Apparently, back when I visited this place, I hadn't yet learned my lesson about not taking pictures too late in the day during the winter, so the rest of the exterior photos here will be a bit darker than I would like. Anyway, next up is the mall's Barnes & Noble, built during the early-00s redevelopment (and attached to the side of the Target, despite the Target building being owned by themselves rather than by the mall).
I recently visited a Barnes & Noble for the first time in a couple of years and noticed that the interior was starting to look a little tired. Specifically, the carpet looked dirty and a bit worn. I'm not so sure if it needed to be replaced, but it certainly could have benefited from a nice steam cleaning if nothing else. I think carpeting works in a bookstore in order to reduce noise, and it looks good when taken care of, but obviously it can look shabby quite easily if it isn't taken care of. Aside from that, the number of CDs at that location I went to has dramatically been reduced. In the case of classical CDs, basically all they have are a handful of popular 'crossover' classical CDs such as 2 Cellos and stuff from Yo-Yo Ma. That's about it. They had a lot more even 3-4 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThis would be fine if B&N still had their excellent online selection of CDs, but that has been shrunk as well. That happened last summer. I'm not sure why, but their large selection of older CDs is now gone and they mostly only have albums released in the last couple of years. I have ordered a few things from them even with this restriction, but I certainly bought more when they had the older stuff along with the new releases. I'm not sure why the change was made because they use the same online supplier, Alliance Entertainment, and I believe Alliance still has the older titles because I purchased some older CDs from a classical specialty store which also uses Alliance. I don't get it, but there's probably a reason for it.
The photo came out okay. I don't have any issue with it. I can make out all those Subaru Outbacks even at the edge of the photo, lol.
Yeah, I've noticed that about some Barnes & Nobles I've been to recently too. Definitely seems like they haven't been keeping their stores up the way they used to. You'd probably hate their new store design even more.
DeleteInteresting to hear that about their music section. Even back when I was still buying CDs, Barnes & Noble never really came to mind as a place to buy them, though I have seen some local Barnes & Nobles with large (if rather empty) music sections.
Oh no! That new store looks terrible. It's like a Half Price Books, but with better racks. I expect Half Price Books to be cheap, but not Barnes & Noble! Oh well, I'm not really expecting B&N to open new locations down here. Then again, who knows. We did have a FYE open up recently at Katy Mills...which happens to contain the only Books-A-Million left in the Houston area.
DeleteHere in Houston, there were basically three different styles of B&N when it came to CDs in the 2010s at least. One was a style of store which had practically no CDs except for a handful of latest releases which they kept near the checkouts. Unfortunately, the two B&Ns like that in town were the two nearest to me! Ugh! The next was the most popular which had an area for CDs, but not a full department. Then, there was a handful of stores which still had something resembling a full CD department. The store I described earlier was in the last category. Those were presumably the strongest local stores.
B&Ns in the last category still had a pretty decent selection of CDs up until a few years ago. They were no prime Borders when it came to CDs, but around 2016-17, it was hard to find any chain store which had more, except FYE and Half Price Books maybe, but now they don't have much. They do have a lot of LPs, but I'm not really interested in that.
It really does! I'm surprised Barnes & Noble is opening new stores at all these days... I suppose something is better than nothing.
DeleteThe Barnes & Nobles I knew growing up were pretty much all the first or maybe second category, which is why I never associated them with music. It's only relatively recently that I realized that they had stores with full music departments at all!