adHominem
Senior Member
^I miss those stores as well. I'm surprised that Ben McNally can survive on Bay Street, but I hope it can do so for as long as possible.
I think Ben has such a beautiful space that he's able to rent it out for private events, which helps his bottom line. Plus he's the bookseller for IFOA every year. Hopefully he can hang in there a good long time.
WBB was never my favourite – I still keenly feel the absence of This Ain't the Rosedale Library, Mirvish and Pages – but I'm sad to see it go. Every time a bookshop closes the city as a whole is a little poorer for it.
It also feels like the end of an era of a particular form of retail – WBB (at least before it became an outsize Indigo stepchild) was of a type with Sam's and Honest Ed's: big, brash, not too self-serious, populist and welcoming, disorganized, ramshackle and useful.