moves into SKRs old spot.

That would be the most attractive option to me.  I don't know if they could
make it work, though.  Borders is tough competition, and they have to start
from the ground up.  I suspect their employment and stock have moved on to
other things.

Then again, a foothold in the location might just be worth all that trouble.
I'll cross my fingers.

I'd count Best Buy and Media Play if we're counting mall stores as well.  I
used to like Best Buy's selection better, but they still have a fair amount
of good stuff.

It was in the very early eighties that I started building a classical
music collection.  I had no idea what was good and only a slightly
better grasp on what I liked.  Jim Leonard sort of took me on as
a project, I think.  Every few weeks I'd stop by, tell him what I 
thought of his last pick, and he'd suggest another.  It was years
later, as I started to hear other versions of the same pieces,
that I realized how he'd help me avoid a lot of mediocre purchases.

I was pleased to see him advance to salesperson, to manager, then owner,
and it saddens me now to see SKR close.  But I also know I'm part of the
problem.  First off, I'm down to only buying one, maybe two new classical
disks a year.  And those are pretty obscure pieces which would need to be
special ordered from a traditional shop.  Instead I find them on
Amazon.com, listen to excerpts, and have them delivered to my door within
days.

The thing is, at this point it's so much easier to go to Amazon and wait a
couple of days, rather than try to park downtown.

re 10, Discount records is not a Sam Goody store, since Sam Goody, Discount
Records, Media Play, Suncoast Motion Picture Company, and Musicland are all
owned by the Musicland Group, based out of MN.  They expanded too quickly and
most of their stores floundered.  The only think that keeps someo of them
alive, is that people don't know they're musicland.

I've never had a good opinion of Jim Leonard, no matter how knowledgeable about
music he is. Some of his comments about Schoolkids' Records and his takeover of
same sounded childish to me. At least, that's the impression I got. I also was
not favorably impressed when he almost ran me down with his SUV one day while I
was walking on Linwood.

Y'know, I still don't like to shop on Amazon. Just hate it. I'd rather go to
a store, and look, and fondle, and all that. (I *do* buy music and books over
the Internet, but only those that (a) I can't find in town or (b) that would
cost an arm and a leg if I were to buy them from the physical stores.)

Mostly, these days, I go to Borders. Though the British Isles section at the
downtown Borders stinks right now. And I'm not thrilled with the folk section,
either. The Arborland Borders, interestingly enough, has shown some
intelligence and spark in its acquisitions of those categories, and I've found
things there that I haven't at the downtown store. This is scary. (Well, to
think that a mall Borders would be better/faster/more interesting than the
main downtown store means that SOMETHING is seriously wrong at Borders HQ,
imho.) If I don't go to Borders, I will check Schoolkids in Exile (when my
knees are feeling un-creaky enough), or *ick, Twila hangs her head in shame*
MediaPlay/BestBuy. (But when I go there, I feel in need of a fix of popular
music!)

Media Play is owned by Record Town, I think.  I know that it is owned by one
of the mall chains.

Musicland Group.  I know.  I worked for them and set up several stores.  It's
amazing the amount of information you get when you are hoping to become the
coveted Assistant Manager.

Actually, it's not terribly arcane information. It's all listed (except the
Discount Records part) on www.musicland.com

Hmm.  I'll really miss SKR, though I don't buy that many CDs from them.  I
haven't been all that impressed with Borders's classical selection, in
comparison ... but then again, I really don't get downtown often enough to
have checked out SKR's in a couple of years at least.  Borders's folk-type
sections (the only other stuff I've really ever checked out) aren't all that
great, either, I think.

Borders is noisy.

Schoolkids was one corner of my great triangle in the late 1970's and 1980's,
together with the Michigan Theater and Borders.  Three places to go for
happiness.  I moved to Texas, and by the time I came back Schoolkids and
Border's were wearing a little thin, but still great.  Now Schoolkids and
Border's are both dead and getting to the Michigan Theater is impossible for
me to fit into my schedule.  Sigh.

