{"id":78,"date":"2007-02-01T09:22:04","date_gmt":"2007-02-01T14:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/01\/what-happened-to-the-bookstore\/"},"modified":"2007-02-01T09:22:04","modified_gmt":"2007-02-01T14:22:04","slug":"what-happened-to-the-bookstore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=78","title":{"rendered":"What Happened to the Bookstore?…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"GRBJ0583.gif\"<\/p>\n

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal<\/em>, January 22, 2007<\/p>\n

A year ago, an independent bookstore opened in downtown Grand Rapids, River Bank Books. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago it closed. It was a bummer on several levels. First, you hate to see any bookstore close. Second, you’d like to see stores that aren’t part of mega-chains succeed. Third, things like bookstores make downtowns just that much nicer, and (whether it’s true or not) tend to be perceived as a bellwether of a city’s health.<\/p>\n

I did, in fact, patronize the store. I didn’t go there as a destination, but it was nice to pop in while I was down there. I even bought some stuff, though obviously not enough.<\/p>\n

So when I found out the news, I wanted to draw a comic about it because, you know, I wanted to call attention to the cause, and maybe help other downtown retailers and just sort of rally, um, support for the….<\/p>\n

Okay. Honestly? I did, in fact, have some sympathies here, but my primary motivation for this week’s comic was my right thumbnail. A couple of days before deadline, I got my thumbnail bent back playing basketball. The nail luckily snapped back in place, but it was bruised halfway down and sore as hell. I couldn’t hold a pen without extending the thumb out, which was no good for detailed drawing. So I came up with this comic because it required limited drawing board work; I did most of it on the computer.<\/p>\n

The thumb is all better now. So no smarty comments on next week’s comic about not being able to tell by the quality of the drawing….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, January 22, 2007 A year ago, an independent bookstore opened in downtown Grand Rapids, River Bank Books. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago it closed. It was a bummer on several levels. First, you hate to see any bookstore close. Second, you’d like to see stores that aren’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}