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Health & Fitness

How do you eulogize a business?

Waxing melancholy on the passing of a local business

How do you eulogize a business?

Jordan's Village Book Store has closed its doors. Another small business closed, another vacant store front.

I don’t know if it was the economy that killed Jordan's. I can’t even really speculate. The reason given was that the owners wanted to retire and couldn’t find a buyer. I can’t be mad that someone wanted to enjoy their golden years without running a local bookshop.

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I can miss the store, though. I can miss a business that has been there my entire life. I don’t know how many birthday gifts, stocking stuffers, gift wrap, and thingamajigs I bought there over the years. Always in the white hand-signed Jordan's Books bag.

Does a town need a bookstore to survive? Probably not. It’s more like an appendix or a tonsil, you can live without them. We have Barnes and Noble and the Internet; those of us who still read can get books. Ultimately losing a bookstore isn’t going to lower our property values.

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Maybe its passing won’t lower our physical property values, but in some way our psychic property value has been diminished. As a bookstore, Jordan's was more than Clive Cussler adventure novels, stationery and a sticker wall. It was part of the small-town feel that so many valley residents value. It was part of the fabric of our community. 

A retail store is not the building, a retail store is not even just the product it sells. A good retail store is the people, the service, and the accumulated goodwill of generations of patrons.

The sticker wall that seemed so massive to elementary-school David is bare. The counter that sold me a Harry Potter book in the wee hours of the morning, after Barnes and Noble sold out, is gone. The product is gone, the store is empty, but the goodwill of the Castro Valley community remains.

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