Local SF bookstore Borderland Books going out of business (thank the new wage control law)

Discussion
1

Reason magazine's Brian Doherty reports this week on the owners of independent small bookstore Borderland Books in the Mission citing the city's recent "minimum wage" hike (I think such legislation is more accurately described as "wage control laws") as a reason for their going out of business:

http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/02/san-francisco-minimum-wage-law-claims-sc

Love & Liberty,
                              ((( starchild )))
Outreach Director, Libertarian Party of San Francisco
                           (415) 625-FREE

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2

Thanks for the post,
Starchild. The closing of any small
business due to difficulties making ends meet is cause for sadness, but the
closing of so many “brick and mortar” bookstores is especially sad for me. With each closing, we lose an immense amount
of opportunity for enriching our lives.
In our family, when our children where growing, we spent countless hours
in bookstores (yes, we worked outside the home). Not just buying books, but browsing, learning
about authors, participating in the many “programs” that bookstores had for
kids. There was always something going
on at Waldenbooks on West Portal. The
ladies that owned the Buy, Sell,Trade bookstore on Irving Street had summer
reading programs, where the kids were supposed to read a list of books then
come in to discuss them and get their free book for a prize.

According to the article
Starchild mentions, the Internet and high rent certainly made things difficult
for Borderlands Books, but the
recent minimum wage law delivered the fatal blow:

“If you don't believe that
increasing the minimum wage can harm, perhaps even fatally, small businesses,
you might be interested in this account of why they are going out of
business from the owners of the great science fiction/fantasy specialty
bookstore Borderlands Books on San Francisco's hip shopping mecca Valencia
Street. They explain how, after
surviving rent doublings, having to move, the encroachment of Amazon on retail
book sales, and the recession, the city's new $15/hour minimum wage is finally
driving in the stake.” To make matters worse, the folks who worked at Borderlands are now without a job.

Marcy