So I heard on the radio today that Kohl's was closing down. Well, that's what the DJ said. It turns out they're only closing 18 stores. That's a relief. Not because I love Kohl's so much. I suppose it's a fine store. I bought some stuff there once or twice. Truth be told, they don't -- in my experience -- have the most imaginative or inviting layout; their floor plan strikes me as a tribute to the Miller's Outpost I used to buy Levi's at in college. 
But I digress. I wasn't really wanting to write about Kohl's. I was wanting to write about the tremendous ambivalence I feel about the disappearance of brick and mortar retail stores in America. See, when I heard that Kohl's was closing, my first thought was, "Great, we've lost another one." That is to say, another store chain bit the dust, a casualty of the shift to shopping on the internet. To be honest, I've still never really gotten over the loss of Borders. I used to love shopping at Borders. I know, Borders and Barnes & Noble are six of one, half a dozen of the other, but Borders happened to be the chain that had a store in Downtown Boston during the years I inhabited that glorious city, and it was a Borders that helped me retain my sanity when I would visit it first thing upon arriving at my in-laws' in Sterling, VA from the cultural waste that is Greenville, PA. (Apologies to my Mercer County peeps, but that pathetic excuse for a bookstore in the Shenango Valley Mall just wasn't cutting it for me.) Big box book stores meant -- no, mean -- they mean something to me. I've loved them ever since the Barnes & Noble went in in Santa Clarita, CA while I was an undergrad. While I appreciated the plot line of You've Got Mail as much as the next guy, I have to admit that I was a little on the side of Fox Books. Not that I wanted the Shop Around the Corner to have to go away, but Joe Fox (Tom Hanks' character) was right about his fictional Borders. It was a nice place to be. You could get a coffee, browse, and go home with a book immediately after making the decision about what you wanted to read. I suppose there's a bit of karma in that here, hardly 20 years after the big box book store was the soulless giant tromping out the indie bookstore, it's the big box book store which looks to be the first line of casualties in the era of the internet. Not coincidentally, Amazon.com started, if I remember correctly, as books and music.
But now you can buy anything there. You can buy it cheaper, and while you won't get it faster, you can get it without ever having to leave the comfort own home. You don't have to put any pants on to go shopping, and since it seems like you don't have to actually sign anything for the UPS guy anymore, you probably don't even have to put pants on to take delivery (though your neighbors, in most cases, would appreciate it if you did).
One sees the advantages. But rarely has the easiest thing ever been the best thing, and internet shopping, too, comes with some costs. There are, no doubt, the same economic woes that people whine about with regards to Walmart all the time. You know, putting small businesses out of business (though it seems that Amazon.com tends to hunt much bigger game), the loss of jobs that comes with said businesses going out of business (they do estimate around 1500 people will be put out of work by the Kohl's closings), etc. But I'm less worried about those than I am the loss of the quintessentially middle class American experience of going shopping. Notice I said going shopping. And I meant it literally. Going somewhere to go shopping, and by somewhere, I don't mean to the desk to open up the laptop. I mean going to a store. Getting out of the house, venturing into the rest of the world, making contact with some other human beings. Maybe taking someone with you. Stopping into some other stores along the way, just for the hell of it. Browsing. Stopping on the way home at a restaurant for appetizers and a couple drinks. It sounds fun to me, but maybe that's just my '90s talking.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not on a curmudgeonly rant about the evils of technological advancement here. I don't want Amazon.com to go away. Or Ebay. Or really any online shopping. I, too, appreciate its convenience, and I'll readily admit that it has become as much of a necessity as any of the things we need but could easily do without. But I worry that someday there'll be no Fox Books anywhere for me to go to. I worry that every shopping mall that I would have happily whiled away a midweek evening in in the '90s will turn into the half-empty ghost town that half of them already are. And the thing is, when businesses that sell things we actually buy go under because we're buying those things online instead, businesses that sell things nobody wants at all curiously take their place. The Barnes & Noble in Reston, VA gave way to a place called The Container Store. I don't get The Container Store. It's a huge store that sells oversized and overpriced Tupperware. Who buys this? Yes, I'm bitter about their having taken over a bookstore, but I doubt very seriously I'd shop there anyway. I mean, how exciting is it to buy a clear plastic container? Does one go "just browsing" in a container store, perusing plastic storage? As if deciding on the one you will get, not now, because you've got the one you came to get today, but the next time you're in the store. You see the point? Plastic containers is what we should be buying online, not books, or pants, or shirts.
I'm not sure what the solution is. I don't want to plead with my readers to spend more than they need to get what they want. But maybe it's time to also consider the value of the experience. One of my well-heeled friends in college used to buy his undershirts at Nordstrom. I asked him about the wisdom of this, given that, even if it was higher quality, it was an undershirt. Nobody would see it. He said it was worth the experience of shopping at Nordstrom. I thought he was a little nuts then. I'm not so sure now.