Oh, you thought Borders still existed?  Sorry, different Borders.  The thing
that stands on the site of the old Borders and bears its name is merely the
animated corpse of Borders.  It still has lots of books, and I still go there
sometimes when I want to buy some books, but what differentiates a great
bookstore from a lousy one is that spirit that that staff feed into it.  In
a great bookstore, if you walk into the mystery section and look at the
arrangement of books on the shelf, then you see before you a physical
manifestation of the understanding of the genre brought to it by an informed
intelligent reader of mysteries.  Today the mystery section at Nicola's books
has some of this (but the science fiction section there is stupid).  No
section in Borders has it, though every section used to.  If there are any
staff members there who are still passionate about books, then they have been
embedded in a corporate framework that ensures that they don't express their
personal tastes in their work.  The shelves are clearly arranged by the same
anonymous corporation that arranges the shelves at Barnes & Noble, which cares
more about the price stickers than the contents of the books.  If they sell
you a good book, you can be sure that it was by accident.  Foo.

Oh well, at least Seva is starting to return to some of it's old glory.  I
thought I'd lost that as well, but it's rebounding under its new ownership.

Interesting comments about Borders.  My feeling too has been that the Ann
Arbor Borders has been slipping the last few years, but at least as of six
months ago it still struck me as a good bookstore.  Perhaps it's because it
was the layout I was used to, but I still generally went into Borders and
found lots of stuff I wanted to read, very easily, and when I did have
questions for the staff they usually seemed to know which books or sections
to direct me towards.  I don't know whether it's the staff in the Ann Arbor
Borders that does the parts of the layout that aren't dictated by what the
publishers pay them to do, but even if the dictates are coming from the Ann
Arbor based headquarters, it's likely that the Ann Arbor Borders is the one
the people doing the layout see on a regular basis.

I've spent the last several months scouting Bay Area bookstores, with the Ann
Arbor Borders being the standard I measure others against.  Looking at the
various Borders clone stores has been interesting.  They all seem to have
copied their sections from the Ann Arbor Borders, but the implementations vary
widely.  The Union Square Borders in San Francisco has all the sections, and
probably all the same titles, as the Ann Arbor Borders, but has the feel of
something that somebody put together from an instruction manual, without
really understanding what they were doing, such that even being very familiar
with what they had apparrently been trying to copy, finding stuff there was
pretty maddening.  The Palo Alto Borders, on the other hand, I found to be
quite nice.  Once again, it has the same sections, and probably most of the
same titles, as the Ann Arbor store, but they seem to have done the layout
very well.  Their sections focusing on more local stuff, which I assume aren't
dictated too strictly from headquarters, are stocked with lots of interesting
stuff.  The building is different enough from the Ann Arbor Borders that
copying the layout wouldn't work, but the layout they do have works very well.
I haven't interacted much with the staff there, but it's been because I didn't
have to.  Being in a university town probably makes a big difference to the
sort of staff they hire.

I've been exploring non-Borders bookstores too.  There's a bookstore in my
neighborhood that certainly fits Jan's requirement of having a staff that's
passionate about books, and I know lots of people who think it's the world's
best bookstore, but I've never had much luck finding what I was looking for
there.  The best conclusion I can come to about the place is that the staff
is passionate about a different type of books than I like, but I also get the
impression they haven't given much thought to how a bookstore should be
organized.  There are some good independant bookstores or small chains around
here, though.  Staceys, which is next door to my office (can't beat the
location), is every bit as huge as the Borders stores, and seems to have a
very good selection.  Still, it made me feel like I had to really look to find
the interesting stuff burried among the rest of the selection.  Stuff I knew
I wanted was easy, but it seemed like the sort of store I could browse in for
a long time before finding anything that would really grab me.  Telegraph Ave,
the street in Berkeley that seems like a year round combination of Ann Arbor's
Art Fair and Hash Bash, has a couple of good bookstores.  Moe's seems to
mostly be a used bookstore, with a collection large enough to seem really
daunting.  Their new section is considerably smaller, so the selection is
somewaht limited, but the stuff they do have is pretty good.  Next door to
Moe's is Cody's, which is quickly becoming my favorite.  It reminds me
somewhat of the pre-chain Borders, back when it was on State Street.  It's
very much an academic bookstore, with a huge selection obviously arranged by
people who understood what they were doing.  The tables and book displays just
inside the door are covered with interesting stuff.  It's the place here that
I walk into not intending to buy anything, and come out with large quantities
of stuff that I really want to read, which is what used to be the best thing
about Borders.

