Kevin Marshall's America » Awl http://www.kevinmarshallonline.com/blog Musing & misadventures of a writer, comedian, and local treasure Thu, 13 Nov 2014 00:17:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 Businesses their own worst enemy, here and downstate http://www.kevinmarshallonline.com/blog/2011/09/12/businesses-their-own-worst-enemy-here-and-downstate/ http://www.kevinmarshallonline.com/blog/2011/09/12/businesses-their-own-worst-enemy-here-and-downstate/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:35:35 +0000 http://blog.timesunion.com/marshall/?p=6064 I often harp on a point that many local businesses are their own worst enemy and that their efforts to portray themselves as victims in need of rescue is not only ridiculous but often indicative of their inherent problems: in particular, they don’t know what a business is and don’t know [...]]]> I often harp on a point that many local businesses are their own worst enemy and that their efforts to portray themselves as victims in need of rescue is not only ridiculous but often indicative of their inherent problems: in particular, they don’t know what a business is and don’t know how to run it.

Well, even the big city’s got this special brand of blues, as evidenced by the petition to have the St. Mark Bookshop’s rent lowered from its previously agreed to price they signed off on in a lease agreement with their landlord. More from Choire Sicha (who is seriously one of my favorite people that I don’t know personally) of The Awl:

“I encourage you petition-signers to go to your own landlords—during the first quarter of the lease that you just signed—and ask for a rent reduction. See how that goes. Yeah. If the bookstore wants to become a non-profit bookstore, let’s file that paperwork and do this thing. (I’ll help!) But this odd public-private partnership “public good” conception of a commercial business is giving me the willies a little.”

Agreed. It’s nice and sweet to get all wistful about stuff like books, but business is still business.

Though I will say that all this is not nearly as frustrating and unintentionally hilarious as all the pining for Border’s, the big corporate chain that shuttered more local businesses than it opened and then became a victim of its own mismanagement.

RELATED: AOA recently had an interesting interview with Susan Novotny, owner of The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Market Block Books in downtown Troy, about what local indie book stores could, should, and/or aren’t doing to survive.

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