Save the High Street

[sledger]

Is it just me or is this a load of bollocks?

I hear today that HMV is apparently going bust again (though I must confess I didn't realise it had survived since it last went bust a few years ago), and so many people are getting terribly upset about it and proclaiming we should all go to the local high street and start spending money there to "save the high street".

But honestly, how many people really want to preserve this sort of thing? Who actually likes going to **** pits like HMV (which, by the way, is one of the worst shops imaginable). High street shopping is just dying, and we should let it go on its way. There's a reason why buying stuff online/*********/downloading stuff is preferable to making a horrible journey to Hatfield town centre (or some other equally godforsaken place), and the reason is because it is just so much better.

The jobs and livelihoods of people who work in retail, and how they may all be going to the wall, is a serious issue, but that is a red herring for me.

 

[cpr]

Went for a wander on boxing day into our local town centre. purely because I was bored. 3 shops were open - 2 of them Wilko's (the other Peacocks FYI. Yeah Eccles is not a nice place). Pretty sure at that point I decided that letting it die is fine.

Only high street stores I can think I've bought from in the last year are TK Maxx and CEX, with one trip to Primark for holiday bits. It's all very nice to have a browse around shops, but only for non-essential whim purchases. Anything I actually want I'll usually get online when I decided I wanted it.

 

[andmark]

I'm inclined to broadly agree with Sledger and CPR, but it's different for clothing shops. Like I prefer seeing and perhaps trying on clothes before buying them. Things which can rot away like vegetables are similar.

Edit: "Save the high street; go to them at Christmas time"...

 

[sledger]

Yeah, fair enough. I think for reasons such as these shops in the traditional sense will continue to exist for a while yet.

By and large though, high street shopping is done and in the books. Trying to prolong the lifespan of that which has run its course is not only totally retrograde, it's just sad. If people actually wanted it to carry on it wouldn't be in the mess it is, simple as that.

Attempting to preserve something that there is no real demand for is inimical to the advancement of...basically everything.

 

[andmark]

Yeah, it has to come down to the consumers themselves. If they want high streets, then they should shop there. I doubt any government intervention could do anymore than delay the decline and would eventually be unsustainable.

 

[fredfertang]

Shops are dreadful places - their inhabitants are either irritatingly intrusive employees or pushy stressheaded members of the public

 

[sledger]

Shops are dreadful places - their inhabitants are either irritatingly intrusive employees or pushy stressheaded members of the public

Yes agreed,

 

[Niall]

Nothing more depressing than a shop assistant coming over with the weight of the world on their shoulders asking "can I help you?"

"No **** off if I need help I will ask, I am clothes buying not trying to cure aids".

HMV and other places swallowed up local shops previously so it is what it is. The "good old days" of HMV were never really that pleasant , huge prices for movies and cds. 20 quid for movies ffs.

I pity the staff losing their jobs, but I won't start trudging into dreary shops spending big money on trying to hold of the inevitable.

 

[andmark]

In fairness to HMV, it can be a good experience if you know what you're aiming for. Like during my third uni year, I used to get a Bob Dylan album about once a month. Was quite a nice way of getting into his music.

 

[Flem274*]

Boxing day shopping is massive here

I think traditional shops will always exist but here at least we're seeing town centres move to being restaurant and leisure focused with shops moving to shopping centre complexes closer to where people actually live. In the 3 urban areas I've lived, shops in town centres have begun to struggle but pubs, restaurants, museums, libraries, parks etc are booming

 

[fredfertang]

Like during my third uni year, I used to get a Bob Dylan album about once a month.

Either it's not true what they say about the youth of today, or you're the exception that proves the rule

 

[sledger]

Pubs another thing that are struggling pretty badly here iirc. Or at least they were a few years back. Getting swallowed up by the chain providers like Wetherspoons (hateful places).

Nothing will ever beat the pubs in Reading for me. Glorious places. Event the awful ones. So many to choose from as well.

Everyone told me St Albans was the land of great pubs, but it's really not. There are some decent ones. But most are just poncy yuppy dens (i.e. full of people like me), and so I dislike them. The one near my house that Smitteh and I went to was good though.

Went back in there for the first time since Smitteh left me just over a month ago (with another dude who was staying on my couch).

 

[andmark]

Either it's not true what they say about the youth of today, or you're the exception that proves the rule

Thank you very kindly sir. How could one not like Dylan? Today's political context is screaming out for an early Bob Dylan.

 

[sledger]

Just remembered when I met Fred in a pub as well. A good day. Though I forget why I was there in the first place.

Met Neil Pickup in a pub once as well. Many many years ago. Got smashed and fell in a bush on the way home.

 

[fredfertang]

How could one not like Dylan? Today's political context is screaming out for an early Bob Dylan.

My sons seem to have no difficulty with not liking Dylan, but I will try making that point when next berating them about it

 

[fredfertang]

Just remembered when I met Fred in a pub as well. A good day. Though I forget why I was there in the first place.

We were going to go the police station so you could bear your soul about the Ravi's Stores episode, but then you bottled it

 

[sledger]

We were going to go the police station so you could bear your soul about the Ravi's Stores episode, but then you bottled it

Haha ah Ravi Store. I had forgotten about that place. A great parade of shops along that road iirc. By which I mean Ravi Store, the 2 Perfect Fried Chicken takeaways, Chicken Cottage, Premier, and that Indian Restaurant with blacked out windows that got raided by the Police and shut down.

Gosh, it's been years since I last set foot there. Sad really.

 

[Pothas]

Pubs another thing that are struggling pretty badly here iirc. Or at least they were a few years back. Getting swallowed up by the chain providers like Wetherspoons (hateful places).

Nothing will ever beat the pubs in Reading for me. Glorious places. Event the awful ones. So many to choose from as well.

Everyone told me St Albans was the land of great pubs, but it's really not. There are some decent ones. But most are just poncy yuppy dens (i.e. full of people like me), and so I dislike them. The one near my house that Smitteh and I went to was good though.

Went back in there for the first time since Smitteh left me just over a month ago (with another dude who was staying on my couch).

Yeah huge numbers of pubs have closed but a lot of them were probably really bad. There is still space for good pubs (ones that actually do something well) and I think we are seeing more of them, certainly where I am.

As for the high street. Well I am one of those people whose job depends on it so obviously that gives me a rather different outlook. Unlike most in retail I actually love my job, I think booksellers are pretty unusual in that regard. We have the same problems as everyone else of course, maybe I have fallen into a career that is destined to die but it has done pretty well by me so far so not going to give up on it.

 

[sledger]

I would be incredibly sad for bookshops to go actually. They are essentially the only type of shop I enjoy visiting. I don't group them together with the likes of HMV either, as although they both share a business model which at its core involves something that is now available in digital format in analogue form, I really do not like reading things on screen. Similarly, when I buy a book, I do not but it just for the experience of reading it, if that makes sense. They are things I like to collect, and I become attached to specific copies. Never feel like that with films and music. But then I have never really had much of a proclivity for either. Put alternatively, I can see why there would be a demand for book retail to live on, whereas the days of CDs and DVDs as a physical medium are totally toast. Throwaway fashion, or whatever it is called.

The problem I often find with book shops these days, however, is that often they are just simply not big enough to accommodate specific demand, even for fairly mainstream titles. I went all over Basingstoke the other day for instance looking for somewhere that sold the sixth book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Hard to think of a more mainstream author really, but nowhere had it, so I resorted to ordering it online instead.

Anyway, on the subject of genuinely awful high street things. How has WHSmith not gone under yet? Truly dreadful establishment. And it always has been.

 

[andmark]

I would be incredibly sad for bookshops to go actually. They are essentially the only type of shop I enjoy visiting. I don't group them together with the likes of HMV either, as although they both share a business model which at its core involves something that is now available in digital format in analogue form, I really do not like reading things on screen. Similarly, when I buy a book, I do not but it just for the experience of reading it, if that makes sense. They are things I like to collect, and I become attached to specific copies. Never feel like that with films and music. But then I have never really had much of a proclivity for either. Put alternatively, I can see why there would be a demand for book retail to live on, whereas the days of CDs and DVDs as a physical medium are totally toast. Throwaway fashion, or whatever it is called.

The problem I often find with book shops these days, however, is that often they are just simply not big enough to accommodate specific demand, even for fairly mainstream titles. I went all over Basingstoke the other day for instance looking for somewhere that sold the sixth book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Hard to think of a more mainstream author really, but nowhere had it, so I resorted to ordering it online instead.

Anyway, on the subject of genuinely awful high street things. How has WHSmith not gone under yet? Truly dreadful establishment. And it always has been.

Yeah I agree with pretty much all of that. I've struggled to find many decent military theory books at Waterstones other than several editions of Sun Tzu and the occasional abridged version of Clausewitz. The likes of Mao's and Guevara's guerrilla warfare writings don't get a look in. That actually forced me to get Mao's writings from the internet.