My parents are very impressed by the Borders in Rochester.  This
surprised me a bit, but in thinking about it, even in it's attenuated
chain form, it may still be overall better than anything else I can
think of in the Rochester NY area.  When I was growing up, there were a
variety of bookstores in Rochester, but not a huge number and they each
had their interesting limitations.  I also think most of those places
have since gone under - mostly for reasons not connected to Borders.  I
remember Toronto as being a much more exciting place to buy books and a
real treat compared to what was available in Rochester.  I'm not sure
that's true today.  The chains seem to have invaded Toronto as well and
it seems much more the same as what we have here in the states.

Used book stores still seem to be more different; I don't quite
understand why, but it always seems like used book stores in different
states have categorically different "stuff".

I've never enjoyed Borders excessively much, because I'm mostly familiar with
the newer location and I like places (Barnes and Noble, specifically) with
comfortable chairs that I can sit and read in.  It is, however, a good place
to buy books.  The World's Largest Bookstore (that's the title) in Toronto
is a sterile warehouse by comparison, but it still has a lot of books.  I
don't know.  I like sedate, relaxed places, no unlike libraries.  Borders is
a bit too crammed for that.

Isn't that interesting?  I was just about to say the opposite: that for all
I find Borders annoying, it's still ten times better than the other bookstore
chains.  De gustibus etc. etc.

Sometimes my drive home from work takes me past the Arborland Borders
store.  I prefer to drive a few blocks farther and drop in at Barnes &
Noble instead.  Guess that says something about the current state of
Borders.

Borders is one of two stores (the other being the Main St. discount book
store) that is open later than the library, which we appreciate on our nights
out and about.  

An out-of-towner pitches in:

Ann Arbor was the original home of Borders, right?

Now you guys must know how Dr. Frankenstein felt.

And how.  And this one used to WORK for them.  {shudders}  Unfortunaly, they
take a very odd approach to their stores, from a corporate standpoint.  They
replenish not based upon what's popular, but the program is written to
replenish stores, basically one for one sold.  And that makes a lot of it
childrens books.  Not good for money.  I should know, I helped write the
program.  I like them because they can be nice to read in, however, the chairs
in other stores are more inviting that the "new" downtown borders, and the
new arborland one.  I LIKED the old borders store and kinda wish they hadn't
moved.

I only went to the Arborland Borders once, but it strikes me as a typical
strip mall Borders, much like the one in Emeryville,  They seem a rather
different type of Borders than the downtown Borders stores, especially the
stores that are in downtowns near universities.

Whether that's intentional or an artifact of the types of employees they draw
I don't know.

  My guess is the latter -- that it hass to do with the employees..

Supposedly the downtown A2 Borders is a training center of sorts.

