When he opened in 2009 his plan was for it to be the skater’s skateshop. And it was. But it’s tough to run a business that depends on the disposable income of shifty teenagers.
Around the same time he opened his business, kids on scooters were becoming a common sight at skateparks. They were looking for a place to ride as well. Like many skaters Rob was anti-scooter, he would have preferred to keep his skatepark for his own kind. But in terms of running a business, he saw the writing on the wall. It said “scoot or die.”
I was visiting St. John’s a few weeks ago and across town from Rob’s old warehouse I stopped in at a new book store called Broken Books. It was a cool store, stocked with lots of local stuff along with other well reviewed titles. There was no Danielle Steel section.
I talked with the owner, asking if he was trying to corner the student market. The subtext of my question was “how are you staying open?” He appeared to be catering to a small demographic. Keeping a bookstore open at all is hard enough, even with a Danielle Steel section.
His answer was “I mostly care about putting good books on the shelf.”
I’d heard this before. It’s one you sometimes hear from proprietors of artsy endeavours. Earlier this year the owner of a book shop in Toronto made a point of telling me and my classmates the same thing. Toronto Book Store Guy only stocked books worthy of a high minded, literary owner such as himself.
I can’t stand hearing stuff like that. It would have been ok if he’d qualified it by saying he was lucky to have thte freedom to shelf what he wanted, (only a handful of cities in the country could support a business model such as this). Instead he went the “I did it my way” route and in doing so made me want to go spend my money at Chapters, where there’s no soul but also no judgement. And also nice chairs. And Starbies.
To be fair, the young owner of Broken Books came across much less blow hard about his business model. It seemed like something he said because it’s something his customers would like to hear. And it’s true, people like to hear this. When TBSG said it, I could almost hear the lusty sighs of admiration from some of his customers.
But we shouldn’t gush about these people. Most people who pursue art stuff make sacrifices to do the work they want to do. They take other crappy jobs just to buy a little time to do what they’d like to do all the time. So why should we be enamoured with somebody on the business side who doesn’t have to? It makes me want to see what would happen if the whole snooty enterprise went under. What would they do? Would they be able to man up like Rob did and change the business plan?
Scoot or die.
*To be clear it was a combination skateboard and BMX shop. A “turndown” is actually a BMX trick. I just wanted to keep things simple in that anecdote.