Filene’s Basement’s may be closing, but Bob Slate’s back in business

It’s been dragging on for a while, but now it’s official: that sound we’ve been hearing out of Filene’s Basement for the past however many years has been its death rattle. One more Store of My Youth, come January, will be gone, baby, gone.

Even while it was still situated where it properly belonged, in the basement of the Filene’s building, I hadn’t done much shopping there in years. And I suspect I won’t be doing any more. It’s just too depressing to participate in the store-closing death watch, which I’ve done over the past few years with Filene’s (the mother ship), Borders (yes, some of us do lament the passing of mega-chains), and Copley Flair.

And I won’t be writing an elegy to Filene’s Basement, either. Been there, done that. (Twice in fact.)

No, I won’t be missing Filene’s Basement. I’ll be missing the idea of Filene’s Basement. I’ll be missing something that, at one point in time, was distinct about the local shopping milieu. And I’ll be missing the girl who shopped The B so hopefully, for, oh, so many years.

Another local institution has bitten the retail dust as well. Last week, Daddy’s Junky Music shuttered its stores.

I never bought a darned thing at Daddy’s, but I’ll still miss something that was part of the local color for nearly 40 years. Musicians, I assume, will miss it mightily.

One thing that’s gotten them down is that so many folks come in to try out, say, a half-dozen guitars, spending time with salespeople and tapping their expertise. And then, before leaving the store, order the guitar-of-their-dreams online using their smartphone – finding it cheaper.

This practice, which plagues retailers like music stores and opticians (another one that comes to mind), strikes me as a bit unconscionable. I don’t suppose it actually bothers anyone’s conscience, as it’s the way the so much commerce is conducted these days. All that matters is me, personally, getting the best price. No matter that I’m sucking up the time of a store clerk, taking advantage of someone’s investment in bricks and mortar, and then buying elsewhere – from someone who doesn’t have to incur the costs of the clerk’s salary or the bricks and mortar. It seems to me that the shopping online trade-off is (and should be) that you might have to go back and forth a couple of times before the shoe fits. If you want to try it on for size, you should go to a real – not virtual – shoe store, metaphorically speaking, and do your trying and your buying there.  Maybe the bricks and mortar folks can figure out a way to charge those who have no interest in buying from them. We’ll help you pick out your new Gibson or your cool new specs, but we’ll charge you for it, with the charge waived if you buy from them. Good luck with this, of course, but it’s a thought…

This too shall pass, but I’m just as glad that the majority of my life’s worth of shopping is behind me.

Meanwhile, on a positive note, Bob Slate Stationer, which opened for business in the throes of The Great Depression, and which closed last spring, has re-opened. This is a wonderful, old-timey stationery store that had a couple of Harvard Square locations, as well as one in Cambridge’s Porter Square. When I worked near Harvard Square, I popped into Bob Slate’s quite often.

It was there that I purchased a beautiful plum leather Filofax, when Filofax was the ne plus ultra of personal organizers. That was back in the pre-Palm Pilot days, let alone the age of the smartphone.

You used your Filofax for your address book, to keep your calendar, and to take notes. Each year, you replaced the calendar “guts”, but you kept the swanky leather binder forever.

I loved Bob Slate in the way that I always love stationery stores – even Staples, where I’m happy as a clam wandering around picking up pens, colored Post-Its, yellow pads, and thumb drives. No matter that I already have dozens of pens, Post-Its in every color in the rainbow (pastel and bold), stacks of yellow pads (small and large) still in their cellophane wrapping, and enough thumb drives to back up the Library of Congress. I do so love me a stationery store – second only to a bookstore on my must-have retail list. I.e., the stores I’ll still be shopping ‘til I’m dropping.

The other day, I stopped in a the new Bob Slate, located on Brattle Street in what I’m pretty sure was the site of the late and much lamented Wordsworth Bookstore – another marvelous indie bookseller that’s now out of business. (Honestly, I did not start shopping at Border’s while Wordsworth was still alive. Instead, I’d troop over the Harvard Square and hit Wordsworth and Harvard Book Store, yet another great indie – and still going strong. I note that, like Bob Slate, Harvard Book Store opened its doors in 1932, demonstrating that not even the most dire of economic times can keep the life of the mind and the written word down. So here’s hoping.)

Anyway, the new Bob Slate is still in stocking-up mode and hasn’t had their official grand opening as yet. But I was able to buy a couple of calendars, some wrapping paper, and a baby card. And I was just thrilled to be there.

On the same trip, I also managed a quick look in at the Harvard Book Store.

I keep meaning to stop buying books and go to the library, but I did need to buy a couple of baby books to go with that baby card. And while I was poking around, I remembered that I wanted to read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. And then there was the Best American Short Stories for 2011 staring me right in the face.

What’s a reader to do but make a couple of purchases?

Farewell, Filene’s Basement. So long, Daddy’s Junky Music. Fight fiercely, Harvard Book Store.

And – smiley face time – welcome back Bob Slate.

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What’s not to like about a stationer named Slate? Even better than a surgeon named Klutz.