I feel like it is only in the last year that Borders, after a long steady
slump, finally bit the dust.  Some of the more obvious symptoms:  In the
Science Fiction section they have removed the old shelf that used to have new
releases from the last few weeks in it.  Why?  For a regular shopper that's
an amazing convenience.  It had gotten fairly unreliable for a while - a
reissue of an old Robert Jordon book with a new cover on it gets displayed,
but a new book by Norman Spinrad just gets slipped quietly into the back
shelves.  Sure, they can expect to sell more of the Jordan, but it's basically
a marketing ploy to get more people to start reading his endless series of
big fat books (each book in such a series much have lower sales than the one
before, so getting the first book read a lot is important from a marketing
point of view), while the a Spinrad book is something worth noting for people
who care about the insides of books.  Tastes vary, and I certainly agree that
a new book by Robert Jordan, or even Mercedes Lackey deserves prominent
placement, but I'd rather shop in a bookstore that gives the appearance of
servering the agenda of me, the reader, rather than of the publishing
companies.  Anyway, the "new books" shelf has completely vanished, replaced
by a desultry display of "book we are pushing this month" - sometimes new,
mostly not.  There is a table with new paperback fiction, where Science
Fiction is mixed with Mystery, Horror and General Fiction.  I could live with
that, if it actually did a decent job, but it doesn't.  I still have to search
the stacks for new books deemed unworthy of public display.

I'm not a shopper who commonly asks staff a lot of questions, so I don't have
a direct way of telling if they have much going on in their heads.  They seem
like generally cool people, from the talk I overhear, and not incompetant,
but not really into it.  I actually feel like I know the guy who used to do
science fiction and later computers at borders, although I never spoke more
than a few sentences with him, and I'm sure he has no idea who I am.  I'd sign
up to be in his fan club any day.  I still see him on the streets from time
to time, but not in borders anymore.  Wonder what he's up to.

Wednesday's Ann Arbor News has a story in the business section about
the SKR closing.   Jim Leonard says, paraphrasing, that the heavy snows
of December killed holiday sales, and that he shouldn't have expanded
the stores.   
 
Steve Bergman says that his sales at Schoolkids-in-the-Basement were 
up 70% for the year, but he does not forsee a return to street-level
retailing.

I've had occasion, recently, to ask for help at Borders.  Several times.  In
the OLD old days (across the street) the average staffer would probably have
known where to find the exact book.  These days, well, they tried to help.
When the computer didn't turn up ANYTHING by the author, literally, I started
guessing other possible locations (than the one I'd checked already).  (This
was fantasy, but somewhat juvenile.  Not with fantasy/sf.  Is it in either
of a couple of "children's" places?  No.  Is it in Young Adult?  Yes, several
different titles.  (Why didn't the computer find them by author??))  <sigh>
That's the most recent time I sought help, but is fairly typical.

Mmmm, yes, that seems to be the norm at Borders these days -- if it's not on
the computer, then it doesn't exist. No matter that I have an isbn or review,
or anything like that.... siiiigh

Yeah. The computer makes it interesting for sure. Having the computer 
allows Borders to pay the staff less because it helps them deal with the 
higher turnover rates that the lower pay tends to cause.  When they pay 
the staff less, it allows them to sell books for less and still make a 
profit. The computer system also allows Borders to cut costs in 
other ways. But, it does mean less customer service than one might get 
at a non-chain bookstore with a long term staff. Unfortunately, really 
good bookstores just arent as profitable as chains like Borders and 
Barnes and Noble. 

Personally, I have found the staff at Borders to be pretty amazing 
considering the very very low amount they are being paid. 

The one remaining (that I knew of) independent retailer of classical 
music recordings in the Bay Area closed down last month.  They weren't 
convenient to me, so I didn't go there often, and in any case the only 
area where their stock was superior to Tower's was musical theatre.

Stores like that are supposed to thrive on service, so I can't forget 
the time I asked them about something by Malcolm Arnold, and the clerk 
couldn't find him in the computer because he didn't know how to 
spell "Malcolm".  Rather than give the clerk a spelling lesson, I just 
gave up and left.

(Nor can I forget the independent bookstore whose clerk and owner told 
me to stop reading in the bookstore - after 15 minutes, while I had a 
bunch of other books under my arm I was planning to buy.  They insisted 
that no bookstore could permit such a thing, and I think of this 
whenever I see the comfy chairs in B&N or elsewhere.  Needless to say, 
that bookstore is long out of business.)

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss