"I have a favor to ask: When Amazon opens its retail store in the Southport Corridor area of Lakeview later this year, please do not shop there.... Obviously, Chicago isn't going to become a ghost town, but we should be very aware of the cultural and community riches we have in our many independent book stores."The vitality of places like Women & Children First, Quimby's, Unabridged Bookstore, City Lit Books, RoscoeBooks and a dozen others I could name are part of what make Chicago a vibrant city. That vitality is also why I am not overly worried about an Amazon store colonizing Lakeview.
"Chicago is better than this.
"But we must be vigilant in the face of these threats and remind ourselves that the people who own and work in the local stores are our neighbors, are here to stay and are invested in ways a corporation could never match.
"We have seen how easy it is to let something meaningful slip through our fingers. Chicago's literary culture shouldn't be trusted to one man in Seattle."
--John Warner, the Chicago Tribune's "Biblioracle," in a recent column headlined "Don't shop at Amazon's new Chicago store"
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