Evanston Barnes & Noble removes reading tables - the economics of free space
On September 1, I went to one of my favorite places to work from - Barnes & Noble's Evanston location - only to find something I have been expecting to see for months.
The last of the reading tables on the second floor has been removed. Well, not physically. It's just that now, it's being used for a book display, just like the other two tables that were previously removed from public use.
For those of you who've never been to Evanston Barnes & Noble, let me paint you a picture. Ever since.... I would say at least since I started attending UIC back in 2006, there was this nice lounge area at the northeast corner of the second floor of the building. There were large windows that opened to pretty neat views out on to the intersection below, and four tables with four chairs each. Two of those tables were near power outlets, so naturally, those were the ones people with laptops gravitated toward. There was Wi-Fi - nothing too fast, but usually not too slow, either. Students from Evanston Township High School and Northwestern University came here to study. Aspiring writers came here to write. Of course, there were also plenty of people who were just there for the wi-fi. Which I suspect was part of the problem.
The other part of the problem were people who weren't there for the wi-fi. Not the local writers group that met there for a while. Not even a few friends. I am talking about people who basically treated the store like a library and the lounge space like a reading room. They sat down with a bunch of books and/or magazines, read them for hours and then left, leaving the materials on the tables. Sure, some people bought the books they read, but plenty of people didn't.
(I would be remiss if I didn't admit that I, too, did this sort of thing more then a few times. I didn't bring over quite as many books as some of the others, but I did bring some).
This is the closest thing I have to the photo of the lounge area
I suspect this irked some employees - and it probably irked some people further up the chain of command.
The changes happened slowly but surely. First, one table was removed. Then another. Last month, we were down to one table.
At the same time, I noticed that employees started to not only walk around the halls a lot more, but ask customers a lot more about what they need. With the not so subtle "this is not the library, you know" undertone if you stand in an aisle for too long.
And now, the tables are gone. The chairs are still there, but who knows for how long.
There is still a place to sit down and work at the Evanston Barnes & Noble, but it's at the coffee shop downstairs. It only has one set of power outlets - which is a big reason why I avoided it. The other is that, in a coffee area, as with any coffee shop, there is an implicit expectation that, if you are going to use the wi-fi, you at least buy a drink. And if I wanted to do that, there are several other coffee and tea shops within walking distance.
Am I dissapointed? A bit. Am I upset? Not rally. I've seen this coming for months, and this is simply the matter of the Sword of Damacles finally dropping. Plus, in the end of the day, I can't really blame a for-profit company for trying to do the most profitable thing.
I will still shop there. Back when I first started writing for Chicago Flame, annanov gave me a moleskin notebook as a birthday present. It was quite handy - sturdy, with thinly lined paper and built-in compartment to store business cards - but not the kind of thing I could buy regularly. Well, a few years ago, I was walking through Evanston Barnes & Noble and discovered that they sold them in bargain aisles for significantly lower price, and I've been buying them from there ever since.
Evanston Barnes & Noble is still one of my go-to places to buy Trains and Chicago magazines, as well as some of the more unusual magazines (it's no City Newsstand, but the store's magazine selection is more diverse then most other Barnes & Nobles). And I buy books and movies there, too. Not that often, but I buy them. Especially when I'm looking to get something newer as a present.
But it's still kind of bittersweet. I've written a lot of articles and short stories on the second floor of Evanston Barnes & Noble. Sitting there for hours, listening to music piping over the speakers, I wound up discovering artists I never would've heard of otherwise. And I wrote quite a few blog posts from there (just look at the locations of some of my older entries).
I do still plan on going to Evanston to work and write. I just need to figure out a new place to do it from.
(And no, Evanston library's main branch isn't it. They have a serious, serious power outlet deficit)
The last of the reading tables on the second floor has been removed. Well, not physically. It's just that now, it's being used for a book display, just like the other two tables that were previously removed from public use.
For those of you who've never been to Evanston Barnes & Noble, let me paint you a picture. Ever since.... I would say at least since I started attending UIC back in 2006, there was this nice lounge area at the northeast corner of the second floor of the building. There were large windows that opened to pretty neat views out on to the intersection below, and four tables with four chairs each. Two of those tables were near power outlets, so naturally, those were the ones people with laptops gravitated toward. There was Wi-Fi - nothing too fast, but usually not too slow, either. Students from Evanston Township High School and Northwestern University came here to study. Aspiring writers came here to write. Of course, there were also plenty of people who were just there for the wi-fi. Which I suspect was part of the problem.
The other part of the problem were people who weren't there for the wi-fi. Not the local writers group that met there for a while. Not even a few friends. I am talking about people who basically treated the store like a library and the lounge space like a reading room. They sat down with a bunch of books and/or magazines, read them for hours and then left, leaving the materials on the tables. Sure, some people bought the books they read, but plenty of people didn't.
(I would be remiss if I didn't admit that I, too, did this sort of thing more then a few times. I didn't bring over quite as many books as some of the others, but I did bring some).
This is the closest thing I have to the photo of the lounge area
I suspect this irked some employees - and it probably irked some people further up the chain of command.
The changes happened slowly but surely. First, one table was removed. Then another. Last month, we were down to one table.
At the same time, I noticed that employees started to not only walk around the halls a lot more, but ask customers a lot more about what they need. With the not so subtle "this is not the library, you know" undertone if you stand in an aisle for too long.
And now, the tables are gone. The chairs are still there, but who knows for how long.
There is still a place to sit down and work at the Evanston Barnes & Noble, but it's at the coffee shop downstairs. It only has one set of power outlets - which is a big reason why I avoided it. The other is that, in a coffee area, as with any coffee shop, there is an implicit expectation that, if you are going to use the wi-fi, you at least buy a drink. And if I wanted to do that, there are several other coffee and tea shops within walking distance.
Am I dissapointed? A bit. Am I upset? Not rally. I've seen this coming for months, and this is simply the matter of the Sword of Damacles finally dropping. Plus, in the end of the day, I can't really blame a for-profit company for trying to do the most profitable thing.
I will still shop there. Back when I first started writing for Chicago Flame, annanov gave me a moleskin notebook as a birthday present. It was quite handy - sturdy, with thinly lined paper and built-in compartment to store business cards - but not the kind of thing I could buy regularly. Well, a few years ago, I was walking through Evanston Barnes & Noble and discovered that they sold them in bargain aisles for significantly lower price, and I've been buying them from there ever since.
Evanston Barnes & Noble is still one of my go-to places to buy Trains and Chicago magazines, as well as some of the more unusual magazines (it's no City Newsstand, but the store's magazine selection is more diverse then most other Barnes & Nobles). And I buy books and movies there, too. Not that often, but I buy them. Especially when I'm looking to get something newer as a present.
But it's still kind of bittersweet. I've written a lot of articles and short stories on the second floor of Evanston Barnes & Noble. Sitting there for hours, listening to music piping over the speakers, I wound up discovering artists I never would've heard of otherwise. And I wrote quite a few blog posts from there (just look at the locations of some of my older entries).
I do still plan on going to Evanston to work and write. I just need to figure out a new place to do it from.
(And no, Evanston library's main branch isn't it. They have a serious, serious power outlet deficit)