response 13 of 64:

Sep 5 21:56 UTC 1998

People always decry the passing of these local bookstores/music stores, 
but in a good many of these cases, the problem is that the local person 
is just not a good businessperson. krj noted above that lately they 
had stopped stocking the CDs he would buy. If a merchant doesn't have 
the stock, how can people buy it?

Another example of a "local" that just closed up is Main Street News. It 
seemed to me they were in the same boat as Schoolkids.  Several times 
recently I saw a magazine in Borders that I wanted.  Feeling like I'd 
rather support the local merchant, I would trek over to Main Street News 
only to find that they didn't have it on the shelves. What I wanted was 
not really exotic, either. One time it was Cook's Illustrated, another 
time it was San Francisco Magazine.

Another time, I sent them an email before going in to ask them about a 
particular title.  I never received a reply.  My feeling is that the 
proprietor just wasn't on top of things.