Bookstores usually don't open with blaring mariachi music, beaming politicians and misty-eyed community activists, but on Wednesday an honest-to-goodness bookseller opened for business on San Antonio's South Side. About 150 people were there to celebrate an arrival six years in the making.
The vibrantly decorated 3,082-square-foot Waldenbooks store at South Park Mall was stocked with more than 20,000 books, magazines, newspapers and best sellers. Store managers wouldn't say how many books had been sold by early evening, but they said the day's tally was three times their expectations.
I understand about demographics and disposable income. I know why market studies are relied on by corporate America. But sometimes this "research" can become little more than self-fulfilling prophecy. San Antonio is a city of 1.7 million people, the eighth largest in the U.S., but half of the people living there don't have a bookstore within 15 miles of them. Yes, that area of the city is overwhelmingly Hispanic, and yes, the average income level is lower than someone like, say, Macy's would want before opening a store there. No one was asking for a Border's superstore to be built across the street from a brand-new Barnes & Noble warehouse, with a Books-a-Million and Hastings down the street for good measure. But to say that a population amounting to a quarter of a million people couldn't support any bookstore is ludicrous.
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