Synopsis "Bricks and Mortar (in English)"
The idea for this book was born of a frustration I experienced in the spring of 2014 trying to purchase a drafting chair for my studio worktable. I wanted to make the purchase locally, but found only two alternatives, both somewhat flimsy and less than adequate for my needs. When I checked online, I found dozens of models, ranging from the under $100 commodity chairs similar to what was available locally, to the $1439 "Herman Miller Aeron(R) PostureFit Workstool in Polished Aluminum," that promised to let me sit comfortably all day long while reducing pressure under my thighs, and promoting perfect posture and unrestricted blood circulation.After reading many customer reviews for a wide range of possibilities, I settled on what appeared to be an adequate chair for around $240, and ordered it using my Amazon Prime(R) account. The chair arrived two days later, and I have been generally pleased with my choice. (I am sitting in it now as I write these words, and both my posture and my circulation appear to be good.) However, I was left with a nagging sense of guilt for having given up on the local retail channels and invoking my one-click-shopping powers with the all-encompassing, all-knowing Amazon.This guilt festered into a new round of obsessive thinking about the viability of various "bricks and mortar" stores that find themselves in the crosshairs of voracious Internet retailers like Amazon. I always feel a special compassion for the salesperson who, when asked about an out-of-stock item, half-heartedly suggests, "We could order that for you and have it here in a few days." And I wonder what will become of him once the Internet is able to project holograms into our homes and insinuate sensations directly into our brains.Thankfully, the Internet has not yet eliminated the need for many forms of traditional drive-to-the-store type shopping. Rather than try to figure out which of our local retail establishments will resist Amazon's advances, and which will succumb, I decided to take a snapshot of the current state of our household offline shopping. For a period of a month in the late spring of 2014, I documented each trip made to a new retail outlet to buy anything we needed or wanted. This book includes photographic sequences and audio recordings from twelve expeditions. It will be interesting to see in ten years how much of this activity will appear to be antiquated.
