In the months before the opening of Legacy Village in 2003, a sign posted at the construction site touted the coming of the new "Lifestyle Center." I couldn't decide which was worse: that "lifestyle" was an idea we were expected to take seriously, or that shopping had become a lifestyle.
I sneered whenever I drove past.
Now, seven years later, as Joseph-Beth Booksellers prepares to close its anchor store at Legacy, I'm sneering at myself in the rearview mirror. I still don't claim to have a "lifestyle," but I can tell you that the store wormed its way far enough into my heart to break it. Oh, commerce.
The announcement came last week that the flailing Cincinnati-based chain would close five stores as part of a Chapter 11 reorganization strategy. Owner Neil Van Umm – a North Olmsted native – plans to close struggling stores and refocus on the ones that are doing well.
Just days before the announcement of the closing, I found myself talking to a Legacy merchant who was gleefully rumormongering about the bookstore's problems. He ended with the words, "I hope they close." It struck me as not only mean-spirited, but also clueless. For some, Joseph-Beth is second only to the Apple store as a great reason to shop at Legacy.
For me, it was Reason No. 1.
I didn't absolutely need Joseph-Beth to get my book fix. There are libraries for that, second-hand bookstores and bookworm friends more than willing to share. There is our own home library, stocked with volumes from my years as the Plain Dealer's book-review editor, and from sharing a home with a man who still reviews for multiple newspapers. Publishers mail him books all the time – more books than either of us can read; so many that it becomes weirdly burdensome.
Of course, there's always the internet. No hermit with the bandwidth and a reliable UPS driver must ever go wordless in the digital age.
And still, I was a relentless Joseph-Beth patron because the store gave me something that stupid "lifestyle center" sign had presaged: a pleasing center of gravity and a sense of community.
So it is with bookstores elsewhere – those left standing, anyway. Cleveland Heights readers and writers worship Mac's Backs, and the welcome that Suzanne DeGaetano provides them at the Coventry Road store. Hudsonites brag on the Learned Owl, their spiffy little independent that carries on during these turbulent times. Borders and Barnes & Noble, which some see as the big bad chains, are irresistible emporiums for others.
Joseph-Beth became my spot by virtue of its proximity to our South Euclid home and because Bronte, the in-store bistro, served a better turkey burger than I can conjure in my own kitchen. I'd go and eat, and watch the mah-jongg ladies move their pretty tiles, hoping they'd order lots of food and buy books before leaving.
Thus, the store drew me at least once a week, to shop, to eat, and to hang inside the atmosphere of breathtaking possibility that emerges when you're around a lot of books you haven't yet read.
Jasper Fforde, the British fantasy-satirist, came for a Joseph-Beth visit, and so I delved into his delightful Tuesday Next mystery series for bibliophiles. I stocked up on Richard Russo titles I'd missed from before he wrote Straight Man (still my favorite). I kept an eagle eye on the graphic novel section, which started with a bang when the store opened and gradually dwindled over the years. I always browsed the children's department looking for new works with beautiful illustrations to add to my collection.
I listened to readings by authors I knew well and others I'd never heard of.
And it was at Joseph-Beth that I spent one crazed night reporting on the release of one of the long-awaited installments of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The place was packed with costumed kids and scurrying sales clerks. It was beautiful.
On the Saturday after the announcement of the store's closing, I made my usual visit to Joseph-Beth. Of course, such news changes one's perception, so in a way it was nothing like a usual visit. I ordered a turkey burger. The waiter observed that I was dining alone, and I told him I'd come in a state of mourning. He said he understood.
A longer-than-usual line of buyers occupied clerks at the checkout center. Upstairs, a knitting circle occupied a table near the art and photography sections. Like me, I suppose they wanted a place of cheerful community, but I wondered bitterly whether they had always made sure to be good customers, too. I bought three books, a Joseph-Beth T-shirt and a coffee mug for good measure.
As bookstore after bookstore falls to the harsh winds of a new economy, we watch an important part of our lives die. In its place, the marketplace offers up 4G devices and 30-dollar hamburgers and other hallmarks of a new "lifestyle."
I stand on the side that says this is a bad trade. But numbers talk. Like book-lovers, there simply aren't enough.
