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I see what you guys are saying from a pragmatic standpoint, and yeah, I suppose it is personal feelings, but I genuinely enjoy the atmosphere of bookstores--the crowd, the smell, the staff, etc. Admittedly, I don't spend a whole lot of money in them either, due to the library and Amazon, but I still like them. For instance, here in Seattle, we have a cool indie bookstore that has a pub in the basement--how cool is that? You can roam through the shelves, find an interesting book or two, and then head downstairs for a pint. That's the kind of experience you just can't duplicate through online shopping.
I don't think the video store compares quite as well, because a lot of the video stores that disappeared were the Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos, which for the most part were a dismal place to shop (bright lighting, cookie cutter corporate structure, etc.) To again use a local example, we have a place here called Scarecrow Video that caters to cinephiles and has a huge selection of titles (110,000+), many of which are hard to find/OOP. That's about the closest thing to a bookstore I can think of in the video world, and I can guarantee people would miss that place.
I suppose if most bookstores were like, say, WaldenBooks (the Blockbuster of the book world), then yeah, I wouldn't have much attachment to them. But being that it hasn't gotten that bleak yet, I'd like to see b&m stores stick around for a while.
BTW, off topic, but ardeegee, that is an awesome avatar!